Tan does Tokiya - and does it well

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Tokiya is on the second floor of Siam Discovery and is open daily from 10am to 9pm. Make plans at (02) 658 0015 or www.Tokiya.co.th.
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Business tycoon Tan Passakornnatee opened the six-restaurant Ramen Champion complex on Soi Thonglor late last year and he still isn’t satisfied. Now there’s Tokiya, which serves set courses of Asian fusion food.

It’s on the second floor of Siam Discovery, clad in the purple of lavender – Tan’s favourite flower. If you still can’t spot it, look for the big Tan figuring standing outside the door.

He’s going for the proper-sit-down-dinner feel of a hotel with this relaxing restaurant that boasts prices affordable enough for the younger crowd. There are 190 seats, soft and warm lighting and a well-trained staff.

For Bt499 you can have an eight-course Asian Fusion Steak set, each component beautifully presented Western style. You really need upwards of two hours to get through it, but if it’s supposed to be a business lunch, ask the staff to give you the under-an-hour treatment.

The banquet begins with pan-fried eringi in an herb sauce, sprinkled with Japanese pepper, and either a salad of fleshy beef tomato stuffed with fish, shrimp roe and shredded onion, or a cocktail salad of chilled Japanese melon, green apple and cantaloupe with passion-fruit dressing.

Other options are a smoked-duck salad with pomelo and sesame dressing and a mixed salad with shrimp with Thousand Islands dressing.

Your soup can be spicy hot, either tom khlong or a mix of smoked-dried fish with tamarind and onion. Or you can go for the miso cream soup filled with soft fish fillets and steamed egg. The lobster bisque is also good, as is the Tokiya beef soup, with the meat braised for eight tenderising hours.

Get your rice ration in either fried rice balls or aromatic rice.

The former uses steamed rice fried with minced pork and dried shrimp and a breadcrumb coating. The rice is purple, like the walls, thanks to the juice of red cabbage, and it’s topped with wasabi.

I prefer the aromatic rice served in a small clay pot. It’s steamed with wakame and clam soup to lend a seafood taste and then cooked with dried seaweed, tiny crispy fish and clams.

Have some refreshing mulberry-vinegar juice and you’re ready for the main course – beef, pork, lamb, chicken and fish, about 240 grams apiece.

The “oyster blade steak” of Australian chuck beef is marinated with herbs, grilled and sprinkled with Japanese pepper and garlic powder.

“We have a vacuum machine that soaks the beef in the marinade and tenderise the flesh quickly,” says chef Wason Sanitnarathorn. “Eighty grams of chuck beef takes only about 15 minutes to get fully marinated and juicy.”

The BBQ steak comes on skewers with grilled vegetables. You also have to choose among Kurobuta steak, roast lamb chops, steamed rose dory with lemon-cream sauce, fish fillet with Italian cheese and grilled chicken steak. If you can’t make up your mind, get a combination – fish filet with either the oyster blade steak or the grilled chicken.

Next: steak sauce. Miso, pepper, tomato, red wine or Isaan-style jaew dip? The chef recommends miso for the chicken, tomato for the fish and pepper or red wine for the pork and beef.

Don’t even think about being too full for dessert. More choices: milk panna cotta topped with red beans and green-tea sauce, mixed berries jelly, gelato cheesecake or the Taro Dome, with its warm red sticky-rice soup topped with mashed taro?

And still more: Hot and iced green tea is free, but there’s also hot and iced coffee, hot honey-citron tea and iced strawberry, kiwi or blue-lemon soda. These are Bt30 per can. Heineken and Asahi beer is Bt90 a bottle.

Children age 12 and younger can get a six-course set for Bt399 – no eringi appetiser or salad for them, then!