The name Supaksorn "Ice" Jongsiri has long been associated with Baan Ice, the southern Thai restaurant known for its traditional family recipes. This changed last year. Now chef Ice is known as the man behind Michelin-starred Sorn, one of Bangkok's most exclusive new restaurants. Sorn has a four-month waiting list. And for good reason.
Sorn Fine Southern Cuisine. Sofie Lisby
Chef Ice created Sorn along with chef Yodkwan U-Pumpruk and three other chefs from Baan Ice. All are natives of southern Thailand, and have been developing their own masterpieces for the last four years.
Sorn's 24-course menu (2,900 baht or 3,600 baht for wine pairing) uses southern ingredients and traditional cooking techniques. The menu is divided into nine sections, starting off with two amuse bouche. The first is young mangosteen with crispy krill, crispy shallot and coconut plum sugar. The krill is sourced fresh, fried crisp and sprinkled atop the mangosteen with coconut sugar, crispy shallots, chillies and mint. Delightful. The second is a cashew nut relish, using cashews sourced from Ranong. Sorn makes its own cashew butter and chilli paste, which are served on a cucumber slice with a roasted cashew nut.
The next section -- the "prelude" -- is an assortment of eight one-bite appetisers, showcasing the wonders of the sea. First is sand mole crab served with seaweed powder, crispy pickled garlic and turmeric. The feather seaweed powder, dried on the roof of the restaurant, is procured from Assoc Prof Mantana in Krabi, who researches seaweed. It's natural umami taste enhances the flavour of Sorn's dishes. It tastes like crab popcorn -- I couldn't get enough.
Sorn Fine Southern Cuisine. Nianne-Lynn Hendricks
The "2C lobster" is served with mixed Thai herbs and jampuling, a wild fruit from Songkhla. The lobster is served sashimi-style. To retain the texture, it is freeze-blasted to 2C, the temperature at which the meat is most flavoursome. The dish is best washed down with sake.
The grouper with cashew nuts, fish sauce and banana flower is an homage to Thai fishermen; the plate mimics the sea, while the banana flower mimics a boat. "Fishermen make a soup out of squid ink, palm sugar, lemongrass and shallots," said chef Ice. "[They] supply us with the fish and squid so I wanted to showcase how fresh and good the seafood is in Thailand." Which takes us to the next dish, tu-pa-su-tong -- squid served with squid ink and grilled shallots. A feast for the eyes and palate.
Until this point, the lobster was my favourite. Then came the "gems on crab stick". This is blue swimmer crab, crab roe and yellow chilli. The crab and roe are cooked at different temperatures and put together with yellow chilli paste, following a Baan Ice recipe. It's a fiery dish and your mouth will feel the heat. But that won't last long.
"Coco on coconut" takes all the good things from the coconut and serves it with southern plants, dried squid and shrimp. Mutant coconut, which occurs naturally in the endosperm of a coconut, and has soft, jellylike flesh, is served in hot coconut soup. I didn't expect the burning hot soup to reduce the heat in my mouth from the crab, but boy, was I wrong. By the last drop, my palate had been soothed. "Southern food doesn't have to be spicy," chef Ice explained.
The grilled southern chicken uses free-range poultry and is marinated with a sweet chilli paste made with dates. The skewered meat arrives on a grill over a small charcoal clay pot. Not bad, but after the dishes it followed, it failed to impress. The prelude ended with a potent roti crab curry, served according the chef's preference.
Chef Supaksorn 'Ice' Jongsiri. Sofie Lisby
The vegetables showcase wild herbs from the South in the form of khao yam or rice salad. The "forest meets the sea" is a photogenic mix of southern herbs, turmeric rice and morinda rice with a fish innards dressing indigenous to Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat. The dish is inspired by Baan Ice, but Sorn uses rice crispies. The story goes that turmeric and morinda were mixed with rice by the king's herbalist to create a more balanced meal. It acts as a sort of digestive before the main course.
The main course is served to be shared. Southern family-style meals must include vegetables, an egg dish, a curry, a stir fry, a soup and condiments. The rice (from Nakhon Si Thammarat) is cooked in a clay pot over charcoal using Ranong mineral water. The curry is a classic southern fresh yellow curry with thick slices of bagrid catfish, salacca and fish roe. The stir fry is sataw (stink beans) with house-made fermented sauce from abalone, mantis shrimp and sea crab, served with sea conch. (The sauce is fermented in batches. This one was reaching low levels, so the next batch may have a different flavour.)
Grilled crispy pork is marinated in southern chilli paste, while the pimp chilli paste is fragrant water bug grilled in a banana leaf served with a side of stink beans. Nakhon Si Thammarat pumpkin is served with free-range organic egg and lobster or pork. Taro comes in a light soup with crab stock and cabbage. It doesn't end there; condiments include pork rind, sweet pork (my favourite), sweet shrimp, sun-dried fish and chilli with fish sauce. Then we have coconut milk clay pot cooked rice with beef rind and beef curry -- a kind of Thai nasi lemak. A main course not for the faint-hearted.
To cleanse the palate, we get torch ginger sorbet. Torch ginger, native to the South, seems to be the new "it" ingredient in Bangkok. As chef Ice says: "In the South, when we eat stink bean stir fry we eat the torch ginger leaves, which helps with the smell."
A choice of three desserts includes "sweet until midnight": soy milk ice cream and fried dough. The milk is made fresh daily by chef Ice's mother. Keeping with southern tradition, it is served with fried dough or pa tong kho and drizzled with palm sugar syrup. The natural tapioca boiled in coconut water has longan ice, longan jam, frozen coconut milk and grilled coconut. However, my favourite of the three was the mutant coconut, grilled tableside and served with coconut sugar ice cream.
Fruit signals the end of a meal in the South. On this occasion, Sorn serves watermelon in a can. Next season, expect oranges, as this dish changes monthly. The only end a meal like this deserves is southern-style petite four. The khanom lah (sweet goodbye) is handmade by one of the chef's mothers, with dough fermented in honey for a week and cooked in a condensed milk can. It is served with southern-style Ceylon tea or Kopi.
The Forest Meets The Sea. Nianne-Lynn Hendricks
Cashew nut relish and butter wrapped in cucumber. Sofie Lisby
Grouper with cashew nuts, fish sauce and banana flower. Nianne-Lynn Hendricks
Sand mole crab. Sofie Lisby
The Thai way of sharing. Sofie Lisby
