Our trip to Kansas City for my grandparents’ 70th anniversary lasted just three days. Bright and early Monday morning (after an 80-minute mechanical delay), we were on our way to San Francisco for a few additional days of rest and relaxation before returning to Bangkok. Arriving late in the morning, we headed around the corner from our friend Anita’s house (where we were staying) to a newer bakery we hadn’t yet tried, the cleverly named Thorough Bread and Pastry.
The bakery is housed in the space formerly used by Just Desserts. It has a lovely brick wall and an open ceiling (which you can’t see in this picture). Lots of light comes in from busy Church Street, making it an inviting and warm place to stop for a while.
The selection of baked goods is wide and all of them look tasty. We arrived late in the morning so some items were down to just a handful of remaining pieces.
In addition to pastries, Thorough Bread and Pastry lives up to the “bread” part of its name. The baguettes were beautiful and the olive and sourdough loaves had me want to go on a carbohydrate binge.
For snacks with our coffee, I selected a cinnamon roll. Upon request, the bakers will put you food into the oven for a few minutes to reheat it. Of course, that is a must with a cinnamon roll because you want the topping to be just a gooey and molten as possible.
Tawn opted for an almond croissant, which tasted plenty good even if it wasn’t the most beautiful croissant in the world. That reminds me, I’ve been meaning to try my hand at croissant making again, just as soon as this crazy hot season eases off a bit and I can actually cool my kitchen to a workable temperature.
Feeling the need for something passing as healthful, Anita oped for the quiche, which was also very nice. With lots of fresh vegetables, you could almost forget the loads of fat.
In the past several years, there has been an explosion of artisinal, small-shop bakeries and patisseries. From Tartine to Craftsman & Wolves to Thorough Bread, San Franciscans are spoiled with many fine choices for baked goods. It is something we miss about living in the City and I am glad there is yet another place to visit when we are next in town.
While in Kansas City, we met a friend for lunch at Rye, a restaurant in Johnson County that is an offshoot of the well-regarded bluestem restaurant by award-winning husband and wife team Colby and Megan Garrelts. (My blog entry about a 2009 dinner there.)
Located in a newer retail/residential development near I-435, Rye has a welcoming atmosphere and a menu designed to celebrate Midwestern cuisine. It was busy when we arrived right in the middle of lunchtime, but we were seated after only a ten-minute wait. Service was friendly although, to my taste, a tad overfamiliar.
The restaurant has an extensive list of wines that are available in 6-ounce, 8-ounce, and 24-ounce servings, which translates into quarter, third, and whole bottles. (Which isn’t quite right because a standard 750ml wine bottle is 25.4 ounces.) Confusingly, sometimes it is cheaper to buy a bottle and other times, it is cheaper to buy four 6-ounce servings of the same wine. When I pointed this out to the server, who then introduced me to the person who manages the restaurant’s wine selection, I received a murky explanation that led me to suspect that nobody had ever noticed this pricing discrepancy.
That oddity aside, the wine list is a nice one and they deserve kudos for making more wines available by the glass, which encourages exploration and horizon-broadening.
The menu could be described as rustic but with a bit of panache. It celebrates Midwestern classics – chicken salad, pulled pork sandwich, and dumplings feature on the menu – but presented in a way that is a bit lighter, a bit more seasonal, and a bit more sophisticated than might come from your grandmother’s kitchen.
I ordered a two-piece fried chicken plate with a side of mashed potatoes. The breading was crisp and well-seasoned. The chicken inside was juicy but, like a lot of American chicken, the meat wasn’t very flavorful. American chicken (and pork, for that matter) is bred for blandness, much to my sorrow. The potatoes were nice and the mixed greens kept the dish reasonably light.
Curious, I also ordered a side of creamy mac and cheese. On one level, this serves as a good benchmark dish because so many restaurants serve it and it is so often the same-old, same-old. In this case, there wasn’t anything to fault with this mac and cheese, but there also wasn’t anything that raised it above similar dishes at other restaurants.
Tawn had a roasted salmon dish served on Indian rice with a lemon dressing and greens. This was a tad more elevated than the “fish and rice” dish you might find as the more healthful option on typical Midwestern menus. The fish tasted like it might be farmed – for the price, that wouldn’t be a surprise – and was a bit drier than I like, although Tawn prefers his fish that way. The lemon dressing was refreshing and the Indian rice was toothsome, although I couldn’t figure out if they were referencing Native American rice or South Asian rice!
