Hello everyone,
Caroline Oldham
So Thailand has been amazing some many fabulous memories most of all getting engaged, I can't stop looking at my ring and doing dramatic hand movements. We are currently in Dubai, my boyfriend is half Middle Eastern and I used to live in Dubai for 5 years so it is nice to go back and catch up with friends, which I have been doing most of the week. Dubai is a great place and has changed so much since I lived here which has only been 2 years but it seems to change by the day. I shall be sharing my dining experiences from here next week with you.
We have just landed back in the UK and it was nice to land back to great weather even at 8pm it was dry and not too cold so that was really lovely.
Restaurant Hangout's of the Week
So I wanted to take you back to the food in Thailand, we had the most wonderful experience with my gluten free and dairy free diet. The staff are so accommodating in Thailand and nothing is ever too much trouble. We stayed at the Banyan Tree in Koh Samui, breakfast was wonderful a large selected of fruits, rice pudding dishes lashed in coconut milk and they also made me gluten free pancakes most mornings.
We ate such big breakfasts that we skipped lunch every day and headed straight to dinner. Dinner we ate at the resort a few times, Saffron their Thai restaurant was amazing, everything was full of flavour and so delicious, we also ate on the beach for the night of the engagement which was delicious we had steak and lobster along with some wonderful salads and vegetable dishes.
One evening we ate at Tree Tops in Anantara, a restaurant recommended to us by some friends, you dine in small coves within the tree tops, you can choose your own music and watch the wonderful views while you eat. They were excellent again with my food and cooked everything especially but unlike a lot of UK restaurants they still incorporated strong flavours. I had snow fish which was a lovely meaty fish in a coconut milk and white wine broth with fondant potatoes and artichoke hearts.
My fiancé had slow pulled rib beef with truffle mash and vegetables. They like to give you palate fresheners between each course which is really nice usually a mango or pineapple sorbet of some kind. The lovely unique thing about the Tree Tops was that they had a 'salt guru' so with each dish they would let you smell and recommend salts for your food, this would be anything from garlic and rosemary to honey flavoured salts, it was wonderful to try the different tastes with our food.
We also dined at the Six Sense's, it was a hotel we also looked at staying at however we decided against it. We were told their 'Dining on the Rocks' restaurant was really good, so good that people with private jets fly in just to eat here. However, our experience with this restaurant was not great, we arrived and the staff are not very welcoming, we were driven down to the restaurant, no one was there to greet us, then when we did find a member of staff she got herself in a bit of a flap, we were told the restaurant was smart/casual, however people were turning up in their beach clothes allowed to sit and eat, which when you are paying a minimum of £60 per head with no alcohol you expect some guidelines to be enforced.
Our hotel had called them on two occasions to check all the dietary requirements were in place, however, none of these had been picked up so all my food came laced with gluten, good job I spotted it! The other thing was they let me order anything and then instead of saying that it wouldn't be suitable as they would have to remove ingredients they just served me a half built dish with none of the main ingredients in it. The real disappointment was the main course, we ordered a steak, it was so badly presented and the quality of meat for the price was just not acceptable so we spoke to the staff manager on duty who was really helpful and agreed that we would not have to pay for our meal so we left. Maybe we just had a bad experience but I cannot imagine flying a private jet just to dine at this restaurant.
Keeping in with the Thai style food I am going to share this really light pudding recipe of coconut lime jelly with mango coulis. It is fresh on the palate and resembles the flavours from Thailand which we experienced. http://blog.biteappy.com/blog/coconut-lime-jelly/
Tagged in Caroline Oldham