In December, Tawn’s university friend Ko was married. Tawn and several of their close friends helped with various aspects of the wedding. For example, Tawn served as the emcee both in Thai and English, since the groom’s family are from Sweden. As a thank-you, Ko’s mother took the friends (and me) out for a very nice dinner at the Grand Shangarila Restaurant, an old-school Chinese restaurant in the Silom area known for their seafood hot pot and lobster sashimi.
Let me share our banquet with you:
A choice of sauces and condiments: kimchee, soy sauce, wasabi, and Thai style dipping sauce. Korean, Japanese, and Thai all in one row.
Look at the beautiful kimchee!
Newlyweds Per and Ko take pictures of the appetizer plate, while Ko’s mother looks on.
Can you name all the appetizers? From the back, clockwise: fried daikon radish cake; fried small fish; fried deer tendon with ginkgo nuts, and – anyone want to guess what item four is? Please see below…
If you guessed duck tongue, you would be correct. There’s a little cartilage spine in them after you eat the meat. Who knew? Tasty, though.
A lovely roast duck was brought to the table and presented to us, then the staff carved the crispy sweet skin off and wrapped the skin in these delicate crepes with plum sauce and green onion inside.
Close-up view of the crispy goodness of roasted duck skin.
The main course: lobster sashimi. Look at the size of it! Everyone is in awe…
Creature from the black lagoon…
The sweet meat, which we could either boil briefly in a broth and eat, or simply eat raw after a brush of soy sauce. In my opinion, raw was the better option as it was tastier.
My goofy husband pretending to be impaled on the lobster.
Also served was a boat of sashimi dragon fish, a firm white fish that was boiled in another broth.
There were two broths, one made from some of the lobster’s blood and Chinese cooking wine and another from the fish bones. Don’t mix!
Also served with the lobster was a little bowl of – any guesses? A gelatin made from the lobster’s blood, with Sprite poured over it. Odd… didn’t understand the point of this. It is meant to be a chased to the lobster and the gelatin was pleasantly salty. But no idea why the Sprite was in it.
Shrimp balls served with a crab meat topping. Rich…
Fried soft shell crab with black pepper and salt, garlic, scallions, and chilies.
The remaining roast duck meat made its way back to the table as a stir fry served on a bed of crunchy fried vermicelli noodles.
Fried wide rice noodles with lobster head. Ultimately, the entire lobster that was first served as sashimi is consumed over several courses.
Dessert number one was a taro paste bar with ginkgo nuts wrapped in pumpkin seeds and fried.
Dessert number two is fresh young coconut meat and ginkgo nuts served in a light sugar syrup.
Needless to say, this was a pretty fancy – and filling! – meal. We were really treated wonderfully by Ko’s mother and went home with several containers of leftovers per person.
Outside the front of the restaurant, which is located just off Soi Taniya, the adult nightlife street that caters to Japanese tourists and expats.
christao408 
looks so gorgeous..all of them. The food entices me and …kinda made me gag (the mention of tongue and blood)..but I sure would like to eat most of what is shown here. Everything looks very fancy and unattainable here in St Louis. Maybe if I ever go back home and manage to stop by in Bkk..
I’ll have the rice please HE HE! I am kidding with you I love seeing the food. I am not so adventurous with food. Why I went Vegan for awhile. Gave me new food to try without eating something that lived 🙂 ha! Ok the coconut dish looked good!
drooool…. i want sum of that sashimi…. ❤ raw fish/seafood!!!!”My goofy husband pretending to be impaled on the lobster.” awwwwww hehehe too cute! melts my heart
OMG!!! The dishes look fantastic! Does the lobster have blood? I’ve never had giant lobster before, saw it on TV tho. I believe it’s very delicious! I had duck tongue and neck long long time ago. They don’t have much meat on them. “The fun is to practice your teeth and tongue to suck the bones for full flavour and very little meat.”
I love eating those small fried fish and duck tongue. haha My sister thinks the duck tongue is gross but it tastes really good.
Some really different tastes/textures here. The coconut meat/gingko nuts with sweet syrup reminds me somewhat of the soft tofu in sweet rosewater that we had on Lantau Island at the Buddhist temple. I’m not certain about the duck tongue. I had to swallow a few times to just consider trying that. I’ve never seen a Maine lobster that size. Glad to hear that they use all of the edible parts throughout the meal, though.
