EATINGOut
Exclusive eatery boasts some seriously impressive - and huge - seafood
VANNIYA SRIANGURA
The modest exterior of the eatery. |
A variety of prime-grade, oversized seafood which is only available upon reservation. |
The excellent fried rice with home-made salted kurao fish. |
Khun Jo with the 200-kilogramme pla mor talay, or giant grouper. |
Flash boiled fillets of giant grouper served with sour and spicy sauce. |
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At Ban Ruea Sripol, blood cockles are as big as a woman's fist, mussels are larger than a mobile phone, crab claws are as huge as an adult's palm. And all come with price tags that could make a faint-hearted customer fall from her seat.
A few months ago a close friend told me about a humble seafood restaurant near the Mass Communication Organisation of Thailand (MCOT) head office on Rama IX Road that he had visited. He said that the seafood was exceptionally huge, the prices unusually high and the staff weren't particularly excited about walk-in customers. Well, how could I miss a place like that?
Judging from its appearance, Ban Ruea Sripol, which occupies a two-unit shophouse, looks rather unexciting. The warmly-lit interior, amateurishly decorated with shells and stuffed aquatic creatures, betrays that the room was once an office.
With capacity to seat 50 diners and four private rooms, the eatery has been well known among an exclusive circle of discerning diners as the place for fresh gigantic seafood that can hardly be found anywhere else in the country.
The owner, Khun Jo, is a veteran chef with 15 years experience working at Bangkok's top hotels, while his wife hails from a fishing family. So when the two got married and decided to open a restaurant in 2000, it wasn't just the flavours they aimed to highlight but also the supreme quality and extraordinary size of the seafood no one else was offering.
At Ban Ruea Sripol, a meal for two costs around 4,000 baht, so expect to pay more than 10 grand for a party of five. Yet there's no need to dress to match the prices on the menu (in fact there's no menu as such).
Customers here usually arrive in their casual attire. And the restaurant is not the place to spot typical hi-sos who come decked out in gold and diamonds, but rather the country's movers and shakers - high and low-profile - such as high-ranking politicians, chief commanders of the arm forces, top bankers and corporate CEOs as well as ordinary well-off families.
Because the restaurant operates only by reservation, what diners are having are what they have previously requested, which also depends on their availability, or the best products the ocean has on offer at that time. Basically, it's a variety of deep-water fish, crab, prawn, shellfish and cuttlefish.
Our first dish, boiled blood cockles (980 baht) presented 15 half-opened shellfish with their meat fresh, plump and juicy (some may say "bloody"). On the street you can get as many as 40 blood cockles and pay as little as 30 baht for the thumb-size shellfish and, perhaps, an upset stomach as a free gift. But here, even the meat of the shellfish was almost as big as a golf ball, while the quality was noteworthy. Should the blood cockle prove to be too bloody for you, ask if the restaurant has hoy malang poo (1,480 baht for approximately 15 green mussels).
Because great seafood should be treasured for its freshness and authentic taste, though you may want to have your favourite seafood deep-fried or treated with tasty sauce, you'll most likely end up cherishing the natural flavour of the seafood when it's steamed or quickly boiled.
Dish number two was pla mor talay luak jim, or flash-boiled fillets of giant grouper (2,280 baht). Served on a 16-inch long plate was a generous portion of expertly sliced fish fillets speckled with deep-fried garlic. Showcasing its freshness and top-grade quality via beautiful layers of thick supple skin, blubber and cottony white meat, the fish yielded a naturally sweet taste without any fishy odour nor a hint that the fish had died some time ago.
Three of us couldn't finish the huge order though it was really good, and the leftover was turned into the star of my family's khao tom pla breakfast the next day.
Of course, a restaurant shouldn't be praised just because it offers super fresh ingredients. When it comes to concocting flavours, Khun Jo proved to be one of the real masters. His signature squid (with eggs intact) with Indian vindaloo sauce (1,280-1,680 baht depending on the size of the squid) featured an impressive blend of lightly deep-fried squid, tossed with pungent Indian curry spice and served with grilled banana on the side that resulted in a deliciously distinctive taste and texture.
Don't stuff yourself before you try the restaurant's khao phad pla kurao khem (980 baht), which my friends and I agreed was one of the best in the country.
The price tag of the fried rice with salted threadfin fish reflects the quality rather than the quantity. The portion was just large enough to serve three or four diners but the quality was beyond criticism. This delicious dish is made with perfectly cooked jasmine rice tossed in a burning wok together with the fragrant salted fish that had been marinated and frozen immediately after it had been caught.
The restaurant even hires a boat crew to prepare the salted fish and has a separate freezer on board to store it.
We didn't have a chance to sample pla tao teoy luak, or steamed deep-sea silver pomfret (1,280 baht per kilo) which is another famous dish here. I've been told that Ban Ruea Sripol was the place for deep-ocean fish like pla mor talay and pla tao toey. Due to the fact that it usually take months for a deep-sea fishing charter to get back to shore, most fish caught far from land are usually treated with formaline to keep the meat firm. But here the fish are covered with crushed ice from an ice-making machine on board - not even a freezer - to keep the fish fresh.
Other interesting items that we missed were grilled saltwater prawns, which amazingly are as big as river prawns, and the steamed crabs (1,380 baht per kilo).
For dessert, the restaurant only has deep-fried battered banana with honey and vanilla ice cream (680 baht). And it proved to be a real delight.
Apart from water, soft drinks and beer, there are no other drinks on offer here. Bringing your wine is always welcome, and without a corkage charge.
Can't wait to get a table here? The first thing you have to do is call the restaurant and talk to Khun Jo. And if you think it's the place you're looking for, then you might want to discuss the menu or give him the number of people in your party so he can estimate and prepare the menu for your group.
There's no minimum number of guests per table. But keep in mind that the food comes in a fixed portion which can be huge! So if your party is small, it's very likely that you won't be able to savour as many dishes as you'd like.
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