Our friend had the house salad, grilled salmon added, with a sherry vinaigrette. While I didn’t try it, she seemed pleased with the dish. The greens were a nice mixture of types, so it certainly was a step up from a plate of iceberg lettuce. Of course, if a James Beard award-winning chef served a plate of iceberg in anything other than a wedge salad with Maytag dressing, I would be disappointed.
Nearing fullness, we ordered a single slice of pie, banana cream, for dessert. While I love pie, banana isn’t my favorite so I let Tawn do most of the eating. It was a nice enough pie although I found the crust a little tough. The pudding was nicely made, creamy and smooth.
All in all, Rye seems like a decent restaurant, providing familiar food with a slight twist at reasonable prices. While I don’t return to KC very often, I would keep Rye on my list of places to stop for a meal.
When I moved to Bangkok more than seven years ago, I flew THAI Airways’ nonstop flight from New York JFK Airport to Bangkok. In the years since, THAI has discontinued both the New York and Los Angeles to Bangkok nonstop flights. In their place is a one-stop flight via Seoul Incheon Airport to Los Angeles. When shopping for tickets for our recent flight to the United States, this Bangkok-Incheon-Los Angeles flight was the cheapest option offered by a Star Alliance carrier.
I’ve edited a nice video that overviews the flight, the cabin, the amenities, and meals served. If you would rather view the pictures and read the story, those follow here:
The flight departs Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport at 7:10 am, a bit earlier than ideal. Thankfully, we were packed the day before and made it to bed at a reasonable hour. Still, the 3:00 am alarm came much too early! The queue at the airport was short and the wait was less than fifteen minutes to check in. There were no lines at either the security screening or immigration counters.
Just past immigration is a large scale sculpture of one of the most famous episodes in Hindu mythology, the samudra manthan or “churning of the milk ocean”. It is an impressive sculpture that illustrates that this mostly Buddhist culture has strong Hindu and Vedic Brahminist roots.
We made our way to one of the many THAI Airways Royal Silk lounges. These lounges offer a nice respite from the stresses of air travel: a quiet ambience, comfortable seating, and a selection of reading materials, food, and beverage.
Since we had departed home so early, I helped myself to a latte, some small pastries, and (something I never eat!) a box of chocolate breakfast cereal. Maybe this is because my mother would never allow us to have so sugary a cereal in the house when I was a child, now I enjoy having a bit every now and then as a special treat.
Our Boeing 777-300 was waiting at the gate as the sun slowly climbed above the hazy horizon. The windows of the terminal were not very clean, making for this poor-quality image. Boarding commenced a few minutes late but the passenger load was only about 60% so boarding did not take long.
The economy class product is comfortable and modern. The seat maps provided on THAI’s website indicated that certain rows of this plane had 34″ pitch. I brought a small tape measure and samples several rows and found a consistent 32″ pitch. Comfortable enough and an inch more than most US-based carriers, but nothing special. Asiana, Korean, and All-Nippon offer 34″ pitch and EVA offers 33″ pitch as the standard in their long-haul economy class.
The morning breakfast option was pancakes and sausage or (my choice) stir-fried pork with ginger, rice, and pumpkin and egg. The food was tasty enough, although nothing very special.
About four-and-a-half hours later, we arrived at an overcast Incheon and were soon at the gate and off the plane. The same aircraft would take us to Los Angeles but all passengers were required to disembark so the plane could be serviced and a new crew could board.
This is my first time transitting Incheon since they opened the new mid-field concourse. It is a bright, sun-lit place with modern architecture. Within a few minutes, we had cleared the security screening and returned to the departure level.
Despite only having about 80 minutes on the ground, we took the time to stop by the Asiana Airlines lounge. As a holder of the United Club card, I have access to Star Alliance member lounges. This is a nice perk for long-haul travel and this new lounge in Incheon is very nice, with a faux library and a baby grand piano. I wonder what would happen if a guest decided to begin playing it?
The selection of food wasn’t very interesting, but I did help myself to some salad and a glass of draft beer. Truth be told, the beef was very hoppy and as I’m not much of a beer drink, I had only a few sips. On our return trip from Los Angeles, we had a slightly longer layover in Incheon and I took the opportunity to use the individual shower rooms to freshen up.
Returning to the gate area in preparation for boarding, I admired the nice combination of steel, wood, and glass. Despite being very modern, the terminal does not feel cold and impersonal, probably because of the wood floors and many plants.
One sore point about flying through Incheon is that there is a pre-boarding security inspection. All liquids must be disposed of, including any bottled water purchased in the terminal. The claim is that this is for US TSA security reasons, but that makes no sense because at Taipei and Tokyo, passengers can bring liquids from inside the terminal aboard US-bound planes. I hope this restriction is lifted soon because not bringing your own water aboard is an inconvenience that does nothing to improve security.
