By Cole Pennington
Correspondent

BANGKOK — Last July Jess Barnes spent his nights beside Blair Mathieson (formerly of Quince) in the small kitchen at Maggie Choo’s churning out baos, dumplings, and noodles.

Their Chinese comfort food was the kind that’s preemptively consumed before a long night at the neighboring club swaying back and forth to soulful jazz tunes and watching the lounging Shanghai-styled pretties become prettier with every cocktail.  It’s not the cheap and greasy stuff, but the feel-good kind of Asian street food that’s inventive and approachable, albeit trendy.

With a sterling reputation built on markets and pop-ups, you may have enjoyed one of Barnes’  universally lauded baos before. Even the New York Times has given them praise.

A bao at Maggie Choo's, prepared by Jess Barnes

Photo: @jessbarnesbkk / Instagram

The Maggie Choo’s pop-up was an enormous success. The young chef was still running his mainstay joint, Opposite Mess Hall for another two months before closing it to open what would become Daisy Matthews.

But as the Bangkok dining scene goes, Daisy Matthews never opened.

Jesse Barnes was back where he started, less a restaurant.

But as things fell apart with the Silom venture, they came together in another form: A semi-permanent establishment at Maggie Choo’s, a grown-up version of Big Trouble in Little China.

“We’re not purposely trying to fit into the 1930s Shanghai concept, but in a way, we do anyway.” Jess says. When he first occupied the space and started designing the menu he leaned towards tried and true Opposite Mess Hall favorites. Then he came to realize that diners weren’t looking for the same thing as at Opposite.

“We’re a place to eat that’s attached to a club. We’re not a restaurant.’ says Jess. The plates are shareable, and the portions are sized for diners to order a few to snack on.

Jess has moved away from the Big Trouble model that emulated the immigrant-driven Chinese food made famous by places like Mission Street Chinese and Momofuku.

Exotic meat

The menu isn’t without a dish doused in sweet and sour sauce, but this time around the meat in question isn’t chicken, it’s rabbit.

“Several years ago I put rabbit on the menu and immediately took it off. The Thai demographic didn’t get it.” But now it seems like rabbit is an easy sell – especially when it’s slathered in zesty orange glaze. Jess says “the middle class is traveling more, becoming more exposed to different culinary traditions. People are more open to try new things.” In other words, in 2016 putting rabbit on the menu is less risky.

“It’s quite popular now” the chef says.

Buttermilk fried rabbit. Photo: @jessbarnesbkk / Instagram

What’s absent is a menu heavy on what Jess calls “Dude Food” that was prevalent in 2013. Instead diners are treated to interpretations of Thai-chinese dishes that borrow heavily from multiple disciplines. The mushroom fried rice gets a heady dose of truffle oil while also incorporating rat ear fungus: a cloudy, spongy fungus that lends well to adding interesting and unexpected texture to an otherwise predictable dish.

truffle and mushroom fried rice. Photo: @jessbarnesbkk / Instagram

PHUKET — Two foreign women were fined 500 baht each on charges of obscenity charge and taught a lesson about Thai culture by police as their topless drive clip rocked the internet on Sunday.

The video, posted by Facebook user,Thawatchai Reemnok, on Saturday showed two foreign women leaning out of the windows of an SUV. The pair threw water from a plastic water over their heads, while dancing topless and leaning dangerously out of a car, in Phuket’s Patong district.

“I saw it with my eyes last night at Patong around 9pm during a traffic jam” wrote Thawatchai Reemnok.

After tracking the registration of the license plate seen in the clip, police were able to arrest a 20-year-old American,  Adrianna Martin, and a 25-year-old Austrian, Camille Prymann.

Both confessed to being in the viral video and the car belonged to the villa where they were staying. They were fined 500 baht each for indecent public exposure and were given a lesson about how to behave in Thailand by the police

“There are so many free boobs in Bangkok, why go to Hooters?” shouted a man in a thick German accent. Another interjected, “Hooters is supposed to have, well…Hooters! I just can’t see this succeeding here.” Finally a third guest came to a conclusion, “It just might work if the girls can be bought, but that completely changes the business model.”

