Bann Nucha Restaurant

So... okay... I haven't been doing restaurant reviews in awhile. Partly because I haven't been going to any new restaurants nowadays and partly because the lighting in restaurants these days are just way too dim for my poor little camera to handle. :P But recently (well, actually, not that recently...), I had lunch at the Bann Nucha Thai restaurant in the mall with a couple of friends, and they had some decent lighting, so... well, here we go. :)

To tell you the truth, I am unfamiliar with Thai cuisine. Even while we were at Bangkok last year, when we ate at this halal restaurant near our hotel (a post about that will be coming up in the next couple of weeks, I "promise"), I didn't order anything fancier than chicken goreng. I know. Tsk, tsk, Ihsan. I already got scolded for ordering chicken goreng in a Thai restaurant in Brunei last time (see here), what more in Bangkok, yeah? :P But in my defense, I did try to see if there was anything else I liked. In particular, I wanted to try authentic pad thai that Hamizah is always raving about... but the restaurant we went to was more of a Malaysian restaurant in Bangkok, so... no pad thai to be found. Oh well, fried chicken it is! :P

But anyway, back to Bann Nucha... this one was definitely Thai oriented. The owner, I think, is Thai. At first, I was very impressed with the service. She greeted everyone personally, always ready with a friendly smile, so I thought... wow. That's nice of her.

But then, she started forcing food choices on everyone. Well, actually, on me, haha. My friends pretty much knew what they wanted, so I was left... and well, originally, I wanted a chicken dish sauteed with basil and chillies, but she was going on and on about the pandan chicken, and basically didn't let me order the basil chicken and forced on me the pandan chicken instead. Well, I thought, okay, she knows better, so fine.

Then the drinks... again with the forcing. Apparently, their sugar cane juice is freshly squeezed and oh so tasty and all natural! Well, what if you don't like sugar cane juice? She still forces it on you anyway! Mind you, I am not that assertive a person. Of course, I could have said no, but right after she talked about it, and my other two friends were like... "Yeah, that sounds nice.", she said "Okay, then, three it is!" and strode right off. Sigh. So oh well. Sugarcane juice it is...

This was Shah's seafood tom yam. :) I know, tom yam is usually red, but this is apparently kampong-style tom yam. Her own recipe, and very authentic. My two friends shared this, and seemed to like it well enough.

And this was my pandan chicken. This was my first time eating pandan chicken, and the pandan smell was kind of off-putting at first, but the chicken itself only had a slight pandan flavour. Other than that, it was really quite flavoursome, which is good. Oily though.

Hamizah's pad thai. Again, different from the usual pad thai. Due to the use of kway teow noodles and soy sauce, it resembled more of a normal fried noodle dish rather than pad thai so Hamizah didn't quite like it so much. When she tried communicating this to the owner lady though, she got told that its a special secret recipe sauce and is very authentic. Okay then.... I myself tasted it, and though I thought it wasn't bad, I am not a pad thai expert so can't vouce for how good it tastes. :)

And this was the ever-so-famous fresh sugarcane juice. Tastes like any other sugarcane juice to me, but whatever. Bit too sweet for my liking, and a bit too sugarcane-y as well, but it is sugarcane, so not surprising, I guess. It was icy cold though, which was nice. My friends seemed to like it too. I just don't like sugarcane juice, is all.

And so... that's it. :) Overall, service was nice if a bit too ... overpowering, or maybe overenthusiastic. Price range was middle-high. Ambience was okay, well-lit by the windows but the view wasn't anything to write home about. :P I probably wouldn't go here again though... If I ever get a craving for Thai food, I want to go to a place where I can order what I want without being pushed around. Those of you who are Thai food fans with a stronger backbone might want to check it out... the food is apparently quite nice (except for the pad thai) with "authentic" recipes, so... yeah. :)

Edit: Although I found the menu selection to have quite a variety of dishes (if only she would just let me order what I want!), I thought the drinks selection was a bit sparse. Which was partly why I accepted the sugarcane thing. There must have been about 5-6 drinks only.

Review by Ihsan