The flight out of Incheon was only about 50% full, leaving lots of space including an empty seat between Tawn and me. There was only one person in the row ahead of us and she sat in the middle seat, so her recline did not affect our leg room. Once airborne for our 10.5-hour flight to Los Angeles, service began with cocktails. Unlike some airlines that have miniature liquor bottles, THAI carries full-size bottles and mixes drinks to order.
Drinks are served with a retro stir stick featuring THAI’s original 1960s logo. I managed to collect several of these between our four flight segments, figuring they will make a nice collection in the future.
Menus were distributed out of Incheon. Interestingly, the menus include information for both the Bangkok-Incheon and Incheon-Los Angeles segments. I am not sure why menus were not handed out as we departed Bangkok. You could argue that there is really no point of menus but I think it is a nice touch that makes the service appear more sophisticated. Certainly, it is nicer to think of your meal as having four courses rather than just being a single tray of food, even if all four courses are in fact delivered on a single tray!
I opted for the Korean style beef bulgogi, which wasn’t as interesting as I was hoping. It was tasty, though. Note that each tray comes with a package of kimchi! The dessert was a raspberry chocolate cream cake and the appetizer was smoked salmon.
The other selection, which Tawn chose, was a pork green curry served with Thai jasmine rice. Curry is an excellent choice for airplane food because at high, dry altitudes, your sense of taste is diminished. Curry has plenty of flavor and remains enjoyable. Notice, too, that the utensils are metal, even the knives. We can’t bring water aboard but are given an admittedly dull metal knife.
Slightly less than halfway through the flight, we crossed the international date line and jumped back to the start of our day. I dozed only a bit on this flight, instead watching several movies and television programs on the on-demand video service. Gone are the days of sheer boredom on a plane. There are plenty of ways to distract yourself as the hours go by.
Mid-flight, snacks were available in the form of instant noodles and sandwiches. About two hours before landing, a second full meal service was provided. I opted for the boiled glass noodles (made from mung beans) with sauteed beef tenderloin. Actually, I didn’t find any beef in my serving!
The other option, which Tawn chose, was sauteed yakisoba with chicken teriyaki. Neither of these dishes were that interesting and while quality was fine, the meals weren’t as interesting on these flights as they have been on other recent THAI flights.
It was a beautiful day as we descended into Southern California. Because the passenger load was so light, I moved to a window seat to take in the view when we landed. Rain storms had passed through recently, so the sky was clear and visibility was better than normal.
After landing on runway 24-right on the north side of LAX airport, we taxied the long way around to our gate. This took us past the United Airlines hangar where one of their Boeing 787 aircraft sits, stranded by the FAA’s grounding of these new composite jets in late January. Hopefully, the fleet will be released to fly again soon.
Pulling into our gate at the Tom Bradley International Terminal, we had neighbors from China and Japan. Had the price been right, I would have liked to fly All-Nippon on this trip.
All in all, the THAI flight was a pretty good experience. From departure in Bangkok to arrival in Los Angeles was less than 17 hours, one of the shortest routes between the two cities. Service was good and the flight was reasonably comfortable, given that we were traveling in economy class.
While I organize my photos and videos from the US trip, let me post these two tidbits to keep you entertained.
The first is a picture of what qualifies as a drive-up window here in Bangkok. A stretch of sidewalk (outside a 7-11, nonetheless!) is filled with vendors selling all manner of food. A man on a motorbike pulls up at the curb, orders something from a vendor, and she packages to go. Two minutes later, he speeds off with his dinner. Can you imagine In-N-Out burger working this quickly?
And in the “Thinglish Example of the Day” category, here was the stage backdrop at the recent first anniversary of the Terminal 21 shopping mall. Yes, they are celebrating “NO 1st”. In all fairness, ordinal numbers are confusing and in Thai are no different from cardinal numbers, using only a simple prefix to distinguish them from cardinal numbers.
Sorry for being away from Xanga for almost two weeks. We just returned last night from a trip to the United States and I discovered that the Xanga mobile app isn’t very convenient for uploading entries. In fact, after two entries disappeared into the ether, I gave up and decided to wait until we were back in Bangkok to try again.
Our flights over and back were smooth enough. I’ll share more about them, including our trip on THAI Airaways’ Bangkok-Seoul-Los Angeles flight, in the next few days.
The primary purpose of our trip was to attend a family reunion for our grandparents’ 70th wedding anniversary. They had expected that Tawn and I could not make the trip but when I learned that we would be the only grandchildren not attending, I booked our flight. Needless to say, they were pleasantly surprised when we showed up at their front door the day before the anniversary.
