Posted on Sat, 28 May 2011
Mod Thai Cuisine at Sra Bua, Bangkok
What’s a Danish guy doing cooking up Thai food in Thailand? Much the same as the Aussie in Bangkok who’s doing the same! The latter is David Thompson, the Thai-speaking Aussie celeb chef whose authentic Thai food and knowledge is phenomenal. The former – less well known but clearly a rising star – is Henrik Yde-Andersen who is putting a daring spin on Thai cuisine. He does this at Sra Bua by Kiin Kiin, a restaurant at the Siam Kempinski Hotel, which promises a “culinary performance extraordinaire”, serving up Mod Thai cuisine and imaginative presentation.
Dishes you can expect to experience include a starter called The Harvest, a flowerpot filled with green curry dip sprinkled with fake soya, from which sprout two baby carrots.
Another dish, and apparently his most famous, is Frozen Red Curry with Baby Lobster Salad and Litchi Foam which is kept cold at your table on a bath of nitro to keep the frozen red curry cold. Various set menus for dinner start from 1800 THB for three courses, while lunch starts from 1500 THB.
So back to my first question : how did a Danish end up cooking Thai food in Bangkok? He had come to Thailand in 2000 on holiday, fell in love with the country and stayed for three years working all over Thailand, soaking up the culinary culture here. On his return to Denmark, he teamed up with Lertchai Treetawatchaiwong, a Thai entrepreneur and hobby chef, to open a Thai restaurant with a twist – Kiin Kiin, which debuted in Copenhagen in 2006.
In 2009, during a promotional tour through Bangkok, Henrik Yde-Andersen was approached by the Siam Kempinski Hotel’s pre-opening team which happened to sample his food by chance. The team offered him the opportunity to open a Thai restaurant at the new hotel, based on the same concept and Sra Bua by Kiin Kiin was born.
991/9 Rama 1 Road,
10330 Bangkok
www.kempinski.com
