Finding His Rhythm
Chef Dan Bark raises the bar with CADENCE, a new fine dining restaurant that is more personal and yet designed to stimulate all your senses, as gavin nazareth discovers
We are standing in an antechamber – the mirrored room almost pitch black – sipping a delightfully crisp Schramsberg Blanc De Noirs 2009 from delicate champagne flutes. A slowly pulsating blue light above outlines each of us with an ethereal glow. In a corner a small burner perfumes the room with the delicate floral and woody notes of Japanese cedar. This brief sojourn is to “clear your senses” explains the maître-d’ as he leads us into the main dining room.
The handsome room we step into is dominated by a palette of cream, with brown and brass accents. Wall and mirrored ceiling paneling in pigeon blue add splashes of colour, while the carpeting echoes the marbled tabletops. Modern Scandinavian chandeliers light up the semicircular banquettes that face a showpiece open kitchen. If the décor seems familiar it might be because Paradigm Shift – the much-in-demand design studio behind Canvas, Stage, Carne, among others – had a hand in it.
Cadence by Dan Bark, located in a spacious townhouse off Sukhumvit 71, is the newest culinary iteration by the chef and his wife Fay Tragoolvongse. In terms of dining room ambience, food and service, Cadence is, the duo say, a more personal and elevated version of Upstairs Mikkeller, their wildly successful concept restaurant in Ekkamai that combined fine dining and craft beer pairing, and was awarded a Michelin star each year since the guide’s inaugural Thailand edition in 2018.
“The transition from Upstairs to Cadence is what you might call a rebranding,” says Bark, who learned his craft in the kitchens of the two