Bangkok: Nahm

I did not grow up in a sports household - we didn't watch "the game" or root for a baseball or football team.  Nobody in my immediate family is conversant in sports teams or players.  My indoctrination, instead, was food.  My mother is an excellent cook with an extensive collection of cookbooks.  My parents are formidable hosts of parties and holiday meals (for their anniversary one recent year my mom cooked a menu from the Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazine issues from the month and year they were married - December 1971).

My parents also love to go out to eat.  They always know about the new restaurant opening or the hot new chef.  While my father doesn't know all the players on the Mets, he knows famous chefs by name and even recognizes them.  It is a passion approaching sports talk.  This was the case even before the celebrity chef craze and the Food Network.  So, naturally, I appreciate a good meal -- everything from my mom's holiday spread, a burger joint or a street vendor to a tasting menu at Daniel or Gramercy Tavern.  Some people see the splurge on a meal as wasteful or extravagant, but I see it as an art form and, done right, it can be transporting.

I feel that this background is necessary to explain why, last night, I found myself at Nahm in Bangkok.  I know that a good Thai meal comes cheap.  Indeed, I had a squid, prawn and papaya salad at some hole in the wall place for lunch yesterday and it was absolutely fresh, had just the perfect amount of lingering spice and cost less than $6.  It even came with a complimentary starter of dried shrimp, peanuts, jicama, lime, chilis and sauce to wrap in lettuce.  So I know that good Thai food isn't hard to come by and isn't expensive.  

That said, when I got to Bangkok, I looked at an April 2012 list of the world's top 50 restaurants, curious to see if any of them were in Southeast Asia.  Lo and behold, number 50 is Nahm in Bangkok.  Turns out, it is hosted in the Metropolitan hotel which is right next door to where I am staying.  I was able to get a reservation for 1 person last night.

Nahm is controversial.  It is the work of Australian chef David Thompson.  A New York Times article explained:

Mr. Thompson says that Thai cooking is “decaying” and has less complexity and variation than it once did. “I’m striving for authenticity, that’s my primary goal,” he said in an interview.

Thompson's provocation received this predictable reaction:

Suthon Sukphisit, a food writer for Thai newspapers and an authority on Thai cuisine, reacts to Mr. Thompson’s stated mission as if he had just bitten into an exceptionally hot chili pepper. 

“He is slapping the faces of Thai people!” Mr. Suthon said in an interview. “If you start telling Thais how to cook real Thai food, that’s unacceptable.” 

Mr. Suthon has not eaten at Nahm — “I’m not going to,” he said. 

Cooking is profoundly wound up with Thailand’s identity. Many recipes were tested and refined in royal palaces. And Thais often spend a good share of their day talking about this or that dish they tried; a common greeting is, “Have you eaten yet?” 

Mr. Thompson’s quest for authenticity is perceived by some Thais as a provocation, a pair of blue eyes striding a little too proudly into the temple of Thai cuisine. Foreigners cannot possibly master the art of cooking Thai food, many Thais say, because they did not grow up wandering through vast, wet markets filled with the cornucopia of Thai produce, or pulling at the apron strings of grandmothers and maids who imparted the complex and subtle balance of ingredients required for the perfect curry or chili paste. Foreigners, Thais believe, cannot stomach the spices that fire the best Thai dishes. 

“When someone comes along and presents himself as the spokesman of Thai cuisine it’s like Osama Bin Laden going to the Vatican and saying he is the high authority on Catholicism,” said Bob Halliday, a Bangkok-based food writer who has lived in Thailand for four decades. 

Mr. Halliday says he has received e-mails from Thai friends criticizing Mr. Thompson and is not that surprised by the hubbub. 

“Politics is peace and love compared to what happens in the Thai cooking world,” Mr. Halliday said.

The ambience at Nahm is low key and the decor is simple.  My table had a view outside to the Metropolitan's perfectly lit pool.  The vibe was decidedly casual compared to the NY restaurants on the top 50 list that I've tried (Daniel and Eleven Madison) but the service was very attentive.  I opted for the 1700 baht (around $55) set menu.  I've ordered in from ThaiNY and spent $40, so I couldn't resist. The set menu starts with canapés and then provides a choice of one nam prik (relish), one yam (salad), one soup, one gang (curry) and one pad (stir fry).  It ends with desert.  The choices were near impossible and I admit some anxiety in trying to select an assortment that would provide a glimpse into the range of offerings. I had a perfect watermelon martini to start as I sifted through the menu.

I don't usually take pictures of my food but I wanted to remember the courses (it seems weird, even when the food is artfully presented).  Even with the pictures, I can't quite remember the full description of each of the courses, and the descriptions were involved.  The canapés were fabulous, a highlight was the Southern mussels, you would never have known they were mussels.  I had a scallop dish for my relish; a chicken, egg and squid dish for my salad; a pork and squid soup with loads of cilantro (to die for); a beef for my curry course; pork and squid in coconut sauce and crispy fish for my stir fry.  There was a chili cured mango covered in green sugar as a spicy palate cleanser and then I finished off with a lychee in perfumed sauce and little coconut cakes for desert.

The soup and "salad" were superb.  Complex and perfectly spiced, both of those would have been a perfect meal if they were left undistracted by all of the other flavors at the table.  The relish (scallops) was loaded in a red chili paste that had a familiar dirty taste I couldn't quite place.  The red curry beef was good but a little heavy and overly salty.  The stir fry was odd and didn't really work for me; the pork and squid were in a thick coconut sauce and served separate from (not on top of) the fried fish.  The fried fish was crispy but salty and still had little bones in it; it was hard to make that dish come together for me.  Desert was simple and delightful.  I should have taken notes on the menu descriptions but I was too self conscious to do so and, besides, I wanted to just take in the experience.

I really liked that meal began and ended with a salty sweet peanut taste.  The amuse bouche was a little crispy pork and peanut bite.  At the end, the cookie plate had a salty sweet peanut ball.  It was as if the flavors of the meal would take you all over the map but you ended the journey roughly where you started.  I had a poetry professor in college that said a poem should accomplish something, not begin and end with the same line or idea, but I thought the beginning and end of the meal with the salty sweet peanut was a nice touch.

Usually the set menu is for sharing.  The table chooses each course and the appropriate amount of each dish comes for everyone to share.  I was a little overwhelmed when all of my dishes basically came at the same time after the canapés, including my soup.  I thought this might have been because I was dining alone but the same happened for the table of 2 next to me.  I didn't like this at all.  I wanted to linger on each dish one at a time, especially the soup, which sat there getting cold as I worked my way through the dishes. I like the drama and pace of small course after course over a period of time.

All in all, this was an excellent but not perfect meal.  For me, much of the experience of dining out is the company and the conversation a few glasses of wine and good food enables.  It was a little odd (if not lonely) to sit there alone, and perhaps this colored the experience.  I wonder if it would have been different if I was there with Kim, Marge and Nick, with Kim making the menu choices and Nick selecting the wines.  I think I still would have wished for a course by course pace.

The dishes that were excellent were unlike any Thai food I had ever tasted and definitely superior.  This is decidedly the best Thai food I've ever had even if (controversially) it is prepared by an Aussie.  But the food and the overall experience did not come close to Daniel or Eleven Madison.