Restaurants are businesses. We don’t blame them for wanting to make money and for marketing themselves. Restaurants are also run by people. We don’t blame them for having bad hair days or for expecting customers to treat them like human beings. But we also care about food and service and atmosphere, and we won’t stand for dishonesty, cheap restaurateurs, lies (or even exaggerations), blatant rip-offs or being treated like cattle. That’s why we’ve listed these 10 Dining Commandments, so that you can continue to visit and enjoy good restaurants without any head—or stomach—aches. Keep your eyes wide open, keep tight hold of your wallet and dig in!
1 Don’t Trust the Label
Two curious New York high schoolers, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, hit four restaurants and 10 grocery stores, spending US$300 (B10,353) on fish samples to send them to a lab that uses DNA analysis to identify the fishes’ breeds, The New York Times recently reported. The results? Very fishy: one-fourth of the cuts were mislabeled. An expensive piece of white tuna sushi turned out to be a much cheaper farm-raised Mozambique tilapia, while the alleged red snapper was in fact Atlantic cod.
If 25% of the fish is mislabeled in New York, what’s your guess for Bangkok?
Labeling issues don’t stop at the sushi bar. Most countries recognize what are called geographic indications (a.k.a. denominations of origin), systems to identify the origin and quality of products. In France, for example, under their appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) rules, “Champagne”—with a capital “C”—can only be made in the French region that goes by the same name and using prescribed ingredients and methods. The same goes for Bordeaux (wine) or Brie (cheese). But some countries ignore such “trademarks” (“chianti” and “champagne” wines from the US, Australian “camembert”).
“Scam” might be too strong of a word, but let’s say that some people are taking advantage of the public’s confusion/ignorance about Kobe and wagyu beef. Kobe beef is a particular breed of beef, wagyu, that is raised in the Hyogo prefecture. It is a well-marbled delicacy that should literally melt in your mouth. (By the way, the myth that they are all fed [only] beer and massaged daily is more marketing than fact.)
In Bangkok, if the “Kobe steak” on the menu only costs B275, either (A) it’s bite-sized, (B) the owner of the restaurant just won the lottery or (C) it ain’t real Kobe. Unfortunately, short of DNA testing, it’s sometimes impossible to be certain of what you’re eating.
It’s common for restaurateurs/managers to try to pass “wagyu” beef off as Japanese; in fact, in Thailand it usually comes from Australia. For that matter, there may come a day when wagyu beef is not even imported—Saraburi wagyu, anyone?
2 Question Your Waiter About the Water
Just like choosing coffee at Starbucks, ordering water is getting more and more complicated. “Naam plao” (plain water) is now an ambiguous request that can land you a big fat bill at the end of your meal. At one French restaurant, asking for plain water got us B99 Evian. “Don’t you have anything cheaper?” we asked, and our bottle was replaced with B30 Minere. Also, watch out for waters that appear imported but aren’t. An Indian restaurant served us Mont Fleur for B65 (again we had asked for plain water), which is actually B10 Thai bottled water. And check out our reviews for an especially annoying account of liquid larceny: B160 (plus tax and service) for two bottles of San Benedetto after we asked for “naam plao.”
Often you won’t even see it coming, as waiters usually don’t show the bottle and refill your glass behind your back. By the time you get the bill, your water may cost you as much as one or two dishes. Once, at a swanky French hotel restaurant, our water bill for six people came to over B1,000! If only it was worth it: in a blind test, most people really can’t taste the difference between pricey waters and their common, local counterparts.
3 Bring Your Own Wine
Wine mark-ups were listed third in Olive magazine’s 10 Most Common Restaurant Rip-offs. But when is a restaurant making a profit and when are you getting ripped off? “The smallest markup is 200 percent. What can I say? It’s our source of profit,” says one Bangkokian restaurateur. “With everything from overhead, wages, rent—we need to make money somehow.”
If your favorite restaurant is robbing you with its wine list, bring your own. A bottle sold for B2,000 in a shop could cost B4,000-6,000 in a restaurant—but even with an B800 corkage charge, it will only cost you B2,800 to bring your own. As for ordering by the glass, the markup is even higher, and so are the risks.
“We mixed and matched leftover wines and then re-sold them to less discerning diners as a house wine,” reveals a former waiter at an Italian restaurant. His tip: “Stick to bottles.”
4 Don’t Overestimate Your Appetite
Now that we are on the subject of vino, free-flow, too, is not as good a deal as you think. “Promotions are made to draw people to a venue, but they also make money,” reveals the food and beverage marketing manager of a big chain hotel. “Take free-flow. People come thinking they’re going to really indulge and then usually drink only four glasses. Even heavier drinkers rarely drink more than a bottle in the end,” he explains.