This is the sort of discussion I heard at Frying Pan Canvas 1.0.

Frying Pan Canvas is a new pop-up dinner series put on by Jess Barnes of Opposite Mess Hall fame, and Justin Dunne, the man behind Evolution48, a Bangkok F&B consulting firm. The maiden dinner took place at Justin’s private residence, but future dinners will be held at secret locations. Jess cooks up the food while Justin supplies diners with proper social lubrication.

And everyone at the dinner was very well lubricated.

Justin Dunne mixing cocktails

The Frying Pan formula is predictable: four courses, four cocktails. It’s the social aspect of the dinner that makes it remarkable. With each course guests switch seats, sit with strangers, and discuss a new topic related to the F&B industry in Bangkok. Vagaries of a slowing economy and the city’s obsession with food trucks were among the topics explored at this dinner. The only rule is that politics stay out of the discussion. Boobs, when discussing Nana’s newest “family restaurant” are fair game, though.

My seat didn’t come free, in fact a seat didn’t even come at all. In order to attend, I had to work in the kitchen doing prep work to earn a spot, and a spot meant standing around a residential kitchen. Perhaps the best vantage point to observe a crowd of nearly twenty diners, mostly from the hospitality industry, get drunk and pontificate about Bangkok’s proliferating food scene.

The discussion, comical most of the time, painted an insightful picture of what industry professionals are thinking about Bangkok’s exploding restaurant market. One diner, Daniel Fraser of Smiling Albino, noted that he had just taken out a New York Times food writer who was in town to do a story on how Bangkok is rising to the status of a global culinary capital.

The first course, lardo wrapped around strawberry enveloped by toasted nori, was just as juicy as the discussion that ensued.

 Lardo rolls with Chiang Mai strawberries and toasted nori

You’re opening a burger joint in Bangkok. Where do you put it?

Immediately the crowd started wondering if Bangkok even needed another gourmet burger. “Maybe a junk food burger is better?” remarked a man saying that he’d put it on Wireless road to target the grease-loving Americans.

Another gentleman saw Saphan Taksin as a future culinary hot spot. “You have commuters, you have tourists.” He remarked that a high-end gourmet burger restaurant might work there as tourists open their wallets easily.

Jess Barnes doesn’t see it that way, “The next 24 months aren’t looking bright”, he opined. “Prices will need to come down when people are tighter with their spending.” From his experience at markets and pop-ups all over town, he’s learned that 200 baht is the point where people start to become discretionary with their spending habits. Food under 200 baht is easier to sell.

Speculation about tough times looming in the near future set the next topic of discussion up naturally:

We know the economy is slowing down. Why are there so many restaurants opening up? How does that math work?

The short answer is, it doesn’t, but it also might not matter. Jess explained that restaurants have become the new accessory of the Bangkok elite. “A lot of places that are opening up don’t need to succeed financially to stay open.” he says. He also noted that “Bangkok is probably the easiest place in the world to open up a restaurant. It doesn't take a lot of money and things can move quickly.” He notes that the Thai tradition of suppliers giving restaurants roughly 15 days to pay for goods keeps business from racking up huge debts and then failing massively.

To end on a light note, Justin posed the question of whether or not the recent opening of Hooters was a good thing for Bangkok. The room agreed–it’s just not risque enough to catch anyone’s attention– and the food probably isn’t the main draw either. In other words, it’s just not exciting enough.

Increasing competition, tightened spending, and more media global attention than ever before are lighting up the restaurant scene, but everyone at the dinner agreed: 2016 is going to be a pivotal year for the food and beverage industry in Bangkok.

To reach us about this article or another matter, please contact us by e-mail at: [email protected].

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BANGKOK — Each New Year comes with new expectations, and Bangkok always amazes us in some way. A lot of change happened during 2015 and, little by little, the City of Angels was gradually transformed.

What will Bangkok look like in 2016? How will the city change? We asked some experts to contribute their thoughts, to help us better imagine how our beloved city will alter in the next twelve months.

The purple line first test run on Dec.14, 2015 before it officially begins operating in August, 2016. Photo: BMCL / Facebook

More options, less cards, same price

When the Mangmoom (spider) card comes into effect in August, passengers can finally carry only one integrated piece of plastic for both the BTS and MRT.

