Thai Seafood
Seafood is a big passion of mine, which I think became pretty clear in my post on Soho's Rex and Mariano. I love what they do there, so when a friend came over from Bangkok and wanted to eat somewhere great in London, I took him there, confident in my choice. We ate the red prawns that everyone quite rightly goes on about:
He was unimpressed. I know. Apparently living in Thailand for years with constant access to gigantic prawns for very little money will do that to a person.
Now, having eaten things like this:
(With minced garlic and shrimp paste)
And this:
... I can kind of see his point. But those Rex and Mariano red prawns are an entirely different kettle of fish.
Anyway back to Thailand. Everyone said the food would be ridiculously cheap, and it was... cheap-er, but I don't know where everyone else was eating as our meals were always in the £60-90 region for the two of us for dinner (you do need to factor in that wine is noooooot cheap out there). The prawns above were only about £9 or so I guess that's not bad, and this lobster was only £15:
He was yummy, as was the crab in the title shot which is in a yellow curry. Messy but good. Crab is a big big thing over there, and the blue swimmer crabs in particular. We saw the locals fishing for them in the shallows some evenings on the beach, and I saw a few scurrying along which was cool but did not make me feel bad at all about enjoying this beefy one raw in a crazy spicy green papaya salad:
We were surprised to see oysters available over there, but jumped at the chance and had the plate below for about £19:
It was interesting to have a change from shallot vinegar, lemon and tabasco and I will think about serving oysters at home with some kind of Thai accompaniments like those above. The oysters themselves were quite quite different to the creamy natives we have over here; they were almost on their way to a mussel if you like. I'm writing this whilst on a juice fast (WHY?) and am genuinely considering whether oysters would be permissible due to their near liquidity. I guess not.
For more Thai sunshine, see yesterday's post, otherwise more soon!