While on the trip, we had the opportunity to see several friends including a few Xangans. Left, Andy and Sugi drove down from Omaha to see us in Kansas City. Right, Jason met me for lunch at San Francisco’s food truck parking lot. Also, Dr. Zakiah was so kind as to mail her book of poems to my sister’s house, where it was waiting for me. Must make it to Quincy for a future visit!
The trip also had its share of good food, about which I will write more in the next few days. Highlights include a porchetta and baby arugula sandwich (left) from the San Francisco food truck parking lot and fried chicken and waffles (right) from Little Skillet restaurant in San Francisco’s South of Market district. Stay Tuned!
The thing about Bangkok is, it isn’t a very pretty city. Being in a tropical climate, I always expect that it will be a lush, verdant city. Even though I’ve lived here more than seven years, I still have that expectation somewhere in the back of my mind. The reality, though, looks a lot like this:
At least, that’s how it looks from the street level. The buildings are built close to the roads, with only narrow footpaths that are only occasionally dotted with trees. Those trees are usually subject to harsh pruning by laborers armed with sharp saws and little horticultural knowledge.
Over time, my understanding of Bangkok’s relative verdancy has evolved. What I have come to see is that the city has a lot of green space, but that most of that green space is not public. Sure, as you walk down the alleys and streets, you may see some trees and bushes. For the most part, though, they are on private property, peeking over high walls. As a result, you walk in the full heat of the tropical sun.
Compare this with Singapore (pictured above) or even Kuala Lumpur, cities with mature trees lining the public footpaths, providing shade, cleaning the air, and making the city more pleasant. Now, don’t worry – I’m not about to turn this into a Bangkok-bashing, Singapore-loving entry. I just find the comparison to where our greenery lives interesting.
When you rise above the street level, as in this view from the Conrad hotel in the particularly lush Wireless Road neighborhood, you can see that there is quite a bit of greenery in Bangkok, although as mentioned before, much of it is not visible from the streets.
In fact, some of the grander houses live in a lush, tropical paradise. Except for the high rise buildings looming overhead, you would think you were in a jungle!
Sukhumbhand Paribatra, elected this past Sunday to a second term as governor of Bangkok, has promised to radically increase the amount of park land. By most estimates, Bangkok has less than one-tenth the amount of green space per resident compared with an average city. Let us hope that some of this green space can be expanded out of parks and into our everyday lives.
Thailand is a country of cat-nappers. Wherever I travel, I see plenty of people who, in their boredom, lethargy, or exhaustion, take every opportunity to shut their eyes and rest. Maybe it is the heat and humidity?
On the list of jobs I would not want to have is the motorcycle taxi driver or khon kap rotmotorsai. While the offices of Bangkok are filled with women, the men from the countryside find jobs like this one. For a fee paid to the mafia and a license paid to the government, they receive a colored vest and an assigned stand at the mouth to one of the city’s many long soi or alleys.
Inhospitable to pedestrians, the soi are usually too narrow, too winding, and too sparsely populated to justify mass transit. Instead, we flag down a rotmotorsai, hop on the back, and whiz our way to the mouth of thesoi where we catch a taxi, bus, or train onward. Dangerous? Yes. I only ride the motorcycles on our soi, where the drivers recognize me as a regular and are familiar enough with the traffic on the street to know where caution must be paid.
Why are our streets laid out in a network of long, narrow soi? It is thanks to the rice-growing past of the central plains of Thailand.
As you can see in the picture above, rice paddies were laid out in long, narrow strips that connected to a main canal or road. As the paddies were drained, paved, and developed (the housing developments are the strips of mostly red roofs) the streets followed the long, narrow contours of the agricultural past. A map of Bangkok shows that legacy: thoroughfares a kilometer or more apart with long, narrow streets stretching out from them. Few of those streets, though, connect the larger thoroughfares.
The result is that many of us live some distance away from major streets and if we aren’t driving, have to find our way out of the soi under an unforgiving sun. It’s enough to make you cave in an ride on a motorcycle taxi or, perhaps, to want to take a nap.
Cleaning up my company laptop before returning it, I came across some orphan photos that I never shared. Interesting odds and ends like this one:
A toilet at Singapore Changi airport that offers urinal users an expansive view of the tarmac. One imagines that travels could end up standing there much longer than needed, fascinated watching the airplanes coming and going, resulting in long queues for the toilet. Much nicer than the usual airport toilet, no?
