Thai Buffet Dinner Shangri-La’s Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa
Shangri-La’s Rasa Sayang Resort & Spa has turned the heat up a notch with their Northern Thai Food Promotions.
I thought I knew my way around some seriously excellent Thai cuisine from my many trips to the Kingdom. I have had dinners in some predominately Thai local restaurants where the taste is not modified for tourists.
Thai Chefs Prepare a Fabulous Thai Buffet Dinner
I was pleasantly surprised when I was invited to dine at the resort featuring guest Chef Pratthung Taka and Chef Damrongsak Khammongkhon from Shangri-La Hotel, Chiang Mai to share their specialities of northern-style food.
Thailand’s cuisine evolves every time it crosses a provincial border, and the dishes of the north is abounding with the people’s love for fresh veggies, all sort of fried food and use of bitter or other dried spice flavours and lesser use of coconut milk.
I know that the Chefs are tasked with showcasing dishes in three rotational menus and rightly so as there are so many beautiful dishes that they will be cooking.
Robust Tom Yam
On the night of our food tasting, my top pick would be the robust and spicy Tom Yam Goong made with fresh fragrant lemongrass, coriander roots galangal, tamarind and red chilis, full of juicy king prawns with the perfect balance of spiciness and sourness.
Chef Pratthung Taka and Chef Damrongsak Khammongkhon work so well together, their movements in the kitchen were almost choreographed as each instinctively knew what to do next. Fluid as in a dance.
This makes the best Penang Hokkien Mee soup pale in comparison. Seriously.
The Chefs gamely fried up some Phad Thai Goong, stir-fried noodle with tamarind sauce. This is not top on my must-eat list, but I have to confess, I had two serves. I kid you not.
Well just take in the images from appetizers, mains, and desserts.
Salads for a Thai Buffet Dinner
Thai salads aka Kerabu are fragrant morsels of crunchy raw vegetables and even fruit like unripened papaya tossed in the zingiest dressing of fish sauce, palm sugar, fragrant limes, minced garlic pips, toasted crushed peanuts, cilantro with the heat from birds eye chilis.
Exotic, sweet and tangy these summer salads are the perfect pick-me-up to awaken your taste buds with flavour and textures. Fresh, crunchy, tasty and deliciously sweet, sour, zingy and tangy, Thai salad is always a hit with a kick.
Such simplicity of ingredients that you may just pass it and head for a more complicated dish. A blogger colleague insisted that I tried his favourite delish dish, and he’s right, of course.
Yam Woonsen Gai Sab (spicy minced chicken salad) Don’t be fooled. The verdict is in the taste test.
To start your journey, something tart and sourish. Goong Takrai (poached prawn salad with lemongrass and shallots)
Chicken fried with bean curd and cashew nuts.
Everyone’s favourite, Tod Man Pla (Spicy Fried Fish Cakes)
If you’re a lover of basil leaves, this fragrant creamy chicken dish is made for you!
Chicken in Oyster sauce with bell peppers. Mind you these may look like something you can whip up at home but can you match the taste that is Chinese yet decidedly Thai.
Deep-Fried Prawn in Red Curry Sauce
The gravy is heart-warming, creamy, and spicy and goes so well with heaping mounds of warm fragrant white rice.
For me, I’ll be happy with this one dish and rice for lunch. I get a poor man’s version of this with an egg knocked in at a local café when my craving kicks in.
Deep-Fried Prawn in Red Curry Sauce.
Coyly Sweet Desserts
Thai desserts are exciting with a coyly sweet manner, and luxuriously rich doused in coconut crème. These make their appearance on a weekly rotation on the menu.
I had this bland looking dessert which was stewed tapioca topped with “gravy” of coconut crème that was so good that I had to limit my intake to just two and move on the dessert line.
I have a chocolate and sugar addiction and my best friend, the chocolate mousse was beckoning that night!
Don’t talk to me about diet. It just means DARE-I-EAT-THAT!
And if you’re like me, do check out the seafood which is on the buffet line on top of the fantastic Northern Thai food promotion.
Beautifully carved flowers from watermelons!
Relish
Capers are lovely in salads. Unpalatably bitter when eaten raw but once cured in a vinegar brine or even salt, these become intensely salty, sour, herbal with a hint of medicinal taste.
Fish Fun Fact: These odd-looking little spheres are the flower buds of a prickly shrub that grows all over the Mediterranean. When fried in hot oil, these buds open up like tiny flowers releasing a beautiful aroma.
Well if you’re like me, when the seafood is fresh, it’s just hard to resist not packing in some shellfish with a squeeze of lemon and dipped in my all-time favourite; good old garlic mayo dip.
Green-lipped mussels
Prawns
Spanner Crabs with a fat white morsel of sweet flesh!
A handsome baked fish.
Where & When to have a Thai Buffet Dinner
If you can’t get to these Thai specialities in George Town, then head on down to the all-star buffet from 1st June until 30th June 2016.
Treats are available every Sunday through Thursday from 6.30 pm to 10.30 pm. Priced at RM173 net per adult and RM87 net per child, the buffet spread includes free flow of the beautifully spiced thirst quencher, the lemongrass lemonade beverage.
Fun Fish Munny Savers: Diners pay only 60 per cent of the standard buffet price under the “P60 Promotion” which happens every Monday and Tuesday except on the eve of the public holidays and public holidays.
Review: A buffet dinner at the Spice Market is worth your money with the beautiful spread laid out.
Spice Market Cafe at Shangri-La’s Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa – Penang
Beach Garden Wing, Lobby Level, Batu Feringgi, 11100 George Town, Penang
Call: +60 4-888 8888
