Meal #09: Thailand

Our first Thai meal takes us to Krua Apsorn on Samsen Road in Dusit, a small restaurant that boasts a chef who has cooked for royalty - specifically the late Queen Mother and late Princess Galyani Vadhana. Krua Apson, which has several locations around Bangkok, is well-known among Thai foodies, and the original branch in Samsen is always full - I should know because my office is around the corner.

We were lucky enough to snag a table for 10 people on the last day before they closed for Songkran. Despite being a Saturday lunch, the restaurant was full and I was worried that they forgot my reservation because when we went into the restaurant there were no seats available. But no, that wasn't the case, they had another air-conditioned room at the rear building and there were a table with our name on it. Today's food explorers were Air, Sonya, YY, Dan, Minh, Jim, Kai and myself, coming from Thailand, Australia, Japan, US, Vietnam, Germany and Singapore.

Air described Krua Apsorn as Thai home cooking. The menu was relatively small, but everything we ordered was very, very good.

As this was a Thai meal, we ate Thai style - everyone had their own plate of rice along with a few signature courses that was shared between everybody.

The first signature dish was the yellow crab curry, featuring large chunks of crab stir fried with egg and onions in a mild curry sauce.

Prawn curry with lotus shoots - this was the spiciest of the dishes, but even then not tongue-numbingly spicy.

The second crab-heavy dish, stir-fry crab with yellow chilli was a favourite amongst ourselves. Notice the chunks of crab!

This is a rare dish not commonly found in most menus - a kind of Thai flower stir-fried with pork.

And lastly, a gigantic omelette filled with... you guessed it, more crab!

There were two more items that we ordered that I forgot to take pictures of. The first was the special of the day, shrimp cakes, and the second was the coconut ice cream, which was technically a sorbet rather than an ice cream. The sorbet was very good and very rich in flavour and home-made. Despite the crates of fresh coconut on premises, the restaurant didn't even serve coconut juice - it was all going towards the coconut sorbet.  

Between the eight of us the bill was slightly more than B300 a person, which is a really good price for the quality of food we had. Definitely give this one a try if you can - it's not near the BTS or MRT lines, but it's not outrageously difficult to get to either. The main branch is just next door to the National Library of Thailand (หอสมุดแห่งชาติ).

Rat fund: We collected B220 for the rat fund, bringing the current total to B1,770.