FESTIVE FINE DINING PAR EXCELLENCE
Rib Room & Bar once again hits the gourmet heights for the year’s most memorable meals
Some restaurants more than others lend themselves to big celebrations such as Christmas and New Year. Rib Room & Bar, the unapologetically haute cuisine French grill restaurant and sexy skyline scrutinizing post perched atop The Landmark Bangkok Hotel, is incontrovertibly one of them.
With its lavish décor, impeccable manners, superb cellar, sumptuous cuisine and ringside seats through stretch-limo glass for Bangkok’s banquet of midnight pyrotechnics come New Year’s Eve, it ticks every box.
Spilling from the elevator into the 31st floor sanctuary of contemporary opulence, the sense of special occasion hits you head on. You arrive into a moody bar area where the predominant hues are an edgy amalgam of purple, red and gold, with strong black silhouettes of high-backed, wellsprung chairs. Raised in one corner is an illuminated bar, like some giant jukebox, stacked with luminous vodka and gin bottles. In the air is an unusually well selected playlist that segues music from different eras and genres with conspicuous deftness.
But most importantly, here only the most refined and richest food products and recipes are accepted into the prideof-place open kitchen equipped to celebrity chef luminary Alain Ducasse’s impossibly pernickety standards. So if you’re in the mood to mark the passing of another Noel and New Year in the highest culinary style possible, the proposition here is eminently feasible.
The three menus in question are “Chef’s Christmas Inspiration” (available from December 10-30), Chef’s New Year’s Eve 3-course set menu which you pick from multiple choices, and Chef’s New Year’s Eve 5-course set menu which is chef’s personal creation for the occasion but still with a choice of mains.
Philippe Gaudal, Executive Chef at The Landmark Bangkok, whose special baby Rib Room & Bar is, is a Great Chef. One does not use the term lightly. In person his immediate impact is of an old school French chef. Nothing wrong with that. But those who have followed him over the several years he’s been practicing his art in Bangkok know that he’s not averse to pushing the envelope a bit either. Anything to enhance what are already exquisite flavours.
Behind the trendy red-rimmed specs lurks a mind that is constantly thinking about how to make the next menu better. It could be a little thing like a sprinkle of Brittany sea salt atop the French butter pat that renders the basket of breads, so recently removed from the wood-burning oven – great plumes of crusty farmhouse rusticity – an addictive experience in itself. Or it could be any of the insanely delicious dishes Chef Philippe and Executive Pastry Chef partner in perfection Cyrille have lined up for Christmas and New Year.
CHRISTMAS INSPIRATION MENU (Nightly from December 10-30)
Your intrepid reviewer had the privilege of experiencing the entire Christmas Inspiration Menu and it is exquisite. The very first item on it, Maine Lobster Salad, underscores how Philippe’s calm exterior runs deep with creativity. There’s no sumptuous cream sauce here but still one swoons.
“If you look through the menu, I still have my classic dishes but I try to be a bit lighter and I like to play with some of the things,” he ventures.
And so, amid succulent medallions of lobster flesh as thick as octopus talons, you find new age chia seed and quinoa, roasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, rice crisps, thin slivers of raw root vegetables such as carrot and kolrhabi, and fresh fennel, all bound together with a sprinkling of crustacean salt and a light pumpkin oil dressing – “I love my pumpkin oil”. When it’s used like this, who doesn’t?
Next we indulge in the White Miso Marinated Biwa Trout Fillet which at first appears a classic French fish dish – a simple combination of excellent fish and sublime sauce. But what a sauce! Even by Philippe’s Escoffien standards this is beyond heavenly. And guess what – the reason owes as much to the Japanese as the French. He picked up the idea from a visit by a couple of Japanese chefs to the restaurant. They showed him their wild trout from Omi prefecture in Japan, how to marinate it a little with white miso paste and yuzu before you flash it on the salamander. They also gave him the idea that Japanese and French concepts can, in a funny way, go together. Take white misu paste, yuzu jus, mirin and sake and reduce. Then combine into a classic beurre blanc. OMG! Serve with pearl onions that you’d normally find with coq au vin plus Japanese soya bean, edamame and shimeji mushrooms. Finally add Philippe’s homemade seaweed salt and top with crisped trout skin. A new timeless classic of French cuisine is born this day – with a little help from the Japanese.
The third of the three fish and seafood options on the five-item menu is a thick maw of finest snowfish, simply braised and big enough to hold its own against even a French sauce so you can still taste its natural beauty. This is sealed with black squid ink oil that presents an earthy counterpoise. Succulent chorizo is a natural complement to snowfish and here it is cut up into sticks and woven into a garland-like garnish of pea tendrils, purple edible flowers and fresh peas. Add a classic Chardonnay cream sauce infused with saffron and monteau beurre and garnish with pureed and braised beans and it’s another sublime experience.
As for the meat dishes, there’s Sautéed Milk Dutch Veal Tenderloin Albufera Sauce with grenaille potato noisette butter espuma. This is a hearty steak of tender milk-fed veal tenderloin with a velouté sauce and chicken jus reduction, generously topped with black truffle shavings.
And last but not least, the ultimate Christmas Dinner – only tastier: SlowRoasted US Turkey Breast with sage rolled turkey leg and stuffings. The turkey breast is cooked sous vide. Chicken stuffing blends sage rolled in the leg deboned and braised. Another roll of stuffing is made of chestnut, bread and apple. A rich gravy and fresh cranberry & orange sauce accompanies alongside braised Brussels sprouts and mashed potato. It’s hard to imagine the classic dish done any more deliciously.
Meanwhile, the New Year’s Eve Menu dessert by the irrepressibly inventive Cyrille is really an edible work of playful art. Inspired by the truffle season, grand cru truffle chocolates infused with Baileys are buried in a cocoa soil beneath which is a delicious wild berries cream. A Darjeeling and rose water marzipan macaroon, more chocolate, meringue mushrooms and cocoa shortbread crumbles complete the vision.
NEW YEAR’S EVE 3-COURSE SET MENU @ Bt5,900++
APPETIZERS
Wild Rocket Salad Classic RR&B Caesar Salad French Tourteau Crab Salad Porcini Mushroom Cream Soup Lobster Bisque Risotto of Seafood Parma Ham “Culatello Di Zibello” Seared US Sea Scallop Duck Leg Confit Parmentier With Poached Egg Foie Gras Duo
MAIN COURSE
Maine Grilled Lobster Maine Lobster Thermidor Sautéed Scottish Salmon on the Skin Moroccan Snowfish Tagine Australian Rack of Lamb Roasted French Challan Duck Breast
400 Days Grain Fed Australian
DESSERT
Wild berries cream, Baileys chocolate truffles, cocoa soil, macaron
NEW YEAR’S EVE 5-COURSE SET MENU @ Bt7,900++
Foie gras terrine rice crisp, sweet wine jelly French “Tourteau” crab claw on crispy young spinach salad with sea urchin oil
Seared Hokkaido sea scallops yusu miso and glazed carrot Green apple sherbet apple brandy granite Roasted Challans duck breast slow confit duck leg, wild rocket smoked duck and duck crackling, Banyuls vinegar dressing and simple jus or Milk fed Dutch veal tenderloin Albufera sauce, winter truffle veal shank parmentier
Confit amarena chocolate cream, almond espuma
Wild berries cream, Baileys chocolate truffles, cocoa soil, macaron
Rib Room & Bar Steakhouse at the 31st Floor of The Landmark Bangkok. Tel. 02 254-0404 ext. 7777 or E-mail fb@landmarkbangkok.com