Blogger’s Table @ Thai Pavilion, Vivanta By Taj, Gurgaon

Few days back, young property of Vivanta By Taj in Gurgaon, hosted a Blogger’s Table at their recently launched Thai Pavilion. It was a dinner, the day Thai Pavilion was launched here. It was quite a memorable dinner, as we all got to meet legendary chef Ananda Solomon, who brought Thai Pavilion to Vivanta, Mumbai during early 90’s.

It started with a brief introduction to Thai cuisine, by the executive chef, explaining how important it is to get the balance of flavors right in Thai cuisine. According to chef, Thai cuisine has got more vegetarian options than non-vegetarians, perhaps a biggest myth buster about the south east Asian cuisine in particular.

The grub extravaganza kicked-off with amuse bouche, for which chef selected galangal flavored compressed watermelon, which was quite crisp and a tidy affair, as much like an amuse bouche is supposed to be.

And then came an array of appetizers, one by one. Young papaya salad with sweet & spicy sauce and lots of crushed peanuts was something quite unusual. If hadn’t been told earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to tell about the papaya.

Tempura prawns and marinated chicken morsels wrapped in pandan leaves were served next. Tempura prawns nice and soft from inside while crunchy on the outside, I almost found them addictive and asked for the second helping and gave chicken morsels a pass.

Mushroom parcels blended with thai herbs, which were served next, were a little unflavored, somewhere lacking a character, rather nothing exciting to write home about.

Corn cakes and Thai dim sum were some other appetizers, which I really didn’t care about. All because, the food came in pretty quick, so much so that I was concentrating on my prawn tempura and let other things pass.

Main course, included crispy fried fish with tangy sauce, grilled lamb with mint and cucumber, water chestnuts and cashew nuts with red chilli paste, Thai chicken red curry and Thai vegetable green curry with some jasmine rice. All of them were pretty awesome, scoring high above their appetizer counterparts. Each one of the dishes tasted pretty decent and there was nothing in main course, of which I felt dissatisfied at all. I enjoyed almost all of them equally.

I feel that there is enough wide gap between a south east Asian cuisine and their European or American counterparts, when it comes to dessert in most of the restaurants. But this dessert platter completely blew me off. I was super impressed, how gracefully chef Ananda Solomon has succeeded in making such a refreshing dessert out of tender coconut milk and tapioca coated diced water chestnut. I did finish it to last bits and I still dream about that sometimes.

I found the overall meal an average, all because some of the appetizers failed to impress me {I wish, the flavors had been given importance than the numbers}, while main course and the dessert saved the day {definitely, a winner}. Will I go back, yes for the grilled lamb and some other main course and of course the coconut milk dessert.

See, what others have to say about:

• Parul @ The Shirazine
• Ruchira @ The Great Cookaroo
• Mukta @ Bake-a-mania
• Sid @ Chef at Large
• Rekha @ My Tasty Curry