Dining in Houston – Chapultepec Lupita

Posted on 19 December 2010 by christao408

My week in Houston was spent on the industrial northern edge of the city, in an area called Greenspoint but often called “Gunspoint” for its reputation for violence. Meals were of the highway frontage road variety, chain restaurants of the family style that for the most part don’t distinguish themselves. Friday afternoon on the way to Hobby Airport, I had the opportunity to try something more memorable: Chapultepec Lupita.

Located in a run-down looking, funky former house in Houston’s Fourth Ward, Chapultepec Lupita – “Where the beautiful people meet” according to the menu – is as local as tex-mex is going to get. A friendly staff provided attentive service, although since the place was nearly deserted in the middle of the afternoon, we weren’t competing for attention.

Homemade chips and a fiery salsa were an inviting start.

Skipping the fajitas – although they are recommended by a lot of review sites – I went for stewed beef, the proper name of which I forgot. The meat was very tender and flavorful, which a rich, spice-infused broth. The accompanying tortillas were fresh and hot. The rice, unfortunately, was bland and not noteworthy.

Dishes came with a choice of beans three ways: refried, pinto, or black. I opted for the black beans, which very very tasty. A dollop of sour cream and some chopped peppers and this could have been a soup on its own.

The chicken enchiladas with salsa verde were also very tasty.

In the past few years, Bangkok has seen the opening of several “authentic” (so they claim) mexican restaurants, all of which have been a disappointment. There is just something that they don’t seem to be able to recreate in the flavor of the sauces, the tortillas, and the beans. The first person who does will have my eternal gratitude.

Until then, there remains one more good reason to return to the United States.

Return to La Gaetana Phuket

Posted on 4 December 2010 by christao408

When we were in Phuket a year ago October, our friends Stuart and Piyawat took us to an amazing Italian restaurant called La Gaetana. What sets it apart from other restaurants is that the owner, Polermo native Gianni, takes such tremendous pride in his business and pleasure in serving his guests.

When Piyawat made the reservations, I don’t know if he mentioned that dinner was for friends who were visiting again, but Gianni greeted me so warmly that I felt like a neighbor who had been away for a year and returned.

Instead of essentially re-writing the entry from the first visit, I’ll just cut and paste key portions of it here along with some new pictures.

“… The venue was this hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant called La Gaetana. And let me tell you, it was without question the best dining experience I have had in Thailand.

That may sound like hyperbole, but Polermo native Gianni and his Thai wife Chonchita run the most charming of restaurants with the most attentive service I’ve ever received in the Land of Smiles. The restaurant, located in a warmly decorated 80-year old building, seats just 32 so reservations are a must.

The food is great, atmosphere is cute, etc. but what really makes the experience worthwhile is the passion with which Gianni and his staff, many of whom have worked there for years, attend to your needs. His tableside bottle-opening and decanting is a show in and of itself, and illustrates just how much care is given to each detail of the dining experience.

Here’s a video that shows it all.

…

This is exactly what I could imagine myself doing in the future. Running my own small restaurant in some idyllic town, spending my days making my guests happy and ensuring they enjoy excellent food, wine and service.”

And now, pictures from dinner the other night:

Gianni opens a bottle of champagne, chilling the glasses with ice, as Matt looks on.

Antipasto platter with meats, vegetables, and cheese.

Assorted crostini – small toasts with chopped tomatoes or fresh cheese and pesto on top.

Grilled portobella mushrooms with gorgonzola cheese.

Lamb ribs, beautifully cooked, with a side of homemade gnocchi in tomato and eggplant sauce.

For dessert, apple tarte tatin with vanilla ice cream.

After we left the restaurant, I noticed that the Chinese temple across the street was showing an outdoor movie, with a screen set up in the parking lot and the film being projected from a portable 35mm projector in a tent at the back of the lot. This is the way it was done in the old days – and to some extent, still is – in the countryside.

A view from the inside of the temple compound looking towards the screen. Rather a sparse crowd this evening.

Food in Hong Kong: Modern China Restaurant

Posted on 31 October 2010 by christao408

In response to my early posts about this recent trip to Hong Kong, some commenters expressed concern that I wasn’t eating at any Chinese restaurants. Rest assured, I did eat a good amount of Chinese food while there. One of the best meals was my final dinner, enjoyed at a Shanghainese restaurant called Modern China.

Located in the Olympian City Mall in West Kowloon, right above the Olympic MTR station, Modern China blends in among all the other glass-fronted restaurant in a mall that, frankly, could be any other mall in Hong Kong.

The waiting queue is very modern, with numbers posted on an LED monitor along with a map of tables and their status. On a busy Sunday evening, Big Michael and I only waited ten minutes for a table.