Last Friday we gathered at Chow’s place to cook dinner. The menu: homemade pizzas and pasta. The pizzas were a variety of gourmet types based on the menu of Roberta’s Pizza in Brooklyn, which Chow had tried on a recent visit. The pasta was a homemade chorizo and butternut squash ravioli. And to top it off, I made kaffir lime cheesecake.
Friends gather around the large island in the kitchen, helping to prepare ingredients and eat appetizers. The ravioli are already prepared and drying and we were waiting for the oven to preheat for the pizzas.
Every time I cook at a friend’s house, it is a bit of a logistics ordeal. In this case, I needed my KitchenAid mixer so I could roll out the pasta. I was also bringing a case of Oregon beer.
The beer in question is from Rogue, an independent brewer. The most interest beer of the evening: Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale. Had a distinct smokiness with a subtle sweetness on the tail end of the flavor.
For the pasta, I made homemade fresh (not dried) chorizo. I bought pork belly and ground it, adding paprika, garlic, and chili powder.
Browned the sausage in a pan, drained it on paper towels to remove the considerable grease, and then blended it with a butternut squash puree made from locally produced organic squash.
Make the pasta from scratch using Thomas Keller’s “Seven Yolk Pasta” with semolina flour. This is the best way to mix pasta dough, using your hands.
Using a creative technique I picked up watching Season 10 of Top Chef, I layered sage leaves between two sheets of pasta dough and then pressed them several more times. Then flattens the leaves, making the pasta pretty and adding some sage flavor.
Completed ravioli. I cut them relatively small so they didn’t have a lot of filling. In hindsight, I would have added more butternut squash and less chorizo as the sausage overpowered the squash flavor. A few more sage leaves would have been nice, too.
After boiling the ravioli, we fried them in a pan with browned butter and sage leaves. Became a bit more crispy than intended but were tasty all the same.
While I made the pizza dough (with Type 00 flour, a finer texture than regular all-purpose flour), I let Chow coordinate the toppings for each pie.
Half mushroom and pepperoni and half Jerusalem artichoke and pesto.
Salame!
Sliced Brussels sprouts, Boursin cheese, and locally produced pastrami.
Tomato, fresh buffalo mozzarella, and rocket.
For dessert, I once again made the kaffir lime cheesecake that was such a hit on New Year’s Day. It begins by steeping the lime leaves in heavy cream.
The crust is made of graham crackers, toasted pecans, sugar, and butter.
The main ingredients are cream cheese, eggs, the infused cream, kaffir lime zest, and a little lime juice. The juice comes from a regular lime as the kaffir lime juice is much to acidic.
The ingredients are blended together until smooth and light. Truth be told, I add two or three drops of green food coloring just to augment the color. The leaves alone give it only the most pale of greens.
Tap several times to release air bubbles and then cook in a water bath for 40-45 minutes. The key to a cheesecake with a smooth top (no cracks) is to turn the oven off when the edges are set but the center is still very shaky. Then let it complete cooking in the closed (but turned off) oven for another hour. This lets it cool down gradually and prevents the cracks.
The finished product has a mixture of sour cream, kaffir lime zest, and sugar poured over the top. I garnished with a chiffonade of kaffir lime leaves. This worked okay the first time but this time the leaves were a bit tough. I need to choose the smaller, more tender leaves and cut them more finely. The taste of the cake was good, though, and won rave reviews.
Most importantly, we had friends gathered together and shared good food, good wine, and good company. After all, that’s what makes the best meals, right? The company with which they are shared.
Not only is “Let them eat cake” the phrase commonly misattributed to Marie Antoinette, it is also the name of a cute patisserie and dessert bar on Sukhumvit Soi 20 in Bangkok.
Dessert shops are plentiful in the City of Angels but most western style desserts are rarely worth the calories they contain. Let Them Eat Cake proves to be a delicious exception.
Located in one of the “community lifestyle malls” – smaller, open air shopping centers that have sprung up across Bangkok like mushrooms after the rain – Let Them Eat Cake is charmingly decorated but a little small. Waits can get long at key times so come early or be prepared to wait.
I am sorry to say that I don’t remember the names of each of the desserts we tried. I do know that this is a chocolate St. Honoré, an elegant combination of puff pastry, creme filling, and caramel.
A tart of some sort with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Don’t know if I ever tried this or just took a picture!
A tarte au citron – lemon tarte. Was tasty but I found the crust a bit tough.
I don’t remember what this pink, rose-shaped dessert was. A gelatine and with something inside, I think.
All in all, Let Them Eat Cake offered better, more authentic French style pastries than a lot of shops here in Bangkok. I look forward to my next visit and I promise to take more careful notes – and to sample a wider variety of desserts!
christao408 