Bangkok Glutton

A lot of people want success, but many struggle to define it. This is probably because the definitions of success should be as varied as people’s personalities, but the loudest people continue to insist on measuring it via concrete parameters like money, awards and/or Google alerts. By these measures, Kim Kardashian is successful. Donald Trump is successful. Harvey Weinstein is successful. But if I were to choose my own role model for success, I would choose Meg White.

I think Meg White is a great drummer. Or, I should say, as good as she could have been, under the circumstances. Jack White (he still uses her name) recently said that for all intents and purposes, he is the White Stripes. Technically, that may be true, but spiritually, it is not. Because Meg — perhaps even more than Jack — understood fully that the White Stripes were a showcase for Jack. She accepted her supporting player role with grace, and only asked to be respected by her partner. When that wasn’t enough, she chose to leave.

It was Meg who made Jack, leaving open the spaces that he could choose to noodle around in, the ominous silences that another, more insecure, less giving drummer might have been tempted to fill. And did Jack ever fill up space: not just physically, but onstage with his shrieking and soloing and unnecessary exhortations for Meg to “come on!” as if she was going anywhere; offstage with his motormouth interviews in which Meg seemed simply content to sit silently and just be. She — his first wife, his fake sister — was the best partner Jack could have ever had. Her generosity and, let’s face it, love for her ex-husband was what really drove that band.

And what did she get for her trouble? She was derided as a bad drummer (see: The Onion’s “Meg White Drum Solo Maintains Steady Beat for 23 Minutes”.) Her playing was described as “rickety” and “rudimentary” by professional music critics and “always behind” by fans who now can’t put their finger on why they don’t like solo Jack White as much. Hers was the apex of generosity from one person to another, playing the perpetually bumbling Hastings to Jack’s Poirot. Meg gave until she couldn’t give anymore, and then disappeared into Michigan with her riches, presumably to live a well-off, comfortable existence on her couch watching Netflix and ignoring Jack’s phone calls.

It would appear that Jay Fai would like to follow in Meg White’s footsteps. She won a Michelin Star last year, but that blessing seems to have been mixed (I think my favorite story on this is by my friend and fellow ASOIAF aficionado Oliver). Jay Fai had always had a steady clientele, but her relatively high prices kept her from being as packed as her neighbor, Thipsamai pad Thai. I’d heard that Michelin had transformed all of that, literally overnight. Since the last time I visited was the night before the Michelin awards were announced, I decided to go a few days ago to see if anything had truly changed.

The short answer: yes.

You must now put your name on a waiting list, but if you are organized enough (the wait is truly, excruciatingly long), you should call ahead, because they now take reservations.

There was no tax inspector sitting outside (how I would have loved to interview them) and the menu had not changed, but the outside tables were now filled with very patiently waiting diners, content to grab beers from the 7-11 across the street and wait it out until alrealdy-full tables finally finished their meals.

As for the food … well, the wait was long. And despite the partial barrier to her wok station that shielded her from the prying eyes of the street, people were still happy to treat her like a panda at a zoo, taking videos and photos next to her as she fired up omelet after omelet (for some reason, she’s now known as the “omelet lady”.) When our food came, we were happy to see it, and even better, her cooking appeared to not have changed in  quality. Granted, at 73, she is no longer at the apex of her wok-frying powers, but consider her something like 1990s-era Elton John, or The Who post-“Who Are You”, or The Clash after Mick Jones, or Coldplay after … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … uh …

… … … … … .. … … … …

Anyway, the point I was making was that I was a big cheerleader for Jay Fai, from the very beginning. I wanted her in every guide and to get all the recognition that I felt was her due. When that recognition did arrive, it did not seem to make her happy; in fact, it appeared to create hardships for her. This was not success by her parameters, but by other people’s. I recognize now that I wanted this recognition for her because I wanted to validate my own opinions and those of people like me. She herself could take it or leave it (but she could probably leave it).

