From years of traveling and living in Thailand, I’ve been able to sample a lot of Thai food.

While most of my meals have either consisted of Thai street food and home-cooked Thai meals, it’s a rare event when I get to eat upscale Thai cuisine.

Paste Bangkok is an incredible restaurant in Bangkok that specializes in modern Thai food.

By using traditional recipes mixed with freshly creative ideas, making use of extremely high quality ingredients (that are often local, organic, and free-range), and paying acute attention to preparation details, the duo of chefs at Paste have developed a dangerously tempting menu.

Having eaten at Paste Bangkok a number of times now, I just wanted to share the dishes I’ve sampled and a video that I put together (you can watch the Paste Bangkok video of my meal below).

On my first visit I ate a dish called Seng Wa Goong Pao (แสร้งว่ากุ้งเผา), which is actually a royal Thai dish made with wild ocean king prawns and crispy catfish. Plenty of herbs and a dressing that consisted primarily of kaffir lime juice, gave this salad a tongue pleasing zing.

One thing chef Jason and Bee of Paste Bangkok are quick to announce is, while they do care about food presentation, they prefer to let the ingredients of each dish and the flavor combinations speak for themselves.

While many fancy restaurants, both Thai and international, go crazy with presentation including things that aren’t “supposed” to be eaten on the plate and squirting droplets of sauce around the edges of the plate for decoration, Paste Bangkok is less about unnecessary fancy, and all about exquisite flavors.

“Straight forward honest cooking,” is what chef Jason told me.

One of their signature dishes is the poached organic pork neck mixed with red grapefruit, basil, avocado, and toasted rice (หมูตุ๋นเสริฟ์กับเกรฟฟรุ๊ตและดอกไม้ไทย). It’s a beautiful Thai dish that tastes even more amazing than it looks!

Being a lover of fish, I was excited to try a wild sea bass fillet that was steamed and then combined with a sauce made from turmeric, honey and fennel. Garnished with thinly shaved kaffir lime leaves and deep fried shallots gave this modern Thai dish a fantastic touch.

Ka moo, or tender stewed pork leg is an extremely common Bangkok street food dish.

But at Paste they don’t just served a few slices of pork leg over a plate of rice with some pork juice drizzled over it, they prepare what they call “the ultimate-twice cooked-caramelised-pork leg (สุดยอดขาหมูเสริฟ์กับหน่อไม้ดอง, ผักกาดดองและผักชี).”

The pork leg was marinated, then flash deep fried to give each piece or pork a crispy exterior. It was then assembled with pickled bamboo shoots, shaved red chillies, pomelo, coriander, and finally a lightly sweet caramel glaze.

Yet again, this spectacular combination of pork melted in my mouth.

Before sampling the duck