Floyd’s Brasserie Phuket

Last week I had the pleasure of eating at Floyd's in beautiful Phuket, Thailand.
If your not familiar with the late Keith Floyd I suggest you check him out on youtube.com as soon as possible. While Julia Child is often credited with combining entertainment and cooking on televison, in my opinion it was really Keith Floyd who showed us just how much fun it could be. No matter where he cooked; a vineyard in Spain, a fishing boat rolling in the North Sea, or the center of an ostrich farm in South Africa, Floyd always made it exceptionally fun.
The Brasserie in Phuket, nestled in the back of the Burasari Resort surrounded by lush gardens and tropical pools, is his first restaurant in Asia. The menu is a mix of traditional European and French cuisine followed by a solid representation of classic Thai dishes. Not being terribly hungry we kept it simple and ordered three small starters.

Aromatic Crispy Duck Leg on Herb Salad


This was a perfectly cooked crispy duck leg, it was plump and juicy with a surprising amount of delicious meat that fell easily off the bone. The herb salad was nice, fresh micro-greens with a dash of balsamic, however the raspberry sauce was a bit to sweet for me and I made the mistake of mixing to much of it into the salad. This was my favorite of the three dishes that night, it was light and refreshing but the duck was also hearty and very satisfying. This one inspires me to cook with duck more often.



Poached eggs Burgundy Style
"A remarkable dish of free range eggs poached in a rich red wine sauce with lardons and croutons As generations of wine growers would say, quoting Fats Waller: its liquid ham and eggs ma'am!"


This dish was good, it really was similar to liquid ham and eggs. The eggs were perfectly poached, the smoked bits of ham were crispy and rich, but the amount of sauce was ridiculous. I'm a big fan of sauce so I made a little sandwich with some of the starter bread, some egg and as much sauce as I could get on there, I was still left with a deep bowl of soup at the end. The smoky Burgundy flavor of the sauce was great but the huge amount of it washed out the ham and eggs. It's a shame when a well prepared dish such as this one has everything going for it and then suffers from an error in plating.



Thai Fish Cakes
'The best on the island'

I've eaten fish cakes all over Thailand and these were truly the best. But a purist, or anyone allergic to shrimp would have a hard time calling them fish cakes. They were fluffy with sizable bits of fish all throughout but they also hid large nuggets of delicious shrimp. Shrimp and fish cakes are widely popular all over Thailand but I've never seen them mixed and I think it's a mistake to label them Fish Cakes on the menu. However they were really good and offered an impressive amount of seafood in a light and crispy cake.

Over all Floyd's was a really good dining experience. All the dishes were good, none of them great but the portions were large and the price very fair. All of these starters were priced less than 250 baht and the mains all seemed reasonable as well.
With the many excellent restaurant choices around Phuket and Bangkok I might not make it back to Floyd's anytime soon but I will continue to watch his timeless cooking programs and pay tribute to him every time I pour a little wine in the cooking pot and a lot in my glass-

Classic Floyd cooking ostrich on the farm-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypoH2Z3khZ0

www.keithfloyds.com

Khanom Cusine

With only a few more months of living in Khanom, it's time to slowly say goodbye to this beautiful little fishing village; and that means eating at all our favorite local restaurants and food shops. As often as possible-
I'll also try to highlight some of the other wonderful things to eat around Khanom-
It has been an amazing four years... We will try to visit often but I might never live here again and I know I'll always miss Khanom. But that's another story and this is about food.
So lets eat!

May, 20, 2010
Lunch at Krua Chonapa, on the beach road 1km from Kho Khao

Chonapa is one of the very first real Thai restaurants I tried on a vacation here over four years ago, before we made the decision to move. I was feeling adventurous that night; cruising a chopper along the beach road with a month of holiday, and seriously considering the prospect of leaving the U.S.A to move here and run a restaurant. At Chonapa I decided to skip the English menu and just point at something in the middle of the Thai pages. Sometimes adventures can lead to disaster. I've never seen a dish that looked or tasted anything like this, it was horrible. Dark nuggets of some mysterious sinewy cartilage, covered in a muddy brown sauce that was beyond spicy. I tried to eat it.
I dove in with a heaping chili-infused spoonful of rubbery chunks that seemed to be on fire in my mouth, and I was then rewarded with the unpleasant snap of chewing something hard. I ordered more beer with ice and kept eating. I convinced Jen to try some, a tiny bit on the end of my spoon and that was enough, she wasn't touching the chunks.
Maybe the kitchen was having fun with the silly foreigner who thought he could blindly choose from the local menu, or maybe the menu actually said 'Insanely spicy Duck tongues and testicles with bits of Ox knuckle'

I'll never know what I ate, but I do know how to order exactly what I want in a Thai restaurant now and I've been back to Chonapa many times. They have an all new menu with some simple twists on traditional Thai dishes.
We only ordered one dish as they were out of the winged bean needed for the other salad we wanted, guess we'll be going back soon-

This is Som Tom Tawt or fried papaya salad with seafood-




Som Tom is a very common Thai salad, often sold from street vendors and mobile Som Tom carts that cruise around in every city.
It is most often made with green papaya as the base but it can also be made with: heart of palm, cucumber, apple, carrot, even enoki mushrooms. These are all available at Krua Chonapa at various times but they have also taken the Som Tom one step further.
Deep Frying-

Here they've taken the simple Som Tom and brought it to a higher level. Deep fried green papaya, mixing that crispy golden goodness with the perfectly steamed squid and shrimp is brilliant. Place one fried papaya flake on your plate and crush it with a spoon, then add the salad of seafood, roast cashews, baby tomatos, string beans, and lime.


Som Tom is perfect but this is somehow even better.

Hello and หวัดดีครับ!

Welcome to my food blog, this blog will be about food, restaurants and home cooked meals. Also my upcoming experience at Le Cordon Bleu, Bangkok.
My goal is to make you hungry and thirsty every time you stop by.
Lets eat!