The interior of the restaurant is clean and spacious, although tables are packed pretty close together. The wait staff was professional and attentive, although in typical Hong Kong style were not overly friendly. The menu is accessible, offering lots of pictures and clear English descriptions.

A small dish of sweet dried shrimp were served as a complimentary appetizer. Very flavorful, although when I lived here it took a while to get used to eating shrimp with the shell still on.

On the autumn special menu was an intriguing sounding dish: braised seafood in pumpkin.

Sure enough, a beautiful orange pumpkin arrived on our table and upon removing the lid, we discovered a medley of fresh seafood in a rich pumpkin broth. We also scraped the sides of the pumpkin to dislodge some of the cooked, but still firm flesh. Very tasty.

Can’t go to a Shanghainese restaurant without some Xiao Long Bao! Very tasty, too, with delicate wrappers. Really, though, will I ever like any XLB better than those at Din Tai Fung? On the menu, these are rather cutely described as “Mouthful Small Steamed Meat Buns”.

Braised noodles are always a favorite, especially these fried noodles with twice-cooked pork.

Our final dish were these fried pastries filled with chopped beef and preserved vegetables. They were kind of like turnovers, with a very flaky crust and a savory filling.

There was a lot of juice inside and trying to cut them open neatly proved to be a chore. But this will give you an idea, at least.

Overall, I give Modern China good marks for tasty, reasonably priced Shanghai style food served in a convenient location. Good enough to be added to my Google Map of Hong Kong. If you are looking for a break from the Cantonese food while in Hong Kong, head over to Olympian Mall.

Food in LA: Bar Pintxo

Posted on 28 July 2010 by christao408

On my way back to Bangkok, I had a twelve-hour layover in Los Angeles. I’m super-fortunate that Gary seems to have an infinitely flexible schedule (although he swore that if I had been in town the following day, he wouldn’t have had any free time) and an inexplicable willingness to spend the afternoon running me around town.

I also really fortunate that Gary and W are such foodies and do all the legwork of trying and evaluating restaurant, so that when I stop by for a brief visit they always have the perfect recommendation. Tuesday evening’s recommendation was Bar Pintxo, a Spanish tapas bar in Santa Monica. We were graced with Steve’s presence, as he had a break in his globetrotting and drove up from the OC to join us.

The restaurant is just a block from the beach, conveniently located near the Third Street Promenade. They have a happy hour until 6:00 and we managed to sneak in just beforehand and order our first round of drinks and some of the tapas specials.

The restaurant isn’t very large and is built around the kitchen area. It is very cozy with tall tables and bar stools and bottles of wine and a huge mirror adorning the walls.

Of course, one must start Spanish tapas with some sangria, right? This red wine concoction was very good, not too sweet.

The happy hour specials include 6 pintxos (“pinches”) for $6, so they loaded up two platters for the four of us. The platter above has crimini mushrooms stuffed with mushroom mousse and manchego cheese; fresh tomato and garlic; and huevos rellenos con vinagreta vasca, deviled eggs with a pepper and onion relish in a vinaigrette dressing, all on grilled bread.

The second platter had Serrano jamon (ham) on grilled bread with olive oil; chorizo Bilboa (spicy sausage) with cherry tomato halves; and tomato conserve and manchego cheese, all served on grilled bread.

The pintxos were all very tasty, a nice variety of simple but bold flavors.

W continued the ordering with frisee and shaved manchego cheese dressed with a quince vinaigrette and served on a flatbread.

Next came a paella with razor clams. Very nice and clean flavors.

You can’t order tapas without ordering tortilla espanola, the Spanish style frittata with egg, potatoes, and caramelized onions served with a side of aioli.

We also ordered the brocheta de cerdo, mojo verde – the pork loin skewer with vegetables and a herb and lemon pesto. The pork was nice and juicy, although the meat itself didn’t have a lot of flavor. The sauce, though, packed a punch.

Me enjoying the meal.

For dessert we shared a plate of churros with a chocolate dipping sauce. This was pretty unexceptional and the sauce was like thick hot chocolate, not really thick enough for dipping.

The arroz con leche, rice pudding with fresh peaches, was much nicer. They bruleed the top slightly, adding a nice texture. And of course rice pudding is a favorite of mine.

The service was friendly although not super-attentive, the atmosphere was convivial, and the food was tasty. Just what I needed before a long flight back to Thailand.

La Gaetana Phuket

Posted on 23 October 2009 by christao408

The first night in Phuket we drove 30 km to Phuket Town, located on the south end of the island, to enjoy a fantastic dinner with Stuart and Piyawat. The venue was this hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant called La Gaetana. And let me tell you, it was without question the best dining experience I have had in Thailand.