The same goes for buffets, this F&B professional claims: “Stick to set dinners. Three to five courses is plenty of food. It’s served to your table, it’s made-to-order, they use better products. Buffets are a rip-off, in comparison.”
Buffet spreads are designed to make you fill up quickly on sauces and carbohydrates ranging from mashed potatoes and bread rolls to rice-heavy maki rolls with tiny slithers of fish. Sure, there are oysters and Alaskan King Crab at most hotel spreads, but there are tricks to steer you away from those. “We’ll only take out four oysters at a time and won’t replace them immediately. We’ll also put only one guy at an Alaskan king crab station so that a long queue will form before him and people get discouraged,” says our hotel insider. “They think, ‘I’ll be back when the line is shorter.’ But by then, they’re too full.”
After spending many Sundays on a brunch binge, Peter Green, a foodie and popular blogger on egullet.com, shares some of his first-hand tips: “I like brunches—a selected few. Go for stuff made at live cooking stations and avoid anything smothered in gravy, cheese or any cloaking device that will hide the gnaw marks. With some resorts, some stations are set outdoors, but you wouldn’t want to go for mayonnaise-laden dishes festering in the hot, balmy tropical weather.”
5 Pick Your Night
Chef’s may have bad hair days, but those are still better than a night with no head chef at all. However, overworked, chefs do take days off, even if the restaurant itself stays open. Watch out for Mondays and Sundays, two days when the chef is least likely to be manning the kitchens.
Another important consideration is the delivery days of fish. What, you didn’t know “fresh” fish doesn’t arrive daily? Chefs are quite open about this. Just ask your favorite sushi chef when he gets his catches. Krit, a sushi-lover with a degree from Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, says, “Personally, I usually go to sushi bars on Tuesdays and Fridays. Those are the delivery days from Japan, so you are sure to get the fresh cuts.”
If you’re going to enjoy a visiting chef’s cooking, you’ll also want to avoid the first day (see Special Nights, below).
6 Be Wary of Organic
Organic is here to stay. But is it just marketing or is it really better for the environment and your health? If you order an organic bowl of salad using ingredients from certified organic farms overseas, the carbon dioxide used to ship the food far outstrips any benefits to the planet that might have come from the food growing without pesticides. As for locally grown organic food, it’s better for the environment, but maybe not for you.
And there’s the labeling issue. Who says it’s really organic? Furthermore, even organic lobbies admit they don’t have definitive research on the health benefits of organic food. That’s because non-organic food contains only minute traces of pesticides that Food and Drug Administrations consider harmless.
Now, do organic products really taste better? According to many chefs and foodies, the answer is yes. A research by the University of California also backs this up, showing that organic tomatoes have higher antioxidants and a richer flavor than conventionally grown ones.
Organic has benefits, clearly, but it remains expensive and a strong marketing tool. In one episode of People Watchers, a BBC TV show, a group of psychologists conducted an interesting experiment. They disguised themselves as supermarket employees, bringing out two trays of cookies for shoppers to sample—one was “ordinary” while the other was labeled “organic.” Though the snacks came from the same package, most people said the “organic” cookies tasted better.
7 Mistrust The Words “Michelin Chef”
Magazines and newspapers get them all the time, press releases heralding the coming of a “Michelin-starred chef” to our humble city. The press then rush to dutifully copy the press release so that their readers can fork out a few thousand baht to eat “Michelin-starred” food.
At BK, we systematically check the background of these alleged Michelin-starred chefs. Way too often, what we find is that their restaurant once had stars but lost them (the Michelin comes out every year), or that the chef worked in a restaurant that was in a Michelin-rated hotel, or that the chef only worked in a Michelin-starred restaurant at one point in his life, not as the head chef (chef de cuisine) or even the sous chef (the #2) but as an anonymous line cook or commis (apprentice).
Public relations people sometimes think this is enough to warrant the term “Michelin-star chef.” It isn’t. Chefs have long careers that can start with washing dishes at age 14 then work their way through dozens of restaurants.
To be precise, Michelin-starred chefs don’t exist. “Michelin stars are awarded for the quality of food served,” the editor of the Great Britain & Ireland edition of the Michelin Guide told us, “and are not specific to the restaurant or chef. However, in common practice, the head chef (and only the head chef) of a starred restaurant is often referred to as a Michelin-starred chef.”
