Fine Dining At A Traditional Style "grill Room" ...

[Oneman]

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Chiangmai repeatedly delights me, especially the amazing assortment of restaurants.

The Nimannoradee Grill in the Porn Ping Hotel not only is a surprise here on the edge of the jungle, but a double surprise here in the 21st century.

If you're old enough to remember a traditional "Grill Room" restaurant from the 1950s or '60s, you'll get the picture.

This restaurant reminds me of the Men's Grill in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco around 1960.

I'll bet the chef trained at someplace like that, and he hasn't changed a thing since then.

And that's just fine with me.

The menu and the ambiance offered at The Nimannoradee Grill are long gone from post-modern culture in The West.

But here in Chiangmai, frozen in time, one can still experience fine dining as it was in a traditional grill room of half a century ago.

When you get out of the lift on the 20th floor, you'll be greeted by a head waiter/captain in a black suit -- in former times, certainly would have been a tuxedo, but still a nice effect today.

The decor is soft, mellow, and inviting.

The focus is on relaxation and comfort, with a pleasant hush in the room.

You don't see any of the harsh primary colours, sharp edges, or clanging sounds so common in modern restaurant design.

The music when I arrived was vintage Peggy Lee.

And that shouldn't ever be changed.

Except it was.

Soon after I arrived, the soft and charming sounds of Peggy Lee were replaced with a live piano player, who couldn't play.

I mean, he really couldn't play the piano.

But don't let even that stop you.

There is still much to enjoy.

The chairs are rounded, with arms for comfort -- unlike the upright, rigid, chairs of most modern restaurants.

And a pillow at each chair ... ahhh.

So what about the food?

The menu offers a variety of steaks, chops and seafood -- traditional grill room fare.

There is a mixed grill that is branded, "American mixed grill" even though I've never seen such a thing anywhere in America.

By rights, it should be called, "Australian mixed grill," the sort that is everywhere, down unda.

I started with Caesar salad, and it has been years, maybe decades, since I've had a Caesar salad prepared in the traditional way:

all the ingredients neatly placed on a cart, which is then rolled over to your table.

The captain carefully prepares as you watch.

I counted 15 ingredients, including egg yolk and bacon.

Alas, no anchovies, but, still, the performance and the salad were very enjoyable.

My entree was roast duck.

In addition to the usual orange sauce, there was a choice of mango sauce, which I selected.

It was mild and delicately sweet, but it didn't quite go with duck.

The slightly piquant taste of orange would have been a better compliment to the duck.

The duck was roasted perfectly: done through but still juicy.

Most fowl I've had in Thai restaurants is under-cooked.

I've had enough roast chicken here that is still raw inside, that I won't order that any more.

And in Chinese restaurants, just the opposite, overcooked until dry.

But none of those problems here; the duck was cooked just right.

And the portion was very generous -- so much duck that I almost didn't finish it all.

(But I managed.)

It's only fair to mention that the duck almost certainly was prepared in advance and refrigerated or frozen.

No Western-style restaurant like this in Chiangmai would have enough orders for roast duck that they can prepare fresh every day.

However they prepared it, the flavour and texture held up very well.

Vegetables were a large assortment of fresh, steamed carrots, peas and corn.

Plus potato croquettes, deep fried to a perfectly golden-brown crust.

The quality and flavour of the potatoes were excellent, but I'm almost certain they would have been frozen -- so much easier that way than to prepare mashed potatoes from scratch every day.

The presentation was wonderfully simple: just food on a plate, neatly arranged.

And the plate was a standard, traditional, dinner plate, not some huge, heavy slab of white pottery.

There were no spikes of vegetables poked into the food.

No round molds used to shape the vegetables.

No dribbles of sauce around the edges of the plate to give the illusion of more food that there really was.

None of that nouvelle-fusion nonsense.

Just honest food on a plate, the way food used to be served before nouvelle-fusion became trendy.

For dessert my first two choices were not available.

And that gives a clue to the future of this restaurant: time is passing by and customers are fewer and fewer.

Less and less choices will be available everywhere on the menu, and that is happening already in the dessert section.

My first choice for dessert was Neapolitan pastry.

That has to be fresh, which means there must be customers coming in and ordering it regularly.

But it wasn't available.

My second choice was creme brule.

Again, needs to be made fresh every few days.

Also not available.

I settled for vanilla ice cream with fruit salad.

It was perfectly fine:

Good quality ice cream (not Wall's or Nestle), fresh fruit, a dab of whipped topping (not real whipped cream).

It was fine, but nothing special.

And it was a slightly sad end to the meal, because it portends the future for this restaurant.

Next time I won't bother with a dessert there.

Service was well-trained and unobtrusive: a rare combination in this part of the world.

Thais usually think that service, to be "good", must be seen and heard at all times.

But not here.

Waiters were alert, but alert from behind -- where they should be -- not close and in my line of vision.

Dishes were placed and removed properly -- incoming on the right, removed from the left.

My drink was refilled as needed.

I was impressed with the service.

One reason could be that all the waiters were men.

No women working the dinning room.

Are men better at service?

Whenever I've found outstanding service at a fine restaurant, the dining room staff has always been all men.

The service here wasn't outstanding, just very, very, good.

And out here at the far edge of civilization, that's plenty to make me happy.

Next on my agenda at The Nimannoradee Grill would be one of the steaks.

I'm sure the quality and preparation will be excellent.

I've been noticing that some other restaurants in Chiangmai are starting to cut corners on food quality.

(I've previously mentioned the restaurant in the Kantary Hills Hotel as an example of that.)

But Nimannoradee Grill seems to be holding up well in quality.

Not everything on the menu is still available, but what is -- judging from my one meal there -- is very good.

The Pornping Tower hotel itself is an aging dowager from the boom and crash in Thailand in the middle '90s.

Thais don't understand maintenance so the hotel's image has slipped a lot in the past 15 years and it will continue on down-hill.

And that's reflected in the restaurant, too.

The carpet should have been changed 5 years ago.

There's dust on the light fixtures too high for the maid to reach.

Someone forgot to polish the brass railings in front of the windows; forgot since several years already.

But don't let those small things stop you from enjoying the superb food and the ambiance.

Dinner described above: 700 baht, but without cocktails or wine.

An excellent value for the quality offered.

Nimannoradee Grill

Pornping Tower Hotel - 20th floor

46-48 Charoenprathet Rd. -- Chiangmai Night Bazaar

Web site:

http://bit.ly/ajuKmn

-- Oneman

Chiangmai

Edited March 20, 2010 by Oneman

[neilrob]

Thanks. Keep up the interesting reviews, Oneman.