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Gaggan, Bangkok restaurant review
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Gaggan Bangkok restaurant review
Weeks later, I cannot decide how I feel about Gaggan, but that seeded, restless stir is precisely where Chef Gaggan Anand wants me. Welcome to one of the world’s best restaurants. Buckle up.
Written by Liam Collens // See other reviews here. Liam was invited to Gaggan on a press trip to Bangkok. You can find Liam on Threads, Instagram or Facebook.
The Highs
The Lows
The Highs
The Lows
Gaggan Bangkok restaurant review
Experiential, subversive and submerged, Gaggan is industrial and heavy with mood. The dining room’s teal and red neon glow ricochets off bare concrete and steel mesh. A chef’s prep station takes centre stage. Maybe it’s a prep station, maybe it’s an underground S&M room; frankly, it could be an abattoir and this, an autopsy. Maybe it’s mine.
Here I am in one of the World’s Best Restaurants–no 9, to be precise, with 22-courses, 14 seats and about $430 a head, give or take. Gaggan is the eponymous restaurant of Chef Gaggan Anand, a notoriously bombastic contrarian for whom lakes of ink were already spilt—from the abrupt closure of Gaggan’s earlier incarnation to his boisterous, larger-than-life personality and much, much more.
Be a Rebel neon sign glows over diner inside Gaggan
This is not classical fine dining with gloved waiters and oceans of white linen. Nothing here is hostile or mean, but there is a calculated move to leave you in the wilds. At first, you are both a guest and a stranger. Both welcomed and uninvited. Gaggan intends to unsettle you, leaving a restless stir of anxiety, but compel you to stare and question what’s happening with morbid fascination. It’s a spectacle from which you can’t look away.
Chef Gaggan Anand and his team prep for service.
Here I am in one of the World’s Best Restaurants–no 9, to be precise, with 22-courses, 14 seats and about $430 a head, give or take. Gaggan is the eponymous restaurant of Chef Gaggan Anand, a notoriously bombastic contrarian for whom lakes of ink were already spilt—from the abrupt closure of Gaggan’s earlier incarnation to his boisterous, larger-than-life personality and much, much more.
Be a Rebel neon sign glows over diner inside Gaggan
This is not classical fine dining with gloved waiters and oceans of white linen. Nothing here is hostile or mean, but there is a calculated move to leave you in the wilds. At first, you are both a guest and a stranger. Both welcomed and uninvited. Gaggan intends to unsettle you, leaving a restless stir of anxiety, but compel you to stare and question what’s happening with morbid fascination. It’s a spectacle from which you can’t look away.
Chef Gaggan Anand and his team prep for service.
Like in Fight Club, all good anarchies must start with rules, making Chef Gaggan our Brad Pitt as Malia J’s rendition of Smells Like Teen Spirit throbs in the background. Our dinner will be different, he tells us, and he’s right. Over the next two-plus hours, we listen to energetic Kanyesque monologues poking doubt at sustainability awards, his post-dining diarrhoea and the burdensome intricacies of juicing and lobotomizing Bangkok’s rather promiscuous rats.
Gaggan: these might be rat brains.
It’s not conventional, and intentionally so. Gaggan–both man and place–rattle our Eurocentric paradigms of fine dining, bending its arch towards the East but, pointedly, to his will.
“I want to be a chef who wants to run a standalone restaurant and prove that we always look at fine dining to be a Western concept. And I wanted to make sure that Asia, which is so rich in its culture, has a fine dining restaurant that questions the world: what is fine dining? And that’s what I did.” he shared on the World of Mouth Podcast (listen here on Apple Podcasts).
Gaggan chefs sing a chorus to Hey Jude.
Gaggan: these might be rat brains.
It’s not conventional, and intentionally so. Gaggan–both man and place–rattle our Eurocentric paradigms of fine dining, bending its arch towards the East but, pointedly, to his will.
“I want to be a chef who wants to run a standalone restaurant and prove that we always look at fine dining to be a Western concept. And I wanted to make sure that Asia, which is so rich in its culture, has a fine dining restaurant that questions the world: what is fine dining? And that’s what I did.” he shared on the World of Mouth Podcast (listen here on Apple Podcasts).