I now hope for her to get her Meg White moment. I mean, come on, she’s not going to stop cooking, because she knows nothing else. But if her star were to fall by the wayside this year, it would not be the end of the line for her. She would be just as happy in her own spiritual Michigan, cooking up stir-fried crab in curry sauce (the superior choice to the omelet) for her regular customers and ceding the spotlight to someone else.

Monday, March 26

8:00 – At Don Muang airport. It is entirely too early and we have been here an hour already. But it’s worth it: for some reason, the Asia’s 50 Best people have invited us to Macau to attend the big ceremony on Tuesday at Wynn Palace Cotai. I am not being unnecessarily humble. Literally no one we have dealt with has heard of “Bangkok Glutton” before. But they already sent me the invite and can’t take it back. Sucks for them!

9:00 – We start our big foodie weekend with a double sausage McMuffin set (Karen) and double Filet-O-Fish (me). Karen gets McDonald’s coffee and instantly regrets it.

14.00 – We have arrived at the Wynn Palace, having taken a taxi for the entire 5 minutes it takes to get there from the airport. Already, people are extremely nice and efficient. Check-in service congratulates me on being ready with my registration number. I feel smart and special. They take us to our room, and it has a great big view of the airport that we just left, as well as a ginormous bathroom. Karen and I are both thrilled.

14.20 – We register at the media center, while a nice man named Bruno opens three bottles of water that Karen keeps rejecting because she thinks they were already opened before Bruno opened them. I (yet again) request an interview with Chef Bee Satongun of Paste (Asia’s Top 50 Female Chef of the Year), because I earlier received an email from Asia’s 50 Best PR rejecting my interview request, telling me that I can just reach out to her at the event (where 840 people will be). Why include her on the list of people to request interviews from then? This is just a way to tell me to fuck off, right? (“Haha,” says Karen. “The next time someone pisses me off, I can tell them to reach out to me at the event.”)

15.00 – Work worries aside, our stomachs beckon, because it’s been ages since we ate our McDonald’s breakfast.  With “Everybody Wang Chung Tonight” blaring in the background, we take a taxi to Fernando’s, which I love as a great example of the Portuguese-Chinese fusion they call “Macau cuisine”. We get almost everything that we’re supposed to, like the suckling pig, bacalao fritters, and clams, but forego the fried rice and the gorgeous-looking salad with thick, huge slices of tomato.

17.00 – We get back in time to get ready for dinner in two hours. We are absolutely zero percent hungry. But before we retire to our room, we take the free gondola that passes in front of the hotel complex and which offers a bird’s eye view of the property, including the preparations for tomorrow’s Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants party by the pool. Amped up by our gondola trip, I buy a pair of kitten heels from Gucci.

19.00 – Totally on time at SW Steakhouse, but we forgot our press passes, so the front desk is unsure of whether we are legitimate freeloaders or not. Once we get through (I am in the system as “Mr. Chawadee Nualkhair”), we get a nice table that for some reason seats us directly next to each other, with a view of the Chinese-panelled wall in front of us. We find out why exactly 30 minutes later, when the lights dim, the panels part, and we are treated to a mini-show featuring a giant gorilla figure and a banana. Karen thinks it has a very Disney feel. Every 30 minutes, a new mini-show comes on. My mom would love this.

SW (the initials of Wynn Resort founder Steve Wynn, who has since stepped down from the company) has smartly taken the decision of what to order out of our hands, and is providing us with a four-course menu complete with wine pairings. It’s great and smart, and the wines are fabulous — not a stretch considering the huge walk-in wine fridge, outfitted with 2000 bottles bearing 500 labels and maintained at the optimal temperature of 16 degrees Celsius (7-8 degrees for the champagne, stocked in mini-fridges within the fridge). Unfortunately, Karen and I are not hungry. Like, at all.

All the same, William, the restaurant’s general manager, comes up and gamely attempts to guide us through the menu, which includes a Tuscan kale salad (a product of Steve Wynn’s stint as a vegan, William tells us), a Maryland-style crab cake generously spiked with Old Bay Seasoning, and an American Wagyu-Angus sirloin from Idaho, cooked perfectly medium-rare and bearing the sort of char one would find on Texas-style barbecue. Both William and L.A.-born chef Burton Li tell us that they are spreading the gospel of American-style steak to the Chinese, and that the Chinese are gradually responding. With us, they are preaching to the choir.

