Cabbages and Condoms - More Thai food in Bangkok

WHAT???

That was exactly the reaction I got when I told people that I was going out for dinner at "Cabbages and Condoms" Most people thought the phone connection was bad or they heard me wrong!! Saru's reaction was the best of all - "Does condom mean something else in Thai? Sometimes I wonder if he is as smart as they say he is!

Most people were shocked at the name and it made for some interesting discussion o n my Facebook status. I confess that was the only reason I went there. When you travel as much as I do, at some point you get tired of seeing normal things however beautiful they are! I mean, how much can you gush about beautiful sculptures and golden pagodas and keep the listener/reader interested. The shelf life of normal travel tales is short. Every year, Saru and I would go on one big trip every year and come back with lots of pictures and stories. None of the trips garnered as much interest as the one where Saru's laptop and visa documents got stolen by a taxi driver in Seville . Our friends K and BS (OMG.....how did I never realize that his initials are BS? I cannot believe I missed out a golden opportunity such as this!!) were with us in Spain. BS regaled friends with this story for months. With every repetition, the thieves became more elusive and we became smarter as we turned the tables on them and got back our stuff in 2 days. BS wrote a 3-part mini-series on how we maintained a vigilance at the airport, made friends with taxi drivers, even met the taxi association president and got him to get our stuff back. It was an instant hit! I will re-post his story on my blog one of these days.

Anyway, my point is that it is fun to mix it up and go to crazy places once in a while. When we went to Czech Republic, we were tired of seeing ornate churches, so we took a day trip to see a church that was decorated entirely with skulls and bones - made for a great story!

So, I was in Bangkok for work and free for dinners. The French restaurant I blogged about was great, but I was itching to try local Thai food. When I googled for cool restaurants, I came across this name. It intrigued me, so I went, albeit cautiously. The restaurant was established by the former Thai Health Minister, Viravaidya to promote birth control and AIDS awareness. His aim was to make condoms as common as cabbages, hence the name.

Contrary to what I was expecting, the restaurant had a very romantic feel. The hanging lanterns, and tropical trees decorated with lights makes it look like Christmas in Condomville. When you walk into the restaurant, you are immediately greeted at the door by Santa Condom and his family:) I wonder how many hundreds of condoms it took to make these figures.

I ordered food and took a walk around the restaurant. There was a safe-unsafe sex wheel of fortune that you could spin to test your luck, a chart of jokes and lots of condom art to entertain the guests. I don't know about spreading birth control message, but this restaurant was doing roaring business. It was full of foreign tourists. You don't go to a restaurant named 'Cabbages and Condoms' for its food and not surprisingly, there were very few locals there.

Food was not bad....I actually did not have a bad meal in Thailand till now. Soup was nice and spicy while the raw papaya salad and cashew chicken were yummy.

After dinner, if you are looking for a mint, you will be disappointed. The check comes with 2 complimentary condoms and a coupon for a free vasectomy at the next door clinic:):)

Compliments of the Chef - Food in Bangkok

At an International conference this last month, I ran into two Indian guys. It was lunch time and there was a buffet. They were angry at the lack of vegetarian choices when I pointed out a special vegetarian buffet on the side. The two guys rushed towards it and helped themselves to bland fried rice and sautéed vegetables. One guy pointed towards ‘vegetable lasagna’ and asked what it was to which the other guy replied “That’s also a curry, you can mix it with rice”.

I was about to shake my head and judge them when I remembered what a giant loser and pain in the ass I was many years back. On my first day at college, I shocked my friends when I told them that “I never had a samosa in my life”. My friend Appu, immediately set to task. During the first few trials, I would carefully dissect the samosa, removing all the potato curry and sliding it over to Appu’s plate while eating the shell with pride. Curry puff got a similar treatment. I would chew along the perimeter, careful not to touch any bit of the curry and triumphantly declare that I was getting better. 4 years of college and many trials later, I learnt to love samosas and curry puffs, but I was still a very picky eater. When I first moved to the US, I used to eat only at Indian restaurants. A good part of my courtship with Saru was spent on him trying to make me eat a bagel and cream cheese.

As I sat to have dinner at an award winning French restaurant, I realized that I had come a long way from my picky self. I do not profess to be a foodie, I am still conservative in my food choices, but I am definitely getting bolder and expanding my horizons with every new trip. Of the nine meals I had in Bangkok (Good grief..I am counting my time in number of meals instead of days!!), 8 of them were Thai, so one night, I decided to eat French food. The Reflexions is a modern French cuisine set in the very opulent Plaza Athénée hotel. The menu was dominated by meat and seafood. Nothing in the appetizer/soup section looked that great and I wanted to save space for dessert, so I ordered a main course of fish and settled down taking pictures of the place and pretending to be deeply engrossed in a restaurant guide of Bangkok.

