Panorama restaurant has been quietly picking up plaudits for bringing originality to the Bangkok buffet scene.
"Restaurants of Bangkok", for instance, wrote: "For a 5-star hotel to deliver such individual talent takes Panorama into a culinary class of its own", while Thailand Tatler awarded it "cuisine and service" 2014. Panorama complements an informal yet modern and sleek setting with top-notch Thai, Asian and International cuisine prepared with the freshest products in dramatic open kitchens.
The venue gives it a head start. Set on the 23rd floor, it commands a sparkling view across Rama IV to Ploenchit and beyond. The spectacle is most impressive from Panorama Deck, a long open air balcony where you can sit and dine and there is also a full bar and lounge seating. Inside, seen through floor-to-ceiling windows, the prismatic reflections are beguilingly jewel-like. Dark wooden, green lamped casual sophistication blends with chairs and banquettes that are comfy but easy to get up from for frequent sorties. A private dining room for up to ten comes with its own kitchen and personal chef.
The long sweep of three theatre kitchens, each fully circumnavigable, offers multiple live cooking stations, making for engaging dining. The idea is to be as a la minute as possible but there are also dishes just awaiting your spoon.
Executive Chef Marco Turatti from Verona and French Pastry Chef, Hakim Ounas ensure top quality throughout.
The ground-breaking "Samba San" Buffet Dinner combines Latino spirit and Japanese finesse – "san" being the Japanese honorific like Mr, Miss or Mrs. and samba being the musical genre and dance style originating in Brazil and viscerally associated with the Rio carnival. And that's what the New Year's Eve edition will be all about, including those gorgeous, tall, be-feathered, bikinied samba dancers!
Crowne Plaza Bangkok Lumpini Park is a very popular brand with Japanese salarymen and women so it behoves it to do a good job of Japanese cuisine at all times. Hence the standard of sushi, sashimi and makkis etc. is exemplary.
Brazilian guests are more scarce but it's all prime anyway. The main Brazilian feature is "churrasco", a Portuguese term referring to grilled meats, and the related term "churrascaria" which means "steakhouse". Churrascarias are those restaurants where the waiters move around with skewers, slicing slivers onto your plate. You keep a disc on your table turned to green if you want more and flip it to red if you need to pause or stop.
Choose from delicious cuts of Wagyu beef, ribeye, beef picanha fillet with parmesan, lamb rack, chorizo sausage, pork chop, baby chicken marinated with thyme and yoghurt, and, for sweet juice and a digestive aid, pineapple with cinnamon given the same grill treatment. A highlight is the flank steak lightly salted on the surface then grilled and you slice pieces off like a spit roast. The picanha is made with 1824 top quality beef from Australia.
Two special sauces for the churrasco are key: pineapple puree, sweet and juicy, and the Peruvian chiorescu, a spicy but not hot sauce with a delectable tang made from onion, garlic, mint, vinegar, salt, oil and parsley smashed in a mortar with lemon and seasoning.
Marco recommends two ways to get started: with a soft salad of fresh leaves and condiments and/or the stunning seafood where Japanese and South American delicacies are specially featured.
Beside the leaves and veggies, there's a whole parmesan cheese with shavings prepared, plus several other kinds of cheeses, dried nuts and fruits and honey.
Cold cuts include chorizo, pork terrine, duck terrine, pastroami, paprika roast, smoked ham and so on. Excellent fresh baked breads, too, and a microwave oven handily positioned to pop in a slice and warm it. Condiments range pickled artichokes, marinated feta cheese, olives, sundried tomatoes, gherkins, capers.
Then there are composite salads like green beans and shrimps, chickpeas and corn, tapioca tubers and corn, and healthy-delicious quinoa.
As for the seafood, besides prime sashimi such as tuna, salmon, mackerel, crab, octopus and shrimps, sushis and makis, there are several Peruvian-style ceviche dishes, say salmon and tomato, tuna and cilantro and scallops marinated with a little lime, cilantro, onion, garlic and sugar and combined with suitable fruits which go down brilliantly.
Then you have the seafood on ice offering a great selection from everywhere: blue crab, rock crab, rock lobster, Alaskan king crab legs, soft shell crab, blue mussels, tiger prawns and, oddest looking but perhaps tastiest barnacles from Spain, sweet little molluscs hiding inside what appear to be claws but are in fact shells which you pull off to reveal the "fruti de mer" inside. Once bitten, forever smitten!
Condiments include pineapple puree, red onion, spicy Thai sauce, aioli , cimchuri sauce and onion and red wine.
Here too is exceptionally chunky, creamy and rich guacamole with crispy potato sticks and taco crackers which, again, one can soon become full from if caution is thrown to the wind.
You can also explore Thai and Chinese noodle permutations cooked to order. Plus a comprehensive shabu-shabu section with two soups – fish and chicken flavoured and all kinds of everything to mix in: beef, chicken, pork, fish, calamari, prawn, fish balls, mussels, eringhi, shitake, chiodoni and veggies.
Hot dishes offer the likes of roast potatoes to go with your meats, braised mushrooms, sweet and sour fish, Japanese curried prawns with sweet potato, Thai style green curry beef and on.
Then there's a giant dish of paella, the Spanish dish made from rice, shellfish, chicken, and dramatically vegetables and served in a large flat frying pan.
The dessert plate is all sugary fruit jellies and marshmallows with berry soup, lemon tart, brûlée, a pink macaroon, vanilla ice-cream and a world-class chocolate fondant.
As the samba music plays, you graze on mouth-watering delicacies washed down with caiprinhas, Brazils' national cocktail made with cachaça (sugar cane hard liquor), sugar and lime, along daiquiris, mojitos and tequilas from Brazil's friendly neighbours.
Among the wines, Lightbrand NZ Sauvignon Blanc sets the appetite with a smooth Australian Stonefish Shiraz (Coonwara Estate) and award winning Hugo Casanova Chilean Merlot and Savagarro Cabernet Sauvignon, along with a delightfully dry Arrogant Frog Grenache Blanc-Chardonnay.
SAMBA SAN BUFFET DINNER: 6.00pm - 10.00pm (daily). Sunday – Thursday Bt1,200 ++. Friday and Saturday Bt1,800++
HAPPY-HOUR (buy one get one free) at Panorama Deck Bar is around sunset time from 5.00pm – 7.00pm.
PANORAMA Crowne Plaza Bangkok Lumpini Park. 952 Rama IV Road.
Tel. 02 632 9000 or email: info-cpbkk@ihg.com
