This is indeed an era when sublime dining venues — whether it be authentic Thai cuisine establishments, Japanese restaurants or French steakhouses — are made pleasantly effervescent by the sound of sizzling plates, tinkling cocktail glasses and babbling diners in genteel attire. Eating out is often regarded as an indulging social rite, thus highbrow gourmet bars are blowing up around Bangkok and diners can’t seem to get enough.
The newly launched, highly-invested 661 Silom offers two dining concepts. The “Meet” cuisine is available at its ground-floor gastro bar while “Meat” menu is provided at the upstairs steakhouse.
Among the recent openings is 661 Silom, a wine bar that doubles as a fine steakhouse, on the premises that housed the erstwhile, much-loved Niu’s Jazz Bar.
After a high-investment renovation, the newly-launched establishment offers two dining concepts — “Meet” and “Meat” — in accordance with where guests choose to sit.
Available at 661 Silom’s ground-floor cocktail bar and open-air dining patio, the “Meet” menu is designed to cater to diners looking for contemporary pub bites with a Thai twist, complemented by well-crafted drinks, from fancy cocktails to premium Champagne.
Of the seven-item selection, created by Thailand’s celebrity guest chef McDang, we sampled three dishes and were impressed.
The Simmental striploin steak.
Parma ham and melon salad with spicy Thai dressing (320 baht) featured the likes of rocket, mizuna and microgreens dredged with thin slices of green apple, beet root and chilli-lime dressing.
As the leafy greens offered a slight mustardy foundation, the marbling slices of Parma ham lent a salty succulence, the juicy pearls of melon provided a sweet contrast and the Thai-style dressing added a pungent finish.
The next treat was beef satay with peanut sauce, cucumber salsa and baguette (260 baht), and featured char-grilled fillets of top-quality, skewered beef flank. The marinated beef was well-cooked with a pleasant smoky odour, impressively retaining its beefy savour and perfectly enhanced by drizzles of peanut curry sauce.
Modishly presented as terrine, the timbale of curried fish with French Melba toast (180 baht) is in fact hor mok (Thai-style red curry soufflé). Amazingly, the not-too-fiery curry timbale intermingled nicely with the toast and proved delightful for both foreign and Thai palates.
Guests who choose to dine upstairs will be presented with the more substantial cuisine of the contemporary steakhouse. The “Meat” menu offers more than 20 options of appetisers, seafood, poultry and red meat.
We started off with a best-selling appetiser — burrata, panzanella and jamón Ibérico (620 baht). Mild, milky and very soft, the fresh mozzarella-cream cheese came crowned with Italian basil microgreens and was accompanied by the variegated panzanella, which is a salad of seasoned croutons, heirloom tomatoes, shallots and basils. Cured Iberian ham lent the dish a salty tang.
Avid fans of cured Iberian ham from Spain will want to order the jamón Ibérico (460 baht) made from free-range black pigs and served with sous-vide melon.
Burrata with panzanella and jamon Iberico.
The main courses of the evening were Simmental striploin steak (1,300 baht). In a decent 250g portion, juicy slices of medium-rare beef striploin were served from a hybrid breed of German and Swiss cattle, yielding a lean-yet-super-tender and flavourful quality.
The meat course came with a choice of garnishes and sauce. Options include citrusy iceberg salad, sautéed mushrooms and pumpkin gnocchi. We opted for a classic, mashed potatoes, which were velvety thick. For the sauce, among choices like grain mustard, Romesco, gravy and Thai-style jaew sauce, I recommend the superb Béarnaise.
Worth sharing among a party of four or more diners is the lamb shoulder (3,800 baht for a 2kg portion). The hefty cut of lamb, rubbed with herbs, sous-vide for 48 hours and roasted before being served, exhibited a crusty, charred exterior and tender juicy meat that easily fell off the bone. The lamb was accompanied by Thai salsa verde and lamb jus reduction.
At this steakhouse, the matter of sweets is no less pivotal. The service staff suggested the flash-frozen berries with hot white chocolate sauce (390 baht) and it proved extremely satisfactory.
The lovely-yet-simple dessert was a luscious illustration of contrasting tastes, temperatures and textures for the crunchy, frosty fruits wonderfully contradicted by the sweet, creamy taste of the hot chocolate sauce.
The restaurant has a nice repertoire of creatively crafted cocktails and prime wines from both the Old and New Worlds selected by its veteran sommelier Giulio Saverino. It’s one of the very few places in town that offers the prestigious French Champagne Dom Perignon by the glass (1,900 baht).