So before you spend serious baht on a visiting “Michelin-starred chef,” Google their name—or read BK. And remember: you’ll never get exactly the same food you would at that person’s “Michelin” restaurant (see Special Nights, below).
8 Refuse to Be Seated
Where you sit in a restaurant certainly makes a difference, and there’s no reason why you should let the captain decide where that’s going to be. Depending on the occasion—a romantic dinner, a jolly get-together, or a leave-me-alone meal—you need to choose a table accordingly. The shorter the distance from the kitchen to your table, the faster the service will be, meaning the food will arrive fresh and hot. So, if food is your focus (and not the view), when you go to a sushi bar or a pizzeria, it’s wise to sit at a counter or a table relatively near the kitchen. In restaurants known for stunning views or intimate atmosphere, the kitchen and the dining are are usually on separate floors. “You should order something that doesn’t need to be served piping hot or ice cold,” advises Peter Green.
9 Love Your Waiter
“Don’t underestimate the servers or think they see too many people to remember your bad manners,” says Cecile, who worked as a waitress in many restaurants when she studied abroad. “We usually kept bad tippers and fussy diners waiting for an hour before we’d give them a table. Or even just turn them down saying we’re fully booked. We can’t do anything too extreme, though. After all, it would be bad for business and would come back to bite us in the ass.”
Some waiters don’t see it that way. “There was this bunch of university students that showed up three nights in a row, disturbing other customers with their loud and cocky manners while looking down on every single server,” recalls former bartender Chat. “On that third night, I decided to rub pieces of lime onto the toilet floor before mixing them into the cocktail they ordered.” Remember: Your food, which is your health, is in their hands, so it doesn’t hurt to be polite and you’ll benefit in the long run.
10 Complain
If all else fails or if the damage is done, it’s time to bitch. But here’s the good news: complaining works, and some places will thank you for it. Professional restaurateurs know the importance of a word-of-mouth
reputation. If you find a cockroach in your soup, they’d rather you tell them, and give them a chance to make up for it, than go slag them off all over town.
“We really treat complaints: they don’t go in a trash can,” comfirms our hotel F&B source. “One guy complained about his salmon not being fresh and we went through the whole distribution chain. You know, if you have one guy throw up because of bad seafood, you lose his business, his friends’ business, and if he actually throws up in the restaurant, the business of everyone there that day.”
You can also make a formal complaint to the Department of Health (Hotline: 1675). But the line is so hot that it might take ages for an officer to take your call.
Bonus Tip: Read BK
There’s only one magazine in town that truly reviews restaurants: that’s us. You know our mantra: we go incognito, we don’t sit with the chef (or sexy PR) and we pay our bill. For restaurant reviews you can trust, read BK. Here ends the lesson.
Tales from the Dining Room
We’ll never forget that place where we found worms in the oregano on one visit, then coackroaches in the ground chilli shaker on the next. (Yes, we gave them a bad review and haven’t been back since.) We thought we’d seen it all, but then we asked you, BK readers, what your most horrifying restaurant experience was...
"My friend and I went to a famous khao khaa muu [pork knuckle] stall. The line was ridiculously long, and we waited for almost an hour. But just when it was my turn to order, the owner lifted up a lump of meat from a giant braised pot under the cooking counter and placed it on the chopping board. It was a rat! A fat cat-size rat! But with Superman-speed, he dumped it back before other people could see it, brought up another pork knuckle like nothing had happened. I was stunned. I dragged my friend back to the office and never went back."
"At my former office, there was a cheap canteen for employees. I liked it, until one day I found a baby frog in my soup while I was busy slurping it up. I threw up a lot. Despite my complaints to the seller, they still have that damn soup on the menu."
"I had dinner with friends and was the only one to eat seafood. Suddenly, I felt a bit ill but even before I got up, I threw up in my napkin, in front of all my friends. It was horrible. I went to the toilet, threw up some more, washed up and came back. At that point, everyone got ready to leave. But I wasn’t done! I vomited one last time in a corner, before reaching the toilets. Definitely my worst dining experience ever."
"A few years back, I was having dinner in a restaurant and there was this old couple having a romantic meal. Then they requested the bill, but before the waiter had the chance to bring it, the gentleman had a heart attack and died on his chair right there. There was a doctor in the room, but he wasn’t able to resuscitate him. It was pretty sad."
Hell’s Kitchens
What happens behind closed doors? Chefs and servers break the silence.
“I worked as an intern chef in a Japanese restaurant at a four-star hotel. Its kitchen was horrifying. Actually, every kitchen of every outlet in this hotel was filthy. Rats were everywhere. They ran through everything including the plates and pans. I even found one in a refrigerator! After I finished the internship, I never went back to eat at that hotel.”