That may sound like hyperbole, but Polermo native Gianni and his Thai wife Chonchita run the most charming of restaurants with the most attentive service I’ve ever received in the Land of Smiles. The restaurant, located in a charmingly decorated 80-year old building, seats just 32 so reservations are a must.

Here’s a video that shows it all.

Lest you don’t want to watch the video, here it is in pictures:

Italian antipasto platter. Yummy!

Grilled veggies in the back and a variety of bruschetta in the front.

Minestrone soup with fresh ground pepper.

Palate cleanser of passionfruit sorbetto.

Homemade spaghetti with pancetta and sundried tomatoes.

Grilled salmon with lemongrass sauce and spinach.

Homemade fettuccine with mixed seafood and tomato sauce.

Grilled bistecca (angus) served with veggies. Very lovely cut with lots of flavor.

For dessert, Gianni displayed the same attention to detail as he did when opening the wine bottles, garnishing each dish before it was served.

The desserts had a very French feel to them. Here, a tarte tartin.

Classic crème brûlée

Baba au ruhm with more sorbetto.

Finally, an Italian dessert! A tiramisu “island” with cinnamon and basil “palm tree”.

Little Hanoi Bangkok

Posted on 22 May 2009 by christao408

For a few years, there was a vegetarian restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 20 called Tamarind Cafe. It was owned by French-born Sylvie Bruzeau and Taiwanese-born Luka Wong, two women who met in Japan and decided to open a restaurant. Tamarind Cafe was a chic little place with a small gallery on the second floor. It had a wide variety of vegetarian food, done in a variety of culinary styles.

Sadly, the lease on the space ran out and the owners did not renew. However, they opened several ancillary food places at some department store food halls, including a Vietnamese place called Little Hanoi, located on the fifth floor of the Emporium shopping center.

Vietnamese food is one of my favorites, so when I discovered that Bruzeau and Wong had opened Little Hanoi, Tawn and I made it a point to visit.

The restaurant is small, as you can see. And it wasn’t nearly as busy as the picture from their website shows! Sadly, the Emporium remodeled their food court, leaving several of the businesses in sort of a blind spot at the back of the floor. Not good for foot traffic, I’m afraid.

We began with a vegetarian variation on what is traditionally beef skewers wrapped in betel leaves. Instead of beef, Beuzeau, who is the chef, creates a mixture of herbs and potatoes. It was tasty, although a little under-seasoned. Gorgeous presentation.

While Bruzeau emphasizes vegetarian options, there are plenty of meat items on the menu. We enjoyed this spring rolls with shrimp, which were very fresh and plump. Lots of beautiful herbs accompanied the meal.

For a main course, we were feeling like fish, so we ordered this white fish, fried with spices and greens. This was served with a plate of banh trang, the rice paper crepes used to wrap spring rolls, and rice noodles. We wrapped our own little dumplings with a little fish, some greens, noodles and fresh herbs. The fish was tasty, although the portion (which was meant for two people) seemed a little small for the price.

For dessert, we tried their beignets, little puffs of dough friend up donut-style. These were light and not at all oily, but they had the faint aftertaste of fish, making me think that the oil in the deep-fryer was perhaps a bit old.

A return visit a few days later for lunch and I tried their pho, the hearty beef noodle soup, and a vegetarian banh mi, the French roll sandwich. The soup was excellent, very flavorful, but something that I could probably find for half the price at the small shop run by the Vietnamese lady near Thong Lor Soi 12. The banh mi was inventive, with roasted pumpkin. The menu announced that it also had cheese, and I was expecting a nice goat cheese or something. Instead it was a single slice of oily cheddar. In addition to a slathering of much too much aioli, there was plenty of cilantro and carrots.

All in all, Little Hanoi gets high marks for creativity and beautiful presentation. The food was good but not great, kind of b-grade food from the standpoint that it makes a good effort but just falls a bit short of excellence. For the money, there is better value elsewhere, but if I’m in the mall and going to eat at a sit-down place as opposed to the inexpensive food court, Little Hanoi is still a decent option.

Dining in Bangkok: Tonkatsu Raku Tei

Posted on 11 September 2008 by christao408

Last weekend Tawn and I took a little time to get out of the house, run some errands, and see some friends. This, despite the heavy load of work.

BK Magazine, a free English-language newspaper, published a list of what they consider to be the best five or six tonkatsu restaurants in town. Japanese make up the largest expatriate population in Thailand and we live in the heart of the Japanese section of town.

Not too surprisingly, there is some really good and affordable Japanese food to be had. In fact, every time I head back to the US, one of the things I specifically don’t want to eat (besides Thai food, natch) is Japanese food.

