Baan Tepa - Bangkok
Dining room with open kitchen on the right
Rating: 16/20
Where: Bangkok, Thailand
When: Dinner for 2 on 23 February 2025
Cost per Person: Tasting menu 6200 THB, Wine Pairing 2900-7500 THB
Accolades: 2 Michelin Stars, #44 on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants (2025)
Why: Thai cuisine with indigenous ingredients from all over the country
Bangkok's restaurant “Baan Tepa” is not exactly what one would call “centrally located”. But after braving the city’s notorious traffic, the upsides of the remote location become apparent. The restaurant occupies a large building on seemingly palatial grounds - something that would be hard to find (or afford) near the city's crowded center. It is the chef's family home, now converted into a two-Michelin-starred restaurant. The interior design reflects the history of the building - there is no glitzy modernity here, the vibe is more turn of the 20th century, rather than 21st century. The main dining room has a two-story-high ceiling and abuts the open kitchen. The room has a bit of a cafeteria atmosphere, thanks to its cathedral, echoey acoustics, and two-person tables that are spaced far apart, unless pushed together for larger parties.
Baan Tepa serves just a single tasting menu, but it can be adapted to dietary restrictions with prior notice. There was one optional course that one might add to the menu, a chicken liver mousse toast, but we skipped it. Wine pairing wise, there were two basic options: a regular pairing (of four or six glasses) and a premium pairing of six glasses. Both pairings could also be extended to seven or eight (if one ordered the chicken liver dish) glasses, and finally, the premium pairing had some ultra-premium upgrades. Lots of choices then, and if one went all in, the ultra-premium eight glass pairing would set one back 18400 THB - more than we spent on our entire dinner and drinks for two. We chose the regular seven glass pairing (4300 THB), and the wines were decent - I liked the sweeter wines the best. It was definitely a good fit for the menu.
We also learned that this is a restaurant where it's sensible to arrive on time (but not too early), since the dinner starts with a brief trip to the kitchen - in our case together with another dining party. We probably wouldn't have been seated before this other party showed up.
In the kitchen, we were treated to a display of fruits and vegetables that would be used in the upcoming dinner. Our server remarked on the produce that “before I worked here, I didn't even know many of these existed.” The restaurant has made it its mission to find neglected produce from all over Thailand and to incorporate them into fine-dining cuisine. Our first bite was a crunchy tartlet filled with a coconut meringue and topped with a Thai plum. The plum was lightly marinated, and there were some light Thai spices and a bit of fruitiness, but not too much - altogether well balanced. The dish was paired with an acidic mangosteen kombucha 18.
The first “real” course was served at our table, and came in three parts. The common ingredient among these three dishes was the use of “kapi”, a fermented shrimp paste. The first dish contained a kapi jelly and kapi crumble. They were served over horse mackerel sashimi, kaluga caviar and herbs from the restaurant's garden. A very fresh tasting dish, lightly spiced - lovely 17. The second dish was served warm. It featured a smoked kapi foam and a kebab of smoked bamboo clams and local fruit. This dish was a bit spicier - at least it had a lingering spice effect after eating it. The lightly smoked clam and fruit were “merely” ok - nothing too special here -, but the kapi foam was delicious, and some vegetables hidden underneath the foam provided for a crunchy texture 18. Finally, there was a dish that contained lobster, a kapi sorbet and a rice cracker on top. Served cold, it was quite spicy. These was lots of seafood flavor and a bit of fruitiness. Overall, not bad, but a step down from the other two dishes 15.
Course two was called “Crab crab crab”, and we again received three different preparations, all containing crab, but presented on the same plate and not quite as elaborate. A purple rice toast was topped with a crab salad, and next to it were a fermented crab sauce made with eggfruit and miso, as well as a small cup full of crab broth. The toast was soaked with broth, and finger limes added some acidity to it. The crab on top was not particularly flavorful, though. The crab sauce - creamy with a bit of spice -, was actually better than the toast. The broth somehow didn't taste of crab at all, it was slightly sweet with a sour lime flavor 15. This course was paired with an off-dry German Riesling because “the dish is spicy” - an odd justification, since the spice level was actually quite low.