The bread basket arrived soon enough. The wafting aromas of the warm bread made me realize how hungry I was, so I took a quick picture and dug in. Not surprisingly it was great. A few minutes later, the waitress came to my table

"Compliments of the Chef Ma'm" She said while placing a beautifully decorated mini-appetizer -"Quail egg mousse with red pepper salad"

"Quail egg mousse?" I asked, just to be sure. The old Vam would have politely sent back the dish, but the new Vam decided to give it a try. "I will spit it back in the plate if I don't like it". I told myself and took a tiny Lilliputian bite and it was not as gross as I thought. I ate the rest of it while complimenting myself on the achievement.

"Compliments of the Chef Ma'm" The waitress came back again with a large bowl of soup. -"Lobster Bisque with Truffle emulsion and cream topping"

Lobster? This time, the question was for myself. I never had lobster in my life, but I heard people rave about it. In the spirit of my new found courage, I decided to give it a try. I took one sip and almost kicked myself in the foot for never trying lobster. The soup was without doubt one of the best soups I EVER had. I was expecting a fishy soup, but this had a very intense earthy flavor. I finished the entire bowl and wiped it clean with bread!

I was just getting ready for my main course, when I saw the waitress bring another dish towards my table. "Another complimentary dish? This is insane!!" I told myself. This one had some ice-sculptures on the plate and a small open tin can. The lid on the can read "Caviar"!!!!!

"Compliments of the Chef Ma'm".

CAVIAR?? Are you kidding me?? There was just no freaking way I was going to eat tiny little fish eggs!! uh uh...No way!! Forget it! Haute cuisine to Hell!! I am sorry, but THIS is where I draw the line.

Smiling at my vigorously shaking head, the waitress said " This is watermelon caviar topped with passion fruit seeds ". Whew!!! I heaved a sigh of relief and happily accepted it and went on to photograph it. Lighting was poor and I took so long trying to photograph it without flash that the sculptures started melting!! Taking the cue, I tasted the caviar. It was quite delicious, but a LOT of work to eat water melon, I have to say!

Then came the dish I actually ordered "Roasted Dover Sole with wild mushrooms duxelles, roasted baby artichokes and truffle emulsion". The Sole was tasty, but nowhere in comparison to the awesome lobster bisque. Saru looked at this picture and said " Jeez, what did you do to tick off the chef??? He spit all around your fish!". Only my husband can come up with something so disgustingly imaginative!! It was light cream!!

Chef Thibault walked up to my table. " I hope you enjoyed the food. The main course was going to take a while, so I sent you the soup and stuff". I thanked him profusely and asked him how he made the soup. Remove the claws and cook the lobster head in the broth until it reduces to a soup consistency. I think I was happier not knowing how it was made!

Then began the long process of selecting the dessert. The chef described everything on the menu (in that utterly cool French accent, complete with sound effects and hand gesticulations to explain texture). I was so taken by the performance that I ordered "Degustation or Tasting Menu" . It included small portions of pineapple ravioli, raspberry tartlet, vanilla lime sorbet, caramelized Vanilla mille-feuille and my favorite Moelleux au chocolat.

>I liked the warm pineapple ravioli. The tartlet was just OK and the sorbet horrible. I have never liked sorbets. I think they are weird food masquerading as desserts and should be banished from this section. This one was lime sorbet and would have been great as a mouthwash flavor... if you ask me!!! The big surprise item was the mille-feuille. It was a small pastry with thin, delicate, buttery layers of puff pastry filled with soft, luscious vanilla cream (cream, not ice-cream). The pastry layers and the vanilla cream melt, the minute they touch your tongue. "Food Porn is what this is", Saru said when I described it to him.

I saved the best for the last- the warm chocolate lava cake! The key to a good lava cake is good chocolate. You know you are eating bad chocolate when it tastes like Bournvita (I challenge you to try Domino's Rs.25 chocolate lave cake and a Bournvita shake and tell me if they taste different). Based on what I have tasted over the years, you do not want to skimp on the budget when buying Chocolate. More expensive is almost always more tasty. Needless to say, the lava cake at this upscale restaurant was beyond fantastic. I loved it so much that I did something very uncharacteristic of me - I ate slowly savoring every bite. When I called Saru later that night to describe the experience, he did not believe me. He knows that I am not dainty when there are fruits or desserts next to me. I am the type of girl that eats grapes, 2 at a time (one on each cheek), so that when I bite into it, the taste explodes in the entire mouth at the same time.

The very first bite of the lava cake was so amazingly fantastic that I did not want the sensation to end. Warm spongy cake with soft, smooth, velvety chocolate... almost induces a state of ecstasy!! The cake and the sorbet were the only items left on the plate and as I was staring at them, I came up with a brilliant plan!! I ate a small spoonful of the lemon sorbet. It was so horribly yucky that it completely erased the taste of chocolate cake and cleansed my palette. I sipped some water and then went back to the lava cake and took a bite. Voila! It was a repeat of my out of the world first-bite experience. I went back and forth between the awful sorbet and the awesome cake and had the first bite experience for the entire cake! I am so thankful that the restaurant was almost empty that night, otherwise, people would have stared at the crazy Indian lady whose facial expressions kept alternating between an "ewwww gross" to "OMG...this is heaven" multiple times in the 15 minutes it took me to finish dessert.

