Thailand: Breakfast in Bangkok

We’ve just gotten back from a rejuvenating trip to Thailand, and left all our stress behind. Which means that for the next little while you get blog posts of all the fun and food we experienced over the last few weeks!

One of the joys of traveling is breakfast!  In Bangkok our breakfasts were so good that I’d start dreaming of them before dinner-time the night before!

Our hotel was set up with breakfast on the 34th floor, so we got a view of sunrise over the city while we ate:

Just before we left my camera kicked the bucket, so I picked up a new point and shoot for the trip, and I am so glad I did.  It has a panorama mode, So I became Panorama Girl for the trip!

Our hotel breakfast had a lot of international options on the breakfast buffet — Japanese sushi and miso, European cheeses and muesli, Middle Eastern hummus and eggplant dips, eggs to order, and tons of lovely pastries.

I love tasting everything, so I’d make up plates of food covering all sorts of cuisines.  For example, our first morning included Indian curry (potatoes and spicy coconut chutney), and part one of many plates of fruit (papaya, dragon fruit, pineapple, kiwi, and those little balls on the bottom-right are preserved Mirabelle and yellow plums):

That white fruit with the black seeds and the fuchsia skin is dragon fruit.  We can get it here in Toronto, but it never seems to taste like anything.  And that’s because by the time it’s made its way all the way across the ocean, it just can’t keep it’s flavour.  But in Thailand, dragon fruit tastes lovely, and a little bit sweet, and is divine topped with a squeeze of lime juice.

One morning I made room for a fried rice course — and I’m so glad I did.  The rice was just perfectly done: there was just enough fat for that bit-of-oil mouthfeel, and each grain of rice was distinct.  The cashews were toasted and added so much flavour to the rice that had a few sautéed onions and veggies, and was studded with raisins.

Beside the jars of beautiful preserved plums was a jar of rhubarb compote.  You know that got me, and so I had to find something to put it on besides gluteny pastries.  So onto some yogurt it went, topped with pistachios.  Ohhhhhhhh I have a new favourite for sure.

I also adventured into the wonderful world of soymilks — at home I tend to make my own nut milks, but I always love new options. And on our buffet we had soymilks in a variety of flavours: regular, green tea, black sesame, with added vitamins, and the inexplicable “with added collagen”.  I tried a different one each morning (but skipped the collagen option).  My ultimate favourite was the green tea flavour.  It was just a little bit sweet, and it tasted like a green tea latte — like matcha and soymilk got together and made something beautiful.  I also really enjoyed the black sesame, which tasted a bit like tahini + a bit of sweet + sesame oil.

And apparently breakfast on vacation also includes a bit of dessert.  I tried the raspberry panna cotta and I am just so glad I did.  I am not normally a fan of panna cotta (also it’s not usually vegetarian as they add gelatin), but this one was safe & calling to me.  The raspberry sauce on top was just so fresh; it tasted like raspberries and nothing else.  And those black flecks you can see on the creamy white custard?  Vanilla bean.  Yum.

And with breakfasts that good, we went off to explore Bangkok!