Two of Thailand’s top chefs give us their two cents on Bangkok’s dining scene

Chefs Duangporn “Bo” Songvisava and Dylan Jones are two of Thai cuisine’s great modern exponents. The timeless flavors of traditional ingredients are taken to new heights at their eponymous restaurant, Bo.lan, tucked away in a green oasis in the middle of Bangkok.
Kurt Ganapathy caught up with the couple in the lead up to <a href="http://sg.asia-city.com/events/news/5-reasons-look-forward-chang-sensory… target="_blank">Chang Sensory Trails 2017</a> to talk about their favorite places in the city, hear their thoughts about the upcoming Bangkok Michelin Guide and find out if the supposed Bangkok street food “ban” is anything to worry about.
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Dylan, how did you get your start in Thai cuisine?
Dylan: I decided after I finished my apprenticeship that I really wanted to travel, so I went through a bunch of London restaurants and applied for jobs. As it happened, Nahm was the first one that got back to me. I expected to do six months at Nahm—do Thai food for six months, learn it, travel around Europe like all the other Australian backpackers, come back, do another cuisine for six months and repeat that as many times as I could. But after working at Nahm, I just fell in love with the food completely and utterly. I often say that I didn’t really choose Thai food; it chose me. I was just blown away by the techniques, the flavors and the different ingredients.
And where do you go when you feel like dining out?
Dylan: If it’s Thai, we’ll probably go to Nahm. Bo: Or Bangkok Bold, but go for the chef’s table.
Dylan: If it’s a more modern sort of Thai cuisine, then probably the new restaurant Gaa that was just opened by the old Gaggan sous chef. It’s fantastic. For more casual Thai eats—Soul Food. For pizza you can’t go past Peppina really.
Bo: There’s a Vietnamese place that’s really good, Tonkin Annam.
Dylan: It’s actually in the Old City, right near our other restaurant (Err Urban Rustic Thai), so when we’re over there and don’t want to eat our Thai food, we go to their restaurant.
Bo: For Chinese, we always love Fei Ya at Renaissance Bangkok.
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If you could recommend a couple of daytrip destinations off the beaten trail but close to Bangkok, what would they be?
Bo: Amphawa is close enough, it’s just an hour and a bit away. The floating market there, in the evening on Friday or Saturday; that’s good.
Dylan: The Maeklong Railway Market is fantastic, but it’s full of tourists now.
We’ve all heard reports about the Thai government’s desire to “clean up” Bangkok’s streets and how this might affect street food stalls. What are your thoughts?
Dylan: I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. I feel that street food has been declining in quality for the last five or six years anyway, if not longer, and if they can do something to curb that decline, make a better life for people selling street food and improve the quality of ingredients, then sure, it’s got to be a good thing.
Bo: It will lose its charm for sure. Running it this way doesn’t mean that food hygiene will become better anyway. An example of “cleaning up” is the Flower Market (Pak Khlong Talat). The Flower Market has lost its charm altogether. The traffic used to be so bad because people would park everywhere and the stalls would even come out on one length of the street, but it was bustling. Now it’s just really stale.
Dylan: If they clean it up too much, it’ll end up like Singapore! But like all things that happen in Bangkok, they’ve already done a major backflip on it. They’re not going to stop street food—they’re going to clean it up a little bit and in certain areas they’ll restrict it to improve access to the pavements—but places like Yaowarat, there’s no way they’re going to get rid of that! I mean, the public outcry; the tourism authority would ask them what the hell they were doing because it’s been their marketing campaign for the last six years.
Bo: Or Khao Yai—they have wineries, an outlet mall; there’s a couple of petting zoos out there.
Dylan: The kids love feeding the lambs! There are a couple of golf courses too, if you want to do that. And there are great local Thai restaurants.
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What are your thoughts on the Michelin Guide coming to Bangkok?
Dylan: For Thailand and Bangkok, it’s a good thing; it’s going to bring more attention to the area and the restaurants here. But my major concern is whether or not Michelin can do it in a way where they hold on to their integrity. So far in Asia, apart from maybe Japan, they haven’t really upheld what my idea of Michelin is. And while there are some fantastic one-Michelin-star restaurants in Singapore, there are also restaurants that I wouldn’t consider, myself, to be Michelin-star restaurants.
I know they say that Michelin stars are just about the food, but show me a one-star restaurant anywhere in Europe that has similar settings and decor to some of the places they’ve given stars to in Singapore or Hong Kong. I know they’re trying to do it to stay relevant, but maybe they can do it in a different way by having a separate section for street food or hawker centers and places like that. Coming to Bangkok, I sort of question how they can actually have an understanding of Thai cuisine to be able to rate it and give it a star or two or three.