Le Du's famous Khao khluk kapi. © provided

When he relocated from India to Bangkok in the early 2000s, recounts Gaggan Anand, there was nothing even remotely along the lines of fine dining in the Thai capital. “Back then, dishes like spaghetti with sun-dried tomatoes or toast with French pâté were considered the ultimate in upscale cuisine,” says the amused chef and owner of the celebrated restaurant that bears his name. For a long time, the city was primarily known for its outstanding street food. But the situation today is very different: In recent years, the Thai capital has risen to become a hotspot of the international gastronomy scene – and Gaggan Anand has played an important role in that.

Gaggan Anand © provided

In the very first issue of the Michelin Guide to Thailand, published in 2017, his previous Bangkok restaurant was the only one to be awarded two stars off the bat and was also ranked first on the list of Asia’s best restaurants. Four years later, after disputes with his partners, Anand closed the eatery – only to reopen in a different location last spring.

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Guests sit at a counter in a dimly lit room and are greeted by Thailand’s rock-star chef himself with the words, “Welcome to my shit show!” And the show is definitely worth seeing: The chef or one of his staff accompanies every dish with an entertaining anecdote, deafening rock music booms out of the speakers and guests are encouraged to sing along or drum on the counter. Compared with the light-hearted supporting program, Anand’s Indian-Thai cuisine is very much serious business. The restaurant brigade functions like a well-oiled machine; its timing is perfect, and the dishes it serves are as impressive in texture as they are in taste.

Gaggan's "Lick it up" is meant to be licked off the plate - accompanied by the rock band Kiss' song of the same name. © provided

They include a lamb chop in a delicately spicy sauce made of red Mathania chiles and dry-aged seabass in banana leaves with Bengali mustard oil and Thai basil – both perfectly cooked, both guaranteed to detonate an exquisite taste explosion. As you would expect, they are accompanied by trendy, naturally produced wines – all of which explains why the newly opened restaurant shot straight to fifth place on the list of Asia’s best restaurants published last March.

"Chef Ton" superstar

"Chef Ton" © provided

This time round, first place on the aforementioned list went to another Bangkok restaurant calledLe Du;it’s owned by Thitid Tassanakajohn, otherwise known as Chef Ton, whose frequent television appearances in his native Thailand have helped make him a superstar. The name means something along the lines of “seasonal” and it therefore comes as no surprise that Le Du is known for fresh, seasonally sourced ingredients. The setting and atmosphere are refreshingly serene and decidedly relaxed.

Le Du. © provided

“We wanted to create a restaurant that offers fine dining but based on Thai ingredients, techniques and recipes,” says Tassanakajohn. Now in his late 30s, he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and worked in various prestigious New York establishments such as Eleven Madison Park or the Jean-Georges before opening his restaurant in 2015. However, turning his concept into reality proved anything but easy, says Chef Ton: “Especially at the beginning, sourcing top-quality Thai products was quite a challenge because there’s no existing network. So we ended up driving here, there and everywhere and asking around to track down farmers, fishermen and food producers, and today they supply us with the very best local ingredients available.”

Gaggan Anand's gin and tonic uni. © provided

One of Le Du’s signature dishes is khao khluk kapi, a local classic made of primarily rice and shrimp paste, but in this case served with an impressive freshwater prawn. Now and again Le Du offers more unusual fare as well: During the rainy season, for instance, the menu might well include ant larvae that are foraged in the wild and served with southern Thai green curry.

A TRUE ORIGINAL IN A TROPICAL GARDEN

Mathias and Thomas Sühring © unpublished

Mathias and Thomas Sühring’s creations are far less exotic. With the help of their friend and investor Gaggan Anand, the twins from East Berlin opened their eponymous eatery in 2018. It’s located in an elegant villa in the midst of a lush tropical garden in one of the megacity’s mansion districts. Based on classic German fare, but creatively refined and elevated to top international level, the brothers’ cuisine is truly original. They serve surprising and unusual versions of dishes that every self-respecting German knows by name, including Frankfurt Green Sauce, Bismarck Herring, Black Forest Cake, Spätzle egg noodles or jellied pork knuckle. Everything is so meticulously prepared, perfectly cooked and elegantly presented that a rather flattering witticism has been making the rounds recently: There’s nowhere that has better German food than Bangkok.

The Sühring is located in a quiet Bangkok villa district and surrounded by a tropical garden. © tinnaphop-tonitiwong.com

The Michelin Guide agrees: The brothers were awarded one star in their very first year and a second shortly afterward. Deservedly so: The brothers’ work has gone from strength to strength and evolved from tongue-in-cheek twists on classics – which are still a feature – to an elegant, sometimes chiseled haute cuisine. Their Labskaus, for instance – a traditional seamen’s dish from northern Germany made of beef, mashed potato and beets – is delicately marbled roast beef filled with corned beef and decadently topped with caviar.

Dry-aged duck in Chinatown

Pichaya Utharntharm, better known as "Chef Pam". © 50best

Pichaya Utharntharm’s approach to tradition is likewise playful. And like Chef Ton, she too has shot to superstardom thanks to her TV and media presence. For simplicity’s sake, she calls herself Chef Pam. And because she’s descended in part from Bangkok’s Chinese minority, it’s no coincidence that thePotongPotong restaurant she opened two years ago is located in the heart of the city’s Chinatown, in a 120-year-old Sino-Portuguese house that’s been in her family for generations.

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The 30-something chef’s cuisine is no less impressive than the setting it’s served in: You enter the old house through a room that was once an apothecary and discover shelves lined with jars of homemade food, including kombucha, soy and fish sauce, but also distillates like whiskey. From there, you’re shown to a tiny wooden elevator that was once used to hoist ingredients for the medicines between floors; alternatively, there are extremely narrow staircases leading to the five stories, but you have to be careful not to get in the waiters’ way. On one of the floors there’s a cocktail bar where aperitifs are served (as well as some surprisingly excellent homemade charcuterie).

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One of the highlights of the 20-course tasting menu that follows is the dry-aged duck, carved by the chef herself and served with mapo tofu and an array of other accompaniments presented in little bowls. “I’d describe my cuisine as progressive Thai-Chinese,” says Chef Pam. “I start from childhood memories and the dishes my mother and grandmother used to cook, and then use both traditional and modern techniques to enhance them to fine dining level.” And that is something she’s extremely good at.

Frankfurter green sauce & smoked egg from Sühring. © provided

All the same, Bangkok’s culinary scene has far more to offer than “just” fine dining. For one thing, there’s an abundance of old established restaurants that serve simple but truly fabulous traditional fare, and then there are the city’s legendary aforementioned street kitchens. One of the most spectacular has even been awarded a one-star rating by the Michelin Guide and belongs to Supinya “Jay Fai" Junsuta. Now in her mid-70s and sporting her trademark ski goggles, she stands at her pans and fries her legendary crab omelet over an open fire, avidly watched by dozens of tourists – impressive proof that today’s Bangkok is one of the most attractive gastro destinations on the planet at every level.

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