FEASTING

My Bangkok friend Dolly has a friend Anna who directs a hotel and restaurant management program at their university.  Anna loves to make food, eat food, and talk about food.  It's an obsession.  Dolly and Anna have dinner together at a new restaurant every Friday night.  I joined them for their weekly excursion to a recently opened restaurant called The Aston.  There was a set menu, but it wasn't printed so you didn't know what the courses were going to be.  It was a mystery dinner.

This was the first course.  I can't tell you exactly what it was, because I couldn't understand much of the explanation from our server.  We all thought we heard chorizo mentioned, but there wasn't a trace to be found.  We decided it was a potato-cheese croquette.  The presentation was impressive.

Second was this angel hair pasta with a sauce that had dried shrimp....didn't care for this one.

Then came a delicious medallion of salmon perched on a salad of radishes, capers, and salmon roe.

This tiger shrimp was delicious and huge.  None of us understood what the yellow powder was, and now I forget what it was resting on.

A grilled lamb rib chop nestled in a puree of smoky eggplant was the first meat course.  It was really  tender and succulent.  I passed on the okra and hot pepper.

Then came my favorite dish, a leg and breast of quail with fois gras and one little morel mushroom.  I added some shavings of white truffle to make it even more divine.

We had two desserts.  This was a sorbet and custard combination with grilled pineapple and kiwi.

And the finale was madelines, dark chocolate, creamy marshmallow squares and salt caramels.

What a sumptous feast.  This was not a budget traveler's restaurant, but once in a while you have to splurge, and Bangkok is just the place to do it.