Can you make fine dining affordable?

How to make fine dining affordable

There are a few restaurants in Bangkok where most people avoid, because they have read the reviews and the food sounds amazing, and well like my friend my financial advisor tells me; the day you have made it, is the day you can visit a restaurant and not have to look down the right hand side of the page (Where the prices are).

Some restaurants also ‘scream expensive by their décor and presentation. So how do you become unpretentious and deliver food in a great environment that the elite would consider most agreeable, yet keep the price within the range of a part time student at Seven Eleven’s salary level?

A few smart restaurateurs have found a way to deliver top quality dishes at prices that would make an English teacher salver and consider stepping inside.

One way is using a new technique using ‘Sous Vide’ a way to combine the technical and modernist aspect of molecular cooking. Molecular Gastronomy blends physics and chemistry to transform the tastes and textures of food.  The consequences are quite amazing; unique and innovative dishes emerge. The term Molecular Gastronomy is commonly used to describe a style of cuisine in which chefs explore culinary possibilities by utilising tools from the science lab and ingredients from the menu.  Formally, the term molecular gastronomy was often left to science students who wanted to break down the elements of food for research purposes and school projects, but imaginative chefs seized upon the idea and started playing so as to develop the social, artistic and technical components of culinary and gastronomic phenomena to present to paying customers.

Combine molecular with traditional, slow cooking of vacuumed meats in slow ovens and well trained chefs who know how not to ‘experiment’ to deeply with a piece of chicken so it becomes a ‘speck of Chicken’ it’s about combining scientific knowledge and cooking experience with the basics of sauces and ‘when to add the sauces’ to create an affordable fine dining experience for all.

Using these methods you can actually prepare a great well-presented dish that would not look out of place in a top Michelin star restaurant, yet when you know what you are doing you can offer these dishes at a price even a perennial Bangkok Protester would smile about.

Some people are artists and can find a way to present food in a style that it very affordable, modern but tastes fresh and homemade as well as create an environment that combines ancient and mystical yet cutting edge, and has all the modernist comforts  at the same time, and this oxymoron of flavours runs through Bath restaurant Bangkok, the bricks on the very walls have been exported from an ancient area of Ayutthaya in Thailand and the restaurant water features provide a chic Feng Shui experience, yet the music and ambience is very much for a modern soul/jazz disciple.

This is Bath restaurant’s unique selling point for any restaurant in Bangkok. For around THB 2,000 you can have a wonderful experience that would cost you around THB 5,000 is some of the more established haunts of the city