That must be an expensive dinner, with lobster, duck tougue and deer tendons were being served; plus a host of other animal species as well! The Chinese do not like to waste animal parts, I suppose! I have not tried lobster sashimi, is it similar to raw shrimp?Tawn’s funny photo was very hilarious indeed. 🙂
wow what a feast!
that looks so delicious! i love peking duck, and i’m sure that was a very good version of it. lobster sashimi also sounds wonderful, although i’ve never tried it. i’m just as confused about the lobster blood with sprite… but i guess it just goes to confirm that we chinese will eat just about anything!
I wish I was there! It looks like a sea foodie’s dream!!!!
I’ve seen almost all of these dishes before but the lobster blood in sprite is new to me. I am not a big fan of duck tongue, chicken feet, organs, sucking pigeon brains… That is a lot of food and I’m glad you folks took home the extras rather than wasting it. I’m guessing just by looking at the pictures there’s 7, maybe 8 people?
I think my family of Thai-Chinese background eat a lot of weird food, but the lobster’s blood gelly with Sprite is just exceptional! I wonder how they draw blood from the poor lobster .. was it still alive? Well my favourite dish is the fried soft shell crab.. yum!
That is one nice meal.
@beautyandthebum – @foggysunnymorning – Well, I don’t know how they drain the blood but I did some online research and a lobster can become very weak or even die of blood loss if a claw or antennae is broken off. Lobster blood also has a bluish tint because they use copper to convey the oxygen to the system, unlike humans, who use iron – thus our reddish blood.@yang1815 – @jace1982 – Yeah, it was pretty impressive.@ElusiveWords – We did have a total of eight people, although had a table for ten. We had to bring leftovers home as Ko’s mom went crazy with the ordering!@lil_squirrel4ever – Oh, absolutely! Now, truth be told, I have kind of mixed feelings with seafood. A small percentage of it is remarkable. A larger percentage isn’t terribly appealing to me. And the majority is usually in the “ho-hum” area.@kunhuo42 – Peking duck is one of my favorite treats. There is another restaurant here in Bangkok that does a really nice job with it. Tawn’s boss likes to go there and I’ve managed to get a few free meals out of it! =D@CurryPuffy – The lobster was similar to shrimp but I think the flesh had a firmer texture, a little more like jellyfish, actually. Quite pleasant, especially with a touch of soy sauce.@jandsschultz – The coconut meat dessert visually is similar to the tofufun but quite a different taste. It is very pleasant, though, and not overwhelmingly sweet.@twentyse7enn – The duck tongue actually was pretty tasty, although I don’t know that it was something so outstanding that I would seek it out. I feel kind of the same way about chicken feet. The sauce is good but there’s a lot of effort for very little meat! LOL@Sinful_Sundae – He has his silly streak, which surfaces from time to time. Like almost every hour.@Ikwa – If you aren’t adventurous, how will you ever find that next favorite food? =D@awoolham – I was kind of lucky in that I grew up in the San Jose, CA area which even in the 70s was quite diverse. By junior high school I had lots of friends from different countries, mostly Asian, and so started getting exposed to all sorts of crazy different foods. To this day, there will be things served to me that make me a little squeamish, but I figure if some culture things they are worth eating, I should at least try! =D
WOW! That was some meal! Great photos too. Now I need to go have some brunch!
oh, I grew up in Burma, next door to where you are, so I am quite familiar with blood, tongue, and all sorts of things. Ate some of them too as a child ..I think I just gotten too far away from the scene and become squeamish.
man, that meal looks incredible!
WAHHHH that looked like A LOT OF FOOD!!!! i really want peking duck now!that gelatin made from lobster blood is interesting. i don’t think i’ve ever seen anybody make anything from lobster blood before… sounds scary with sprite @@
we too have a cantonese style chinese restaurant here in jakarta where they too cook duck tongues (delish!) and serve lobster sashimi. just like the one in your pic, the lobster was big enough to be used for 3 dishes. sashimi was the first, i can’t remember the second, and the third (served as the last course) was my favorite – rice porridge with the head and roe.
@rudyhou – They never, ever let anything go to waste, do they?@iskrak – I imagine with Coke you wouldn’t be able to appreciate the blood as much. Ha ha…@LostSock21 – As it was…@awoolham – I’ve heard similar from other people who grew up in cultures that eat more innards. If you spend time away from it, you sometimes start to look at the practice and end up having an, “Eat what!?!” reaction. =D@murisopsis – Lobster blood and sprite for brunch, right? Ha ha… er, no.
the food looks amazing!