Tuesday, March 27

7.34 – I wake up late, having expected to run first thing in the morning, but being thwarted by the very effective blackout drapes, which make you think it is perpetually 3 in the morning. I am supposed to do the Wynn Palace Property Tour at 10 in the morning, but Karen decides to do it on her own so that I can finally run — something I am desperate to do after the copious amounts of food and wine at Fernando’s and SW Steakhouse. Overeating is no walk in the park, yo.

8.30 – Before we leave, though, we have breakfast in our room: healthy egg white omelet with fruit (Karen) and hard-boiled eggs with bacon, sausage and croissants (moi). Not surprisingly, we are rapidly feeling stuffed again.

10.00 – I run, finally. A note on music at the gym: Alan Parsons Project and Air Supply are probably nice when it’s late at night and you are six years old and your dad is driving you home from a Chinese restaurant in Cleveland, but it does not get you very pumped up. Instead, I entertain myself with video that Karen has taken of a phoenix bursting out of a flower-decked egg. During the tour she learns that every single blossom on the premises is real, sprayed with a material that lets it last up to a year and a half (!)

11.30 – I am showered and sitting in front of my laptop in an empty room. Where TF is Karen?

11.45 – Karen arrives, having made friends with absolutely every single person on her property tour, including Aron, the tour guide and Karen’s new boyfriend.

12.15 – We go downstairs to what we think is our reservation at Mizumi, the Japanese outlet at the hotel. We learn — gradually, after much prompting, because the lovely receptionist is afraid to tell us we are wrong — that we are at the wrong Mizumi, and are supposed to take a 15-minute shuttle to Wynn Macau, where our reservation at the two Michelin-starred Mizumi awaits. Aron walks us to the shuttle to make sure we find it.

13.00 – We are really glad to have been ushered off the premises of our hotel and brought here. We are being treated to a very long and rambling sushi omakase course that includes fresh hairy crab, ungodly amounts of uni and fatty tuna belly, plus as much Blanc de Blancs and sake as we want. “Is that OK with you?” the waiter actually asks us. We laugh.

People use the word “decadent” frequently, but this is truly it, with all that that means: copious lashings of tuna, and uni on everything, even on fatty tuna, rolled in a buttery slice of hamachi, and in a hot clear soup with slices of abalone. We eat everything, obviously. Karen announces to our surprised sushi chef that she loves it here and will never leave.

15.00 – I have nothing to do, since my request for an interview with Chef Bee — including a last-ditch Instagram DM before bed last night — was rejected. Laden with alcohol and with an entire school of fish in my belly, I succumb to sleep.

17.45 – Crap. It’s time to get ready for the cocktail ceremony, which starts in 15 minutes.

18.00 – The cocktail party (and the post-ceremony party) is held poolside, which makes me wonder if they expect people to get sloshed enough to jump into the water. But with the Cotai skyline, such as it is, spread out in front of us, and the gondolas that whizz over our heads, the smiling waiters offering glasses of wine and canapés and the odd, pulsing club music, it really does feel … very nice. It’s a nice party. And of course, William is here, like the genie in “Aladdin”, showing Karen the sake bar and offering to fetch me a glass of wine despite the fact there are about 8,000 other people here. This man is really good at his job.

My dream of interviewing Chef Bee shattered, I do manage to buttonhole Chef Ton of Le Du at the bar, pestering him to answer my email by Friday. “Thank you,” he says, which I think is a classy way of saying “You can leave me alone now.” Later, Karen bumps into Chef Ian Kittichai and congratulates him on his excellent Instagram feed. He takes the compliment graciously, especially for a man in a crowded elevator. And that is the extent of our pleb-chef interaction for the evening. Hey, at least I got a pair of shoes out of this trip.