We decided to try one of the recommended restaurants: Tonkatsu Raku Tei, located in the basement level at the Citi Resort service apartments on Sukhumvit Soi 39.

When you walk in, it becomes very clear that Tonkatsu Raku Tei (Hey! They have the same initials as former Prime Minister Thaksin’s political party… conspiracy?) is the real deal because all the other diners are Japanese. That’s a good sign, right?

What I really wanted to try was the tried and true standard of all tonkatsu: rosukatsu, made from fillet of pork loin, with a thin layer of fat along the side, breaded in panko breadcrumbs, and lightly fried.

Served with two homemade tonkatsu sauces, an original flavor and a really good spicy one that tastes a bit like barbecue sauce but without the tomato, the tonkatsu was tender and not too oily. The pork itself was a bit bland, although moist, and served as a neutral carrier for the sauces’ flavors.

One lesson we learned – sadly, after the fact – was that the sesame seeds in the bowl on the left and meant to be ground up, using the wooden pestle on the far right of the picture that we mistook as a chopstick rest. Oh, silly us!

After lunch, we stopped by Scott and Jum’s house to see their new baby. They live in an interesting townhome development that is very Grecco-Roman in its design. Too bad I didn’t get a wider picture so you could fully appreciate the number of columns that adorned each building.

The baby, whose name I’m not sure how to spell correctly so I won’t try here, is very cute. He’s a mixture of Thai and American heritage so has blended features.

He’s so low-key. He didn’t really mind who was holding him, but apparently really hates being cooped up indoors and his fussing quiets when he is brought outside.

We drove Jum and baby over to a gathering of former United Airlines colleagues. Tawn flew with UA for a few years around the turn of the century. (That sounds old, doesn’t it?) Sadly, we just received news that as part of their further cutbacks, United will be closing their Bangkok flight attendant base for the second time since the 2001 attacks.

The colleague’s house at which the gathering was held is up near the old airport. It took a bit of driving to get to and we were confused and overshot it by a few kilometers. Along the way, we passed the remnants of the elevated rail line that was originally going to run from the center of the city up to the old airport and then on out to the Rangsit area.

The project, which was operated by a Hong Kong-based conglomerate called Hopewell Holdings, ran into problems in the late 90s and the contract was canceled by the Thai government. Due to the inability of the project to ever really gain traction, it became largely derided as the Hopeless Project. All that remains of the project are a significant number of columns running along the Don Meuang Tollway.

A sign of optimism, there were several housing estates built along the Hopewell right of way (which has a still-operating train line underneath it), including this slightly over-the-top property called Monte Carlo:

So the trip to see Tawn’s colleagues was a good use of time if for no other reason than it allowed me to get an up-close look at the Stonehenge of Thailand. Every so often, there is talk of reviving the project or using the surviving infrastructure to build the extension of the airport link (which is still another year or more away from opening) to connect both the old and new airport.

One final thing to leave you with, a very nice pizza I ate at Bacco restaurant, just at the other end of the soi from us.

I think the restaurant makes its own ricotta cheese. It was so good!

Stay tuned

Posted on 25 January 2008 by christao408

Friday night, Roka, Bill and I had dinner at the soft opening of a new restaurant, art gallery, and performance space called “Paradox” on Soi Ekkamai. Website here. It is a fancy new high-concept place featuring Mediterranean food. Since they are not quite finished with construction of the whole complex, they’re doing this soft opening to ease their staff into operations and to get the word out.

They offered a not-much-advertised promotion featuring free four course set dinners for four, for the first twenty reservations each day. The promotion ends today. Roka read about it in a blog and called me, so we made reservations for Friday evening.

It was really good, but I didn’t bring my camera. Course after course, I cursed my camaralessness. After dinner the Australian chef, Andrew Cole, came by the table and we talked for about twenty minutes. We critiqued the food (mostly compliments with only a few bits of feedback), learned how he found his way here (because of Pakistan’s political troubles he discontinued a cross-continent journey and ended up here), talked about the challenges of fine dining in Bangkok (expectations of the well-heeled locals are largely based on what everyone else is doing, not on what is new, original, or even good), and his vision for the restaurant. The picture here is from their website, but it shows the general idea behind the food.

As there were only three or four tables being served while we were there, we inquired as to whether they had any places left on Saturday night. Why not come back and enjoy another free meal and get some pictures for the blog? Sadly, they were at 22 reservations so they were past the free dinner stage. We decided we’d wait until another day, but then at the BTS station, Roka received a phone call. It was the manager. Andrew had spoken with him and would we care to come back for another meal on the house?

Absolutely!

So stay tuned for some pictures and more detailed coverage of this new restaurant in my next entry…

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

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