TravelingSaurus

a part-time traveler, with a love for triathlon, terriers, and seeing the world

Dining at Nahm, by David Thompson In Bangkok: I Fought the Thai Soup and the Thai Soup Won

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We had one very expensive dinner while we were in Thailand, at Nahm in the Metropolitan by COMO. Since we were staying at the Metropolitan, and Nahm has been ranked as one of the World’s Best as well as one of Asia’s best, well, why pass it up?

We decided to do the tasting menu because who knows when we will return to Bangkok again. I’m definitely glad we did as it allowed (errr…forced) us to try some things I never would have ever dreamed of trying.

First, the service at Nahm was great. Attentive, but not annoying. Friendly and helpful, but not pretentious or condescending. Courteous. I’d definitely give it two thumbs up.

Now, on to the food…

Here is what we ordered. For the prix fixe option, you received all the appetizers (canapes, to be exact), one soup each, and then one dish off of every page on the menu (salad, relish, curry, and stir-fry/steam/grill), and then one desert of each diner’s choosing. The portions are generous.  Here is what we chose:

Canapes
Um…bad on us, but we don’t remember all of them.
DH’s favorite was the smoked mussels.
My favorite was a coconut crisp, with crab, ginger, and some pickled vegetables (pictured).

Salad
Grilled beef, with cucumber and mint.

Relish
Fried prawns and vegetables, served with a coconut cream with preserved shrimp and crab.

Soup
Hot and sour soup, mine was with mushrooms and chicken, DH had his with prawns.

Curry
Crab in a yellow curry sauce, with ginger (I think, I’m not good with my curries), served with pickled onions, peppers.

Stir-Fry
Stir-fried wagyu beef, with oyster sauce, Thai basil, and onions.

The stand-out sauce/taste of the night was the stir-fried wagyu beef. The beef in the salad dish was actually more tender/cooked a bit rarer, as we prefer, but the overall flavor of the wagyu was excellent.

Neither DH or I are really a huge fan of curry, but the curry was good. I think we are unqualified to say how good, but for people who don’t eat curry it was tasty.  The relish was interesting…the sauce was a bit overwhelming, which considering the amount of things provided to eat with it, I think was the intention.  The flavor was good, but it was just overpowering.

The salad was also quite good, and I’m a huge fan of the tender, delicious little cucumbers they use in all of their dishes.

Overall, while expensive (particularly for Thailand, not so much for Washington DC), the tasting menu was absolutely worth it and it was so much fun to try all of the different dishes.  While I think both DH and I love cheap Thai food too much to return to Nahm if we end up in Bangkok in the near future, we absolutely recommend the tasting menu and the restaurant if you are looking for a foodie experience.  It’s a fun thing to do once in a while (or, cough, more often than we should). Again, a definite two thumbs up.

(I’m purposefully being a bit vague and not terribly judgmental in describing the dishes. DH and I have gotten to be pretty food-oriented, but neither of us have much experience with Asian cuisine beyond take-out.  I totally did not know what to expect from Nahm and don’t really have anything to compare it to.  That said, good food is good food, regardless of style or influence, and this was definitely good food.)

My Favorite Canapes!
Nahm_3

Counterclockwise: 
Bottom–Wagyu beef, then curry, pickled veggies (with the curry), fried prawns and veggies to go with relish, relish dish, cucumber and beef salad in center
Nahm_4

Cucumber & Beef Salad

Nahm_1

You notice I haven’t mentioned the soup…

The soup was incredibly delicious. DH actually preferred the flavor in other soups we had in Thailand to this one, but I loved this soup.  That stupid damn soup.

The waiter did ask me, when I ordered, if I could handle spicy food. I’m not one of those total wimps. I can handle a tiny bit. But perhaps worse, I like spicy food. Even when I can’t handle it, as I found out on this trip, I still like it. So I don’t have any persuasion to just say “no thank you, please send me the mild stuff”. Nope, I just say SURE, with an absolute sh*t-eating smile on my face.

Idiot.

First, I take one bite and start coughing and spluttering and slurping water (which, I will note, we had still water which was 300 baht, $10 a bottle). Mental reminder–don’t ever order expensive water if you will be chugging it simply to try to counter the fire in your mouth.

The waiter comes to the table and politely tells me how to eat said soup in coordination with the rest of the meal. You aren’t supposed to just eat the bowl of soup before the meal, you are supposed to eat it essentially as a palate cleanser being dishes.  And with a bit of rice.

Awesome, I think. That will make it so much less spicy. I’m sure I just a bit down the wrong pipe–I’m sure I can keep eating.

So I try some more of the other dishes.  And then I head back to the soup. Three spoonfuls.  I am sweating, coughing, nose is running, eyes are tearing, and still trying to have another spoonful. DH is laughing, at this point, and I’m pretty sure the wait staff was amused, as they kindly came over to offer more rice.

Next spoonful, somehow I get a pepper. Not just on the spoon, I actually swallow the thing. And it sears…from my poor little tonsil, all the way down. SEARS. It’s like I’ve swallowed a match, except a match stops burning faster.

I cough some more, and decide to lay the spoon to rest for a bit.  At this point, my mouth is burning to the point where just about everything tastes good. DH reports the salad dish is just a bit spicy…I try it, and report back that it feels like ice. Wonderful, delicious, ice.

You would think, at this point, that I’ve learned my lesson. That I can’t handle Thai spice. That I should just chalk it up to a learning experience, and push my precious, delicious, bowl of soup to the side, despite the fact that I’ve barely made a dent.

Of course not. I continue to try to eat the soup. Literally after every spoonful, I’m stuffing rice down my face intermixed with some $10 water, which must be $1 a sip. The waiter comes over and asks if we want another bottle. I ponder (red, and sweating), and DH just says yes.  I look at him when the waiter leaves, and he’s like–“uh, what are you going to do when you don’t have water? Of course we need another bottle.”  I was too shy at that point to just be like…can we have some normal filtered water out of the pitcher (not sure if it even existed there…but I’m guessing it did).

After about 10 more spoonfuls, intermixed with the rest of the delicious cuisine, I know that I need to call it a night. I’m sweating…and for how absolutely freaking cold the restaurant was…I know that’s not normal. And starting to hear my subconscious…what if you get sick?  Do you know how painful this is going to be if you get sick, Heather? (Obviously, I did not).

So I laid my spoon to rest. I longingly looked at my soup. Seriously. I loved it so much. The taste was perfect, the mushrooms delicious.

But I had lost.

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