20.00 – We are gently encouraged to attend the ceremony by a young man bearing a mini-xylophone and innumerable food and drink waiters, who tell us they cannot serve us anymore. I manage to cajole someone into giving me a glass of red wine, which I suspect was taken off of a clean-up tray. I later regret it when someone makes me down the entire glass on the red carpet before being allowed into the ceremony room.

10.00 – Congratulations everyone! I am told that the ceremony was finished in record time. The merits of the restaurants themselves and the fairness of their rankings versus Michelin’s (and personally, the striking dearth of female chefs), well, that’s debating material for somewhere else. Ultimately, what these lists and stars do is spur chefs to work harder and customers to explore more places, and in the end, doesn’t everyone end up winning?

 

I am supposed to be working right now, so of course I am Googling Kanye West albums and figuring out my own ranking of his top three. I am doing this because I have just read of the Kanye West-based matchmaking service, Yeezy Dating, launched by a kid named Harry Dry who (allegedly) believes that “Life of Pablo” is Kanye West’s best album. This is clearly, horribly, terribly wrong. Obviously the ranking goes: 3. “Graduation”, 2. “808s and Heartbreak”, and 1. “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”. OBVIOUSLY. What is wrong with kids today?

The thing that I have discovered about my bewilderment when confronted with modern music tastes is that I am offended by my own bewilderment. I am offended because this bewilderment makes me feel old. Like, okay, I am repeating myself like an old lady who tells the same story over and over again, but Drake sings like he’s got a clay mask on and it’s rapidly drying but he keeps trying to sing his way through it. And I cannot emphasize the confusion I felt when, while watching a rerun of the “Ellen Degeneres Show” (I know I’m old), I caught a Travis Scott performance and then spent all day listening to his music to confirm 100 percent that I absolutely hated all of it. I don’t understand this stuff, like how cavemen feel about lightning and fire.

Other things that make me feel old:

• People who are fans of Harry Styles
• People who know who Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert are and can tell the difference between them
• People who can tell the difference between BTS and EXO
• Having to take digestive enzymes if I’m having dinner after 9pm
• People who can fit into jeans for sale on the sidewalk in Bangkok
• Eating at university outdoor markets

Almost all Thai universities benefit from outdoor markets, and Srinakharinwirot University (referred to as “Saw Nor Wor”) is no exception. Its market is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so if you amble up on a Friday, like I did last week, you are shit out of luck. My friend Vincent told me about it when we were arguing about the state of Thai street food on camera one day, and although we agree to disagree re. all Bangkokians’ access to street food, we do agree that the SNW market is pretty awesome.

This place has everything, including an elusive yum naem sod (fermented pork salad) vendor who also serves khao chae (summertime rice) in season, a woman whom Vincent assures me is real and absolutely not made up like a unicorn or a mermaid.  Although I have yet to try this woman’s food, I did have some lovely khao yum (Southern Thai-style rice herbal salad) and some salad rolls that I immediately regretted purchasing. There was Thai-Vietnamese-style kai kata (egg in a pan) with corresponding kanom pang yad sai (bun stuffed with Chinese sausage and steamed pork loaf), as well as some harder-to-find offerings like mee kati (noodles in coconut milk) and something called Hong Kong noodle, which is reminiscent of the “complicated noodle” at Greyhound Cafe.

There are also old-fashioned Thai desserts and sweet snacks like tako (pudding with coconut milk topping) topped with flecks of steamed taro or mango.

There were also fresh fruits and vegetables, drinks and even fancy items like organic melon, grown via university project, Vincent says. The only drawbacks, I’d say, are the dozens of fried items on sticks sent to torment me into abandoning my diet and the blaring, intense summer heat, which might be the worst it’s ever been. Of course, the university students continue to munch outside unruffled by the weather, unconcerned about the coming apocalypse — another great thing about not being old, when you start sweating profusely and embarrassing your dining companions.

I’m so gifted at finding what I don’t like the most. So I think it’s time for us to have a toast.  Here’s to the Travis Scott generation.