A Chinese/Thai fusion noodle dish came next. Rice noodles were mixed with little cubes of salted duck egg and roasted squid and topped with crispy squid flakes. The noodles were chewy, almost like mochi, the egg pieces quite firm and the sauce creamy and very spicy. This is where the aforementioned Riesling might have been a better fit 16.
A river prawn from Southern Thailand arrived in a pretty presentation. The “head” of the prawn contained an egg omelet, its “body” was covered with a prawn fat emulsion, and its “tail” consisted of three different kinds of vegetable crackers. The omelet and the prawn meat were actually quite heavy for a seafood preparation - this was definitely not a light dish. The emulsion provided most of the flavor here - it tasted distinctively of prawn and was pretty spicy. The omelet had an interesting “hairy” texture, for lack of a better word. The vegetable crackers that made up the tail were pretty nice, and sat on an acidic gel 16.
The next course was a palate cleanser, and would have gone without a wine in the six-glass pairing. It was entirely vegetarian, and contained white lotus, jicama, snow mushrooms, wild mushrooms, the simmering broth of the lotus root, corn(?) and sake, as well as a granita. (I might be missing some ingredients here and elsewhere since our server talked very softly, and the produce often had only Thai names.) This dish had a nice mix of textures (crunchy, mealy, ...), levels of acidity (fermented, sour, pickled, ...) and temperatures. There was a hint of fruit as well, but no spiciness whatsoever 15.
THe menu’s main course was based on a “black curry” - an invention of the restaurant that used roasted or otherwise blackened ingredients such as caramelized eggfruit, bananas, and nutmeg. It was served with a “beef mosaic” - three different cuts of Australian wagyu (ribeye, ribcap and hanger steak) that together with beef tendons were rolled inside a dried cabbage leaf. On the side was a jasmine rice that had been cooked with coconut water and oolong tea. The curry was very aromatic, as was the little herb salad on the side. The beef was fine, but not amazing - some of the cuts were a bit chewier than I’d expect for good wagyu. The pickles in the mosaic were a nice addition, the tendon with its jelly-like consistency was a neither-here-nor-there addition. The rice was not particularly exciting either, its flavors were extremely light 16. The pescatarian alternative for this dish replaced the beef mosaic with a pomfret fish and kept the rest of the dish the same. Unfortunately, this cut of fish was somewhat oily and not too exciting 15.
Our pre-dessert was based on variations of rice - and not just different types of rice, but also different preparation methods. There was some sticky green (i.e. young) rice, a jasmine rice koji, the SCOBY from the kombucha welcome drink, a yogurt espuma and a cracker made from black sticky rice. Lots of different textures to explore: jelly, foam, firm rice, crunch, ... The cracker on top was more mealy rather than crunchy, and everything was quite sweet 16.
The main dessert surprisingly turned out to be less sweet than the preceding pre-dessert. A pandan emulsion was topped with a wild mushroom crumble, fresh water seaweed, a lion's mane mushroom ice cream and three types of sunchokes. There was some sweetness, but overall this was more of a savory dish with lots of earthiness and umami flavors. Admittedly, I would have preferred a more dessert-like dessert 14.
Three petit fours were based on three different Thai honeys. Lychee honey and osmanthus had been made into a lightly sweet jelly that was paired with a crunchy fruit on top of a stick 14. A mung bean tarte was topped with goat cheese and dark wild honey. This bite had an earthy flavor with a texture reminiscent of graham crackers 14. Finally, there was a little kalamansi fruit topped with citrusy honey, cream cheese and bee pollen. Essentially a citrus fruit with sweet cream 14.
Overall: A dinner that was impressive in its use of indigenous ingredients from all over Thailand. In addition to featuring these little-known fruits and vegetables, there was also an emphasis on recycling and not wasting any parts of the ingredients. Tastewise, though, after a really strong start, this was pleasant rather than mind-blowing. In other words, I might have had better Thai food elsewhere, but never with such a wonderful bounty of local ingredients 16.
