Review: W District Beer Garden near Phra Kanong Post Office

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Fellow member Smokie36 tipped me off recently to a relatively new place/outdoor beer garden that has an interesting mix of Thai and western food outlets available -- the W District beer garden behind the W District community mall that fronts on Sukhumvit Rd. just beyond the Phra Kanong Post Office and about two blocks outward from the Phra Kanong BTS Station exit #3.

I say it's interesting because, upon visiting there last night with the wife, we found an outdoors kind of circular area with perhaps up to two dozen small food and beer/drinks shops ringing the perimeter with chairs and table seating spread around the center. But what was interesting was seeing at least a handful of shops there serving various farang foods and being cooked/prepared by actual farangs!

The selection included a pizza shop being run by an American guy who I believe said he was from Brooklyn, a Mexican food shop being run by a couple of non-Thai guys including one Westerner, and a Spanish tapas shop with a Western guy behind the counter, who said they also prepare paella on the weekends. There also was a UK pastries/pies shop there, though I think I saw a Thai girl staffing it, along with a variety of Thai food options.

The Bangkok.com website has a writeup on the place from some time earlier, when it looked less busy than what we saw last night:

Here's what we saw last night:

In talking to some of the shop folks, the place apparently is open daily. But the opening times shop by shop seem to vary from 4 pm to 6:30 pm or so, and then stay open until 11 pm or later. They have a kind of awkward paper coupon tickets payment system (similar to some food courts), but they hand out 100b packets that have a 50b and multiple 10 and 5 baht coupons that are stapled together. The odd part is, all the shops seem to also accept cash, which the shop holders then simply exchange at the coupon desks.

I tried a half pizza (pulled pork and bacon) for 210 baht (the full pizzas go for 395 baht) and an order of beef nachos for 170 baht. The pulled pork pizza was, according to the shop holder, the most popular item on the menu. I thought it was just OK. The beef nachos were a bit better than OK, though they got a bit soggy with time.

The wife had an order of som tom Thai for 50 baht and an order of Gang Hed mushroom and vegetable soup for 60 baht from one of the Thai food stands.

A large bottle of Asahi cost 150 baht from one of the beer stands, and a bottle of water was 15 baht.

The outdoor seating has a lot of tables for 4, as well as some tables for larger sized groups. They have some outdoor fans and music broadcast loud enough to make it a bit difficult to carry on a quiet conversation. But such is Thailand.

In any event, it made for a pleasant enough evening, and it was a nice being able to go to a place that has such a diverse offering of food (various Westerns along with Thai) all available from a single venue. And it's also easy to get to, being no more than a 5 minute walk from the Phra Kanong BTS station.