For the past five years, Goji Kitchen + Bar at Bangkok Marriott Marquis Queen's Park has been one of my favourite destinations for all-you-can-eat international cuisine.
The name Goji always came up when people asked me to recommend the best buffets in the city. Not only did the 400-seater feature a fun-filled market-style ambience but the culinary quality and variety of its fare were 5-star and beyond the price tags.
It's now been over a year since my last visit there as the current dine-in ban seems to be never-ending.
Of course, lockdown in Bangkok doesn't mean epicures have to isolate themselves from their favourite foods.
The barbecued pork ribs with spicy tamarind glaze and roasted rice crust from Siam Tea Room Thai restaurant.
Goji, like other eateries under the Bangkok Marriott Marquis Queen's Park brand, is making sure diners' gastronomic needs are catered to by offering special takeout dishes.
The selection -- which is basically Western-style dishes such as pasta, pizza, soup and salad -- is diminutive compared to the 300 dishes available at its buffet.
Fortunately, the quintessential and most popular items are there including grilled chicken Caesar salad (275 baht) and braised lamb shank in red wine sauce (565 baht). They were the two dishes that I ordered last week.
Seafood fried rice with shredded conpoy, egg white, and pan-fried scallops with asparagus in spicy Shanghai sauce from Pagoda Chinese restaurant.
The salad was satisfactory with each element spot on. A fillet of grilled chicken and Parmesan cheese shavings came on a bed of neatly arranged fresh crisp romaine lettuce leaves. On the side and in separate containers were thick and creamy anchovy dressing, aromatic homemade garlic croutons and crispy bacon bits.
I know Goji's Caesar salad is among the most scrumptious and addictive in the city. For that reason, my son always made frequent trips to the made-to-order salad bar every time he was there.
Even through delivery, the salad proved to be excellent and a perfect complement to braised lamb shank, which was the main dish.
The braised lamb shank with mashed potatoes and grilled chicken Caesar salad from Goji Kitchen + Bar.
The lamb shank was a huge serving and it came with roasted red onion, garlic, carrot and baby beetroot. The lamb meat, which was tender, was the delicious result of hour-long cooking, red wine and herbs until the gravy developed a bittersweet taste.
The generous portion of gravy also helped enhance the buttery taste of the generous portion of mashed potato.
Other options worth trying are baked Norwegian salmon in white wine cream sauce; Australian grain-fed prime rib steak with pepper sauce; and beef cheek ragout spaghetti with Parmesan. A family set is also available with prices starting at 1,875 baht, inclusive of beverages.
Anchan nom sod or sweet milk infused with butterfly pea flower.
My delivery also featured a few other dishes from Pagoda, Siam Tea Room and Akira Back.
Pagoda is a Chinese restaurant helmed run by Cantonese cuisine master chef Oscar Pun from Hong Kong.
My choice of dishes from Pagoda was based on the chef's recommendation.
There were signature dishes, including stir-fried black grouper in XO sauce; deep-fried pork ribs in Zhenjiang sauce; stir-fried beef filet with dried chillies Sichuan style; stir-fried okra with Laoganma sauce; and the best-selling steamed mud crab with sticky rice in lotus leaf.
A fragrant dish of pan-fried scallops with asparagus in spicy Shanghai sauce (590 baht) and seafood fried rice with shredded conpoy dried scallop and egg white (490 baht) lived up to the chef's esteemed profile.
From Siam Tea Room Thai restaurant, barbecued free-range pork ribs with spicy tamarind glaze and ground roasted rice crust were said to be the most-ordered takeout dish.
I had the BBQ ribs (425 baht) and a yellow curry of crabmeat, banana prawns and sea-blites (480 baht). Both dishes proved beyond my expectation.
The pork ribs were well cooked until the meat was tender and fell off the bone easily. They exhibited a nice concoction of sweet and savoury flavours with a fantastic scent of charcoal-grilled smoke and Thai herbs.
Meanwhile, the curry gratified my demanding palate with a peppery herb-seethed coconut-based broth which featured an abundance of crab meat and prawns.
My lunch also included a delicate creation of eringi pizza with umami aioli and truffle oil (350 baht) and a modern sushi roll called Perfect Storm (450 baht) from Akira Back innovative Japanese restaurant.
Akira Back is a Korean-born professional snowboarder-turned-chef from Aspen, Colorado. He opened his namesake restaurant on the top floor of Bangkok Marriott Marquis Queen's Park in 2018.
The eringi pizza is the vegetarian rendition of the chef's best-selling tuna pizza. Super-thin yet marvellously springy slices of eringi mushrooms came layered over a flaky crust pasted with ponzu-infused mayo and garnished with micro shiso leaves and white truffle oil drizzles.
The Perfect Storm roll was a piquant unification of shrimp tempura, spicy tuna, salmon aburi and chipotle mayo in sushi rice.
Dessert was a cold milky beverage called anchan nom sod or sweet milk infused with butterfly pea flower (85 baht), which was enjoyable.
Bangkok Marriott Marquis Queen's Park's home delivery and takeaway service are available daily from 11am-8pm. Orders can be placed at the restaurants' Line accounts: @GojiKitchenBar, @SiamTeaRoom, @AkiraBackBKK and @Pagoda or via the hotel's F&B reservations at 02-059-5999. You can also order through third-party food delivery applications such as Robinhood, Foodpanda and Grab Food.
