Taya Starling

With new malls popping up left and right in Bangkok, new restaurants, cafes, & treat shops are popping up too.  Central World recently expanded adding a whole new section of fine dining & shopping options in “Groove”.  I’ve been steady working my way through each eatery, most recently with Open Kitchen.

Groove hadn’t officially opened during the past 2 months of my dining explorations so when we hit up Open Kitchen for lunch we were privy to their Soft Opening Menu which had a nice selection of Western & Thai food options.  Since I was still avoiding spicy foods with my post surgery, appendix-less abdomen, I turned a blind eye to the Thai dishes and focused in on the 2 lengthy columns of Western food.

We started with the Sunny Fries: French fries tossed with thick chunky cut fried bacon and topped with a fried egg and creamy chili sauce.  An amazing combination though I think most people would have preferred a runnier egg yolk- seeing as i’m not a fan of egg yolk it didn’t make much of a difference to me either way.

Then we tried to balance out the less than healthy option with some salad…

The Scallop Hash Salad is almost healthy minus the fried hash browns on top: Arugula tossed with parmesan cheese, macadamia nuts, grape tomato, and a balsamic vinaigrette topped with slabs of fried hash browns that look a lot like the kind you can get frozen at the grocery store- I would have preferred the shredded potato homemade style hash browns that really prove they’re made in the open kitchen so at least I’m sure that they’re fresh and not loaded with preservatives. The salad itself was good though, I love arugula and scallops and the crispy hash brown is a nice compliment to the freshness of everything else.

Next came the Mac’n’Cheese I had heard so much about (I can’t resist ordering mac’n’cheese – i mean two of my favorite things basically equals one amazing dish in my book).  The Macaroni & Cheese Gratin: the description said “Elbow pasta with aged cheddar cheese and a bread crumb topping” but it was actually rigatoni pasta with a nice creamy seasoned cheddar and a perfectly crispy bread crumb topping.  Mac’n’Cheese gets me every time.

Our final order (Sarah & I shared all four dishes plus we had Buddah & his girl digging in to help haha don’t worry I didn’t eat all this on my own!) was the Prime Tenderloin Open Sandwich: Australian beef tenderloin cooked medium with foie gras and fries.  This came out completely not as expected.  The tenderloin was terrific (I didn’t eat much since I’m still trying to lay low on red meat) nice and medium with a buttery rosemary tenderness, but i didn’t eat the tiny round of toast it came on.  Basically I dissected the sandwich and ate the frisee salad (with balsamic dressing) topping on its own which is how we discovered the tiny piece of foie gras hidden underneath it- I told Sarah to eat it since cutting it in half would have been a bit ridiculous.  Oh and the fries were more like thin shredded potato chips- yummy yummy.

Buddah got the buger which he said was good but the bread fell apart too easily.  The waiter overheard and told the owner/ manager and they ended up giving us 50% off the whole meal which was more than generous and made us feel awful.  We really just love food so much that we get overly critical I think haha Then again that’s half the reason I eat.  Not to get critical but to really explore what I like and don’t like about food and taste and flavor combinations and texture and plating.  Can’t wait to open a restaurant/ cafe someday.  In the meantime, check out how cute they plated the fries with this tiny deep frying basket.

Next we moved on to dessert- yes, we saved room for dessert.  We started with the recommended Bread & Butter Pudding: Chocolate Chip bread & butter pudding with Madagascar vanilla custard.  I’m not much for bread pudding but this was actually really good.

Next came the Chocolate Mousse with Hazelnut Brittle & whipped cream- their whipped cream is amazing by the way, nothing kills a dessert more for me than awful whipped cream.  The mousse was nice and decadent with a crumbled hazelnut brittle topping which is so nice because not many people like to bite into a slab of brittle.

Lastly came the highly recommended churros: Churro with dulce de leche, roasted hazelnut, and vanilla ice cream.  They said it was one churro per order so we got two orders, naturally.  I recommend sharing one.  The churro is cut into pieces that you delightfully discover under a mound of whipped cream, chocolate sauce, dulce de leche, and hazelnuts.  The vanilla ice cream helps breakup the richness of it all.  I loved it, but could only have a few bites and was slightly disappointed to find that the churro wasn’t covered in sugar and cinnamon.  What’s a churro without sugar and cinnamon? A naked crispy churro.  Which in retrospect was probably for the best considering how sweet the entire thing was as is.

So there you have it ladies & gentlemen, OPEN KITCHEN which celebrated its grand opening along with the rest of Groove, Central World on July 3rd.  Can’t wait to go back to try the rest of their dishes.