Desperately Seeking Crab

Before I left for Bangkok, I was like a mad woman checking out as many blogs and travel advice websites I could for the best places to eat.  As you can imagine, it started to be a huge task and with only three days there, I had to really pick and choose what experiences were on the top of the foodie list.  While searching through blogs, I stumbled upon this short post for the Sukhothai Hotel’s chocolate buffet offered on the weekend and I decided that I had to try it.  My only regret is that we decided to have the buffet on the same day that we were going to have the big show and buffet that night at the Mandarin Oriental (more on that later) so it was hard to totally gorge at both places!

We caught a cab to the Sukhothai Hotel and it was so nice to see a beautiful, low-rise hotel in the middle of all those buildings.  The style of the hotel is similar in so many ways to the Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki (5 star/5 diamond) in its minimalist elegance, Asian influence and tropical surrounds.  As soon as you walk into the tea salon, you sort of feel like you walked into an elegant library where people are speaking in hushed tones and relaxing in big, comfy upholstered chairs.

Immediately, you are greeted, your tea order is taken (or coffee if you like) and then a curiously cold, golden drink is served in a glass.  This is the lemongrass drink that I read in that blog!  I was so excited because it was described as refreshing but I was so sorely disappointed because for me, I found it much too sweet.  Oh well, to each is own.  The one thing that our servers did not explain to us was that there were two sections of the buffet.  We were sat in the chocolate buffet but across the hall, there was another savoury buffet displayed as well.  For people not used to buffets, they probably wouldn’t have ventured out across the hall to see what was on the other side.

Lemongrass Drink

Because we didn’t have lunch, we started with the savouries first.  I went straight for the sushi and little dim sums while my husband went for the mini sandwich rolls and cheese.  The fresh tropical fruit served at this buffet were fabulous.  The quality of everything is very high and everything looked impeccable.

After the savouries came the serious stuff – CHOCOLATE!!  I was so overwhelmed with the choices that I didn’t know what to start with first.  There were chocolate crème brulées, white or dark chocolate mousses, tri-colour cakes, white chocolate mousse cake with passionfruit topping, dark chocolate truffles and much more.  I tried nearly everything there and I was really impressed with it all.  My favourites were the lighter textured desserts like the mousses but the truffles were divine as well.  There were also a few homemade ice creams:  on that day, the flavours were white chocolate/coconut, wasabi chocolate and I think strawberry (sorry, memory is vague).

The savoury buffet

Tropical fruit with the savoury buffet

Chocolate buffet

We both left the pièce-de-resistance to the end – the chocolate cart to make your own custom chocolate drink!  On that day, there were 14 separate bowls of different types of chocolate.  Each bowl had a label describing either the flavour or sometimes the origin of the chocolate and the percentage of cocoa.  Displayed were everything from white chocolate, milk, orange flavoured, Gianduja (hazelnut, think Nutella), African, Central American, you name it!  An attendant would put as much chocolate as you wanted into a pot simmering over a heat source and stir it together and serve it to you in a demi cup.  The result?  An absolutely sublime and dense chocolate drink that you custom made!

Hot chocolate trolley

Attendant mixing the hot chocolate

Before we finished, I saw the chef walk out to check on the display.  He started speaking to one of the guests who seemed like his friend and I knew it, he was French – I recognized that the desserts displayed were definitely made by someone who was trained in the French technique.  After gorging ourselves for two hours, we stumbled back to our hotel room realizing that we had another big meal in a few hours – oh the dilemmas of holidays.  🙂

Sukhothai Hotel offers the Chocolate Buffet on Friday, Saturday and Sundays from 2 to 6pm.  The price for two people was approximately 1860 Baht.  It is best to book the buffet if there is a lot going on that weekend as the tea salon is not that big.