With the Purple Line finally added to the minimal skytrain network in the same month, suburban Bangkok and Nonthaburi will finally gain the direct access to the heart of the city (though you still have to depend on the bus to travel from Tao Poon to Bang Sue station because they will not be physically linked yet by then).

With four more routes of mass rapid transit due to come to auction, Bangkokians can hope for the day that public transport networks will eventually cover every corner of the city.

With Khlong Lat Phrao finally being cleared to pave the way for an alternative transport through canal, travel could become faster and cheaper.

The achitect and writer of “Bangkok: Handmade Transit”, Yanyong Boon-Long, once said the idea of a hybrid network connecting the BTS and MRT with hundreds of canals, was the most interesting idea that City Hall has come up with in 20 years and in 2016, he still insisted the same thing.

“In the age of Rama V, people in Bangkok could use canals to access more parts of the city than what we can access by BTS nowadays. It’s abandoned infrastructure.”

But does it also mean we are going to have better transportation in 2016, or even in the ensuing years? An architect known for his keenness to develop better transportation for the metropolis, said the biggest issue remains the same, the ticket price.

“Most people who use the skytrain are tourists,” said Yanyong Boon-Long. “The big question is how to make it more accessible.”

For him, lowering the ticket price is not the best solution. “The price can remain the same, but wages have to be increased.”

Khlong Ong Ang on Nov.16 after the 28-day demolition of the historic Saphan Lek market.

The cleanup continues  

If there is one word that best described Bangkok in 2015, it definitely goes to “reorganization.”

The largest grey-black market Khlong Thom, the oldest toy and electronics market Saphan Lek, landmark amulet market, Tha Prachan, to name a few, were among the areas cleared up by City Hall during the past year responding to junta policy to reclaim public space.

Some markets are gone forever and some stayed but without small stalls spilling out onto the nearby sidewalks. The campaign has drawn praise from those who are glad to see the law implemented and criticism from those who think it has also swept the life away from the city.

Whatever side you take, it continues. The man behind the crackdown, Maj. Gen. Wichai Sangprapai, said the next targets of 2016 start with Pak Khlong Flower Market and Bang Lamphu and will then continue to the well-known shopping zone, Pratunam.

An advisor to the Bangkok Governor said he even planned to reorganize areas on the Thonburi side of the city, citing Ban Kae market as an example.

As Thailand has just entered the ASEAN Community, Maj. Gen. Wichai said it was even more important to organize the capital city.

“We definetely need to keep going,” he said. “More than 90 percent of people support this policy.”

“Some said we oppress the poor, but why can’t they see that it’s all illegal.”

A coffee shop with a retro interior in Bangkok old town offers old-fashioned breakfast at high prices. Photo: Matichon TV

Bangkok is dead?

In 2015, we found ourselves headed to Chinatown area at night when we wanted to drink at a new hip bar, while on our way back from Khaosan Road, we saw a number of old buildings transformed into stylish, yet old-fashioned looking hostels, especially on Charoen Krung Rd. Apparently, cultural tourism brought life back to Bangkok’s old town.

But does that also mean life and money brought back for local residents? A researcher who works closely with local community argued it was not the case.

“I dare to say Bangkok is dead, it is actually been dead already for a long time ago,” said Walailak Songsiri from the Lek-Prapai Viriyahpant Foundation. “Without humans, it cannot be a city.”

With the reorganization idea, which she claims forces poorer people to abandon the town, plus the unorganized policy of urban planning that makes the area unaffordable for locals, Wilailak said “Next year, we will see a lot more redevelopment and fewer people.”

Despite the effort of young entrepreneurs to arrange a local integrated tour, Walailak asked “Do you actually have real human life for them to see or are you just lying to yourself?”

When pricey fake vintage style breakfasts can be found in buildings that force out restaurants with 30 years of history, due to high rents, Walailak seems unwilling to hope for a better future.

“Where are the roots of all those coffee shops? Now we have become a city without roots and experience to contribute [to the people].”

To reach us about this article or another matter, please contact us by e-mail at: [email protected].