In deciding whether to dine on the tantalizing tasting menu at Karmakamet Conveyance you must first ask yourself if you're up for some "culinary art".
Essentially a chic 1st floor grotto of moulded white plasterwork, purposely-exposed brick and space-reflecting gold-tinted mirrors in the modern monastic style, overlaid with remarkably mellifluous music, artistry infuses every element of the experience. It all unfolds behind a hole in the wall facade tucked inside the skytrain end of Sukhumvit Soi 49 on the left as you enter.
Created by Chef Jutamas "Som" Theantae, as kind of produced by Natthorn "Edge" Rakchana, Creative Director and Founder of the burgeoning Karmakamet aromatics-to-restaurants brand, virtuosity informs everything from the sustainable sourcing to the meticulous prep, and from the imaginative presentation to the exquisite effect on the palate.
The best friends since childhood synergise her highly original and appetizing approach to creating an unpretentious fine-dining feast for the senses and his design and entrepreneurial chops to a level greater than the already gratifying sum of their parts.
To be clear, "Karma" comes from incense, Edge's family's signature product, and "kamet" reflects the Eastern cultures and ways of life Som's life journey has exposed herself to.
Som's style is riven with exceptionally appetizing paradoxes – authentic originality, fashionable sincerity, relatable privilege, rustic refinement.
That this art disappears in a matter of mouthfuls matters not as it can be replicated and iterated ad infinitum, in each manifestation eliciting visceral sensations.
No need to be a culinary connoisseur to appreciate: it plays such melodies on the palate as are impossible not to love.
Chef Som's path to culinary celebrity has all the ingredients normally associated with becoming an exceptional artist. She's been up, she's been down, and really down, and she's been all over. From a spoiled young woman, she struck out on her own, discovering the world, finding both acceptance and rejection on the way to inspiration and, of late, popular admiration bordering on veneration.
Graduating in Lithography at Ramina Natagorn school of philosophy, art and music in India, she went on to chef in fine dining restaurants stateside before having an epiphany while dining at Thomas Keller's legendary French Laundry that "left an indelible trace", and returning to her land of smiles roots to fulfil it.
She honed her skills in restaurants in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Samui, going on to launch in 2013 the much-celebrated Karmakamet Diner, the predecessor of Conveyance, which is still in existence but having been more tourist-oriented was forced by the unspeakable virus to close and is looking for a new direction. She also found time to teach at Vatel School of Hotel Management.
As for the genial business- and design-focused Edge, he studied Fine Arts majoring in Interior Design at Rangsit University. He's well-known for having won Subannahongsa's Best Costume Designer for his work on the cult classic "Angulimala" movie. He originally created Karmakamet to rebrand aromatic products from his hometown in Narathiwas. Everyday Karmakamet lifestyle shop followed with the no-nonsense tagline "I Love My Life".
"My approach is like oil painting; it's about layer after layer in your mouth which creates flavours within," articulates Chef Som.
An advocate of simple, pure and natural ingredients. rather than extravagant food trends, she elevates humble produce such as banana alongside the most luxurious such as champagne.
Karmakamet Cuisine as practiced at Karmakamet Conveyance manifests as unpredictable and honest Asian-inspired creations using "old-fashioned cooking techniques in a contemporary fashion".
The cuisine doesn't follow a traditional doctrine, nor does it bend to passing fads. Rather, age-old methods of cooking are used to shape fresh interpretations.
To summarize, says Chef Som, "At Karmakamet Conveyance, we use taste as a form of experiencing art."
Recipes embody her memories of Asia without the limitations of borders. Each course is a sophisticated patchwork of fresh and transformed ingredients from which flavours in their truest form are spotlighted.
The tasting menu is purposely proposed as a mystery. As flavours reveal themselves, thoughts, feelings, and memories not typically associated with the ingredients emerge.
Only the names of each course is displayed such as 'Grains', 'Warmth', 'Rainforest', 'Village', 'Life' coupled with a short and mysterious description.
The initial table setting features dinner plate shards with the exposed clay trimmed in gold – a statement that broken things can be just as beautiful as whole and a call to throw all preconceptions to the wind – alongside quirky cutlery, different for each diner.
Even still, the actual food is instantly relatable.
The kitchen is down below and dishes arrive on a dumbwaiter.
We start with a Miracle Water aperitif like a concentrated vermouth, served in a miniature shot glass, with a cryptic message: "After 40 years of living in darkness, patience is awarded with an awakening of the senses."
The first dish, "Grains" presents three white china pedestals each supporting a ball with the fine grainy texture of a samosa; one filled with jam blended with cardamom, another with vegan blue cheese, and another with spiced banana. They're inspired by the kind of snacks you get at temple fairs.
Oddly enough, cool, light, refreshing champagne, available by the glass, provides a perfect complement, as it does throughout the meal.
Next is Warmth – a hearty chicken bone and Chinese medicinal herb broth poured by the glowing young wait staff from a tea pot. Chef Som's idea came from the dichotomy of life in China, with southern art depicting happy faces and art from the mountainous north reflecting the tougher climes.
"I thought I would like to make a dish from all the dry ingredients to see if it can be tasty and rich," Chef Som explains. It is.
Rainforest speaks for itself; a poetical green salad featuring astringent extraction of leaves, miniature maple leaves, dill, and a kind of chlorophyll pesto of basil, watercress and parsley.
Hustling & Bustling is in two parts: a deconstructed hoy tord-like fried oyster in a mild chilli sauce topped with chewy mung bean, and; a spicy southern Thai curry added with egg noodles, citrus-sharp pomelo, fried egg. "You need something really spicy to remember!"
The Village started as a wish to create an Isan dish and morphed into something unique; a warm salad of mushroom, squid, roasted sticky rice, dry coconut powder, fried fish, galangal dip, nam pla dip, fried red onion, coriander oil. All nestling beneath crushed coconut-infused, delightfully squelchy gelatine.
Life offers tender beef tongue, crispy shrimp cake, jam dumpling and mild nam jim seafood dip.
Next is a mildly salty Fleur de Sel sorbet atop a confit of mango, snake fruit, and longon, aromatically spiked with chisa and mint.
Even more enigmatically, Next is gossamer soft cured black cod suspended over chili sambol sausage mixed with rice presented like a impressionistic outsize baited fisherman's hook.
It is quickly followed by Dover sole with oyster cream and champagne sauce but with a lot of fermented tofu and dried squid and a slightly crunchy side of Thai green vegetable tempura.
Motion balance offers herb-crusted Tandoori lamb chop with tomato chutney, rice chutney, biriyani rice, onion bhaji and mint sauce – a full-scale Indian blow out mouth-wateringly miniaturised.
The pre-dessert is a sangria custard with sweet pork and shallot stuffed saku sai dumplings leavened with soft tofu, and a confit of jack fruit, coconut and kaffir lime oil, with chewy mung bean on top.
The meal concludes with a kind of reconceptualised ras malai; dairy milk slow-simmered with honey to create a cream, sprinkled with cardamom and covered in edible silver foil.
All in all, it makes for a thoroughly enchanting evening's eating.
Try it now and then come back for the new menu to be introduced in August.
Tasting menu reopening promotion B1,900++ until 13th August.
New "APPRECIATION Tasting Menu" from 14th August B2,900++
Small-producer wines from 1,500/bottle and "complex, clean" champagnes from 3,100/bottle
Bookings: www.KarmakametConveyance.com
Ph: 02 004 3997
Karmakamet Conveyance
1 1/1 Soi Sukhumvit 49
Tel. 02 004 3997
