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Rude Food by Vir Sanghvi: Cooking up a storm
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Fire food from Australia, fresh twists on Thai favs, chefs who stole the show – at the World Gourmet Festival, even Bangkok’s rains couldn’t dampen the excitement
It’s a strange thing for a journalist to say. But I am going to say it anyway: Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.
Last week, we were booked to go to Bangkok to attend the World Gourmet Festival, an annual event organised by the Anantara hotel group at the iconic Anantara Siam Hotel. The event always features top chefs from around the world, often with four-hand collaborations and opportunities to talk to the chefs.
A few days before we were due to depart, it rained for 48 hours non-stop in Bangkok. This is unusual because though Bangkok does get heavy rains in September, the rains don’t usually last for more than a couple of hours.
Unsurprisingly, this year’s rains caused a degree of chaos, and parts of suburban Bangkok were flooded. Central Bangkok was wet but not flooded and still functioned more or less normally. I have tremendous faith in the Thai capital’s ability to bounce back, so I knew that once the downpour stopped, things would soon return to normal. None of the papers seemed to agree with me.
Even after the waters receded, correspondents from the West, seeing an opportunity to get bylines from a country that hardly ever gets into their newspapers, kept the shock-horror stories coming. Bangkok had come to a standstill. The airports were flooded. People were getting around on boats etc.
I know how much the Western press loves a disaster-in-the-Third-World story, so I was sceptical. I called my friend of nearly two decades, Marion Walsh-Hedouin, who is a big wheel in the company that owns Anantara. Marion assured me that central Bangkok was fine and sent photos. I phoned Gaggan Anand, who said that while the low- lying suburbs had poor drainage, which meant that the water receded very slowly, this would not interfere with my trip.
Finally, I called Khun Patcharin who handles Indigo’s Bangkok operations. She explained that while the airport and the airport highway were unaffected, many airport employees lived in a suburb near the airport area, which had been flooded during the downpour. Consequently some loaders and ancillary staff had been unable/ unwilling to come to work. (Patcharin lived in the affected area, but she had worked hard every day to make sure Indigo flights were unaffected.)
The basic problem was with Thai Airways, an airline where staff morale is collapsing due to mismanagement. (Have you travelled Thai recently? Then you will know how deep the problem runs.) Thai employees had not turned up. Luggage was not being loaded on to the carousels, and flights were either delayed or cancelled. Other airlines were doing fine. (Thai sacked its CEO a few days later for incompetence.)
So, I decided we were travelling to Bangkok anyway. As we were going to be there for her birthday, my wife was anxious that I had made the wrong decision, but came along anyway.
In the event, the airport was more than easy to negotiate: Immigration machines have cut the queues to almost nothing. Luggage, which usually takes long to be delivered in Bangkok, reached the carousel even before we did and the roads we used were dry.
In the few days that we were there it rained twice, both times for just an hour, and we woke each morning to the sun glinting over our pool.
Obviously, most people had not been dissuaded by the gloom and doom reporting of the Western press, because my flight from Delhi was full and the Anantara Siam was packed out for the Gourmet Festival.
This had its drawbacks. The star of the festival was the great Julien Royer, whose brilliant Odette restaurant in Singapore has three Michelin stars. I had planned to take my wife to his dinner at the festival for her birthday, but such was the demand for Julien’s food that we could not get a table.
We went instead to one of Chalee Kader’s restaurants. Chalee was cooking at the festival, but I wanted to try one of his own new restaurants: Soma, rather than Wana Yook, his Michelin-starred place or his now globally famous 100 Mahaseth.
It was the right choice. Chalee compares Soma to The Bombay Canteen, but it is a little quieter and slightly more formal, while retaining the air of a neighbourhood restaurant. The food is excellent and Chalee gives all the credit to his kitchen team, hiding at the back when I took a group photo.
Having missed Julien, we were determined not to miss Dave Pynt of Burnt Ends. Dave’s food is one of a kind. He trained at the iconic Asador Etxebarri and understands the Australian barbecue tradition. But there is much more range in his food than say, in the cuisine of Lennox Hastie, another famous Australian chef with a similar background.
Dave does fire food (his Blackmore strip loin was historic) but manages to make the most complex dishes seem simple and inviting. He was at the World Gourmet Festival last year too and is now entirely at home in the Anantara kitchen.
The festival had many other stars, but the big surprise for me was Chumpol Jangprai, the celebrated Thai chef. I should have expected his food to be good (his restaurant R.HAAN has two Michelin stars) but because he is not one of the many Michelin-starred Thai chefs who visit India regularly, he is not top-of-the-mind for us. His Scallop in Tom Kha Cappuccino was particularly outstanding.
And finally, it was time to go. I left Bangkok overstuffed but relieved that I had believed my friends and not the newspapers.
From HT Brunch, October 10, 2026
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