Gaggan chefs sing a chorus to Hey Jude.
But, boy, did I have fun. Primordial fun. Riotous, out of body, emancipated from the trappings and confines of castrated corporate life fun.
Long after dinner and well into those liminal hours between night and morning, I am wide awake in Public House Hotel Sukhumvit, fizzing with adrenaline. A back-to-back singalong medley of Rammstein, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears will do that to a man. Gaggan, the experience, lasts longer in the mind than on the tongue–despite literally licking a carrot halwa off a plate.
Gaggan’s lick-able last course, the carrot halwa.
World’s 50 Best, the Michelin Guide and countless reviews are breathless in their enthusiasm for Gaggan’s showmanship and no-punches-pulled, electric exhibitionism. Even Gaggan is a sweat-drenched heap at the end. But those Guides are thin on details about the food, and I could not help but notice.
Gaggan’s uni kiwi toast, a standout dish.
Gaggan’s 22 course tour de force is divided between two acts with an intermission. All the dishes show tremendous skill at the hands of Portuguese head chef Fábio Costa and the team.
A triangular murku paper parcel takes no less than seven days of their labour to dissolve on the tongue in seconds. Another soft lozenge—this time an intense mushroom bomb—collapses on the tongue. A puck of sweet, tart kiwi is soothed by suave creamy uni; it’s revelatory and my dish of the night.
Gaggan’s mushroom fireworks shells.
A blood-warm stone houses a mouthful of crab and cauliflower when the pungent mustard hits my synapses just as the Red Hot Chilli Peppers kicks in. A tender Thai sea bass embalmed in a banana leaf, Thai coriander, white and yellow turmerics is ceremonially scorched before it’s unveiled.
Reasonable people will disagree about whether a black garlic momo is underpowered and whether the chole bhature is superfluous.
Gaggan’s black garlic momo and the crab, cauliflower and mustard course.
But, boy, did I have fun. Primordial fun. Riotous, out of body, emancipated from the trappings and confines of castrated corporate life fun. Those in desperate search of an existential exorcism should urgently apply online. My conclusion is that the food is overshadowed by the spectacle, but how could it not be?
For all the rebellious damn-the-man (with plated Durex and Gaviscon, like offerings to the Gods), cloth napkins are folded then laid across your lap as Somm Kojic Vladimir pours magnums of Macchiona.
Gaggan is still a restaurant and behind the Emperor’s punk clothes lies an outstanding team who invite you to suspend disbelief and, possibly, eat rat brains.
Gaggan, Would I Return?
This is a big audacious swing by a chef with a decisive point of view of what fine dining and experiential dining should be. For good or bad it is an experience that will live long in the memories of anyone who comes here. Like a Disney theme park, I would return to see it through someone else’s eyes as my sense is that you come to Gaggan to feel something then take that feeling away.
To say the diners get involved in the spectacle would be an understatement.
Extroverts, the open-minded, fans of modern Indian and South Asian food, people who want to be entertained first and foremost.
The line up of wine pairings with the tasting menu; non-alcoholic pairings are also available.
The 22-course tasting menu, THB15,000 (THB16,000 from 1 August 2024) inclusive of wine or non-alcoholic pairing, gratuity and taxes).
Gaggan, 68 Sukhumvit 31, Khlong Tan Nuea, Watthana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. For the latest information, visit Gaggan’s website or call +66988831022.
To say the diners get involved in the spectacle would be an understatement.
Gaggan, Who Should Come Here?
Extroverts, the open-minded, fans of modern Indian and South Asian food, people who want to be entertained first and foremost.
The line up of wine pairings with the tasting menu; non-alcoholic pairings are also available.
Gaggan, How Much Is It?
The 22-course tasting menu, THB15,000 (THB16,000 from 1 August 2024) inclusive of wine or non-alcoholic pairing, gratuity and taxes).
Gaggan, 68 Sukhumvit 31, Khlong Tan Nuea, Watthana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. For the latest information, visit Gaggan’s website or call +66988831022.
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