"The perfect animation of that would be Homer Simpson alternating between "ewwww..." and "ummm..." said the husband before jumping into character making weird sounds and distorted facial expressions!

What was your recent food experience? Leave a comment!

Temples of Thailand - Wat Pho, Wat Arun

I went to Bangkok the second week of March for a work trip expecting to eat authentic Thai food and not much in terms of attractions. Unless green curry macaroni classifies as authentic Thai, I didn't eat good Thai food. I was at a conference where they served breakfast lunch and dinner and it was mostly continental food. I am not complaining too much because I got to eat a lot of salmon and cod that I don't get in India.

Bangkok city surprised me. It was not quite Singapore, but pretty darn close in terms of cleanliness, skyscrapers and infrastructure. I did see some poor dwellings, but it was nowhere near an Indian city. My only complaint was that the traffic was terrible. None of the attractions were close to their Metro Rail stops, so I had to travel by taxis and was often stuck in traffic.

I was in Bangkok for work, so was able to take only a few hours a day to visit the attractions. The first two places I went to were Wat Pho and Wat Arun. Wat in Thai means 'temple'.

Wat Pho (Temple of the Reclining Buddha)

Wat Pho is a 17th century Buddhist Monastery that houses the famous reclining Buddha. The buddha statue is 46 meters long and 15 meters high and covered in gold leaf. An interesting fact about this temple is that the Buddha statue was built first and then the hall to cover it. A 50 bhat tickets lets you gain access into the sacred hall that houses the Buddha. I walked in and was stunned by the art that covered every inch of the hall. The roof had a maroon and golden floral design and every inch of the walls were covered in murals describing the past lives of Lord Buddha. Areas around the statues were covered in gold plated metallic designs. It was very overwhelming to be in this hall surrounded by ancient Thai art. I don't think I felt this way about art after Italy!

Murals on the Temple Walls

When you walk out of the hall, you are welcomed by a number of intricately decorated chedis or pagodas. There are about a hundred pagodas in the complex, some in Cambodian Style, some in Chinese and the rest in Thai style architecture.

The pagodas and bells in the courtyard were intricately decorated using Chinese porcelain. The courtyard itself has a lot of Chinese Statues that were brought by traders as gifts to the King.

One other thing that struck me most about the temple compound were the brightly colored roof tiles and gold leaf decorations giving it a very rich look.

What Pho is also considered to be Thailand's first public university. This is the birthplace of Thai medicine and the famous massage technique.

Vam: Hey Saru, Can I give you a Royal Thai Massage?

Saru: Do I have to get naked for that?

Vam: Do you want to get naked?

Saru: Do I have to?

Vam: No, it is normally done with clothes on. Lie down and close your eyes. I will start from the toes and work my way up.

Saru: Should I even ask where you learnt this ancient art?

Vam: I remember some details from my massage and the rest I will wing it.

Saru: Oh God!!

Vam: So, they use their fingers, hands, elbows, feet...

Saru: Feet?? She uses her FEET?? Does she also jump on you?

Vam: WHAT?

Saru: You know, like when Lucy Liu does a cart-flip, lands on the villian's back and massages it with her feet before rendering him unconscious in Charlie's Angels.

Vam: It is quite sad how most of your knowledge is based on bad action movies. Any way, she did not jump on me, but she sat on me.

Saru: She SAT on you?? Oh my God!! Then what happened?

Vam: She pinned me down, tied my hands and ran away with my purse! Am I telling you a story here?

Saru (shaking his head in dis-belief): I can't believe you allowed a woman to sit on you!

Vam: Well...she didn't exactly sit on me.She almost sat on me.

Saru: Almost?

Vam: She sat in the sitting posture, but didn't put her weight on me. Anyway, it is part of the massage. For 450 Bhat (~700 Rs), I got a 2 hour massage.

Saru: TWO HOURS? What did she do for two hours?

Two hours might seem like a long time, but time flies when you are getting massaged by magic hands . Based on recommendations from my Thai colleague, I went to Health Land Spa. It was a wonderful experience not to be missed. On subsequent days, I went back to the spa for a foot massage and a facial and was transported back into heaven!

Wat Arun - Temple of Dawn

My next trip was to Wat Arun or the Temple of Dawn, which ironically is best seen at dusk. The temple is situated on the east bank of Chao Phraya River. I took a ferry that cost 3 Bhat and exactly 3 minutes to cross the river to get to Wat Arun. Built in the early 18th century, this temple has a massive tower decorated in colored porcelain from China.

The tower is supported by rows of demons and monkeys. Steep knee-busting steps lead way to a balcony with great views of the monastery complex, the river and the modern Bangkok.

I also took this night picture when we were on a dinner cruise. I had to change ISO to 800 to get this image, so it is not a good one.