“Working at a restaurant in Canada, I had to cook outdoors where you’re bound to get a certain number of critters flying around. One of these, called a crane fly, looks like a spindly-legged spider with wings. They would drift over the wok, and then collapse into the oil. You do your best to get them all out of there, but, you know, it gets really busy some evenings.”
“I was touring Bangkok’s hotels with my hotel’s new chef to check out the setup of some of the other kitchens. Trust me, it ain’t pretty: rats everywhere, thick, age-old layers of grease, cockroaches by the thousands.”
“From my experiences as a waiter, never eat garnish vegetables that accompany the food. Pineapples, carrots, cucumbers—all of them are recycled. If the customers don’t eat them, we just keep them and put them on another dish for other diners.”
“I worked in a famous restaurant in Chatuchak Market, and one of the most popular dishes—for foreigners, especially—was pineapple fried rice served in a pineapple shell. We used those shells like real bowls, over and over—and we didn’t even clean them unless we had to. I never order khao pad sapparot.”
Special Nights
Get the best out of visiting chefs and wine dinners
It’s almost impossible to get a table at Per Se, Thomas Keller’s three-Michelin-star restaurant. And you might not be able to afford David Thompson’s cooking at his acclaimed London eatery, Nahm. But Bangkok foodies are lucky. Thanks to all the five-star hotels bringing world-renowned chefs to their outlets during special promotions, the chefs come to us.
“When Thomas Keller came to Bangkok, his meal here cost only a fraction of what you would pay at his restaurants in California or New York,” says “Santi,” a Bangkok journalist. But you might not be getting quite the same thing. “Cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen is challenging even for a renowned chef, so it’s better to book a table on the second or third night when those visiting chefs get familiar to their new surroundings.”
Quality of ingredients is also another dividing factor as chefs do not make the purchasing decisions when visiting. “One year, visiting chefs at a five-star hotel in Bangkok complained that they were given cheap ingredients, which they rejected. They demanded better quality food and eventually got it, but said they would not come back if invited again,” says our expert.
Another great deal is wine dinners. Sukhothai recently invited the Alsacian winemaker Hubert Trimbach and it was a free flow of justifiably famous white wines. The chef also outdid himself, going far beyond what you’d usually get at Celadon. The bill? B1,200.
“Wine makers usually sponsor the event to promote themselves. You’re pretty much getting the wine for free,” Santi explains. Another tip: don’t miss wine dinners where the vintners come with a chef in tow. That way you know the food and the wine will be paired perfectly.
Cracking the Menu Code
Cooking jargon explained
In their bid to appear fancy and authentic, highbrow restaurants love to compose their menus like great literary works, using complicated, and often pretentious, terminology to explain each dish. In case you still have a hard time deciphering the mumbo jumbo, here’s our Menu 101.
A la Plancha
Grilled meat served on hot plate. Pretty simple, really.
Amuse Bouche
In French it means to “amuse the mouth.” While that sounds quite filthy, the reality is tiny bites served before an appetizer to get your taste buds warmed up for the meal.
Carpaccio
Raw, thinly sliced meat or fish. A good choice for weight watchers. Yes, raw.
Confit
Imagine a lump of meat (usually duck) slowly cooked in its own rendered fat and simmered on low heat. That’s confit. Originally a traditional French way to preserve food, here it is a delicacy only found in five-star restaurants.
Bechamel
A white sauce, made from butter, milk and flour. It might sound simple, but it is the mother of all sauces used as the base for a host of more complex sauces in French cooking.
Emulsion
According to the Cambridge dictionary, this is “a mixture that results when one liquid is added to another and is mixed with it but does not dissolve into it.” Like “jus,” it’s a fancy way of saying “sauce” or “dressing.”
Fleur de Sel
This is French for “flower of salt.” That’s not some crazy plant, it comes in flakes that melt in your mouth, while also providing a satisfying “crunch.” It’s also expensive (savvy marketing again); but we have a similar product here in Thailand.
Ragout
A ragout is a stew. Period.
Sabayon
A sweet or savory sauce made by whisking egg yolk, sugar, water or alcohol over a gentle heat until it becomes thick and foamy.
Sous vide
Thomas Keller calls it “cryovacking.” Gianni Favro of Gianni’s fame goes for sous vide. But these two strange terms mean the same thing: to seal food in a vacuum-packed bag and cook it at low temperature for hours and hours. Yes, that’s the 21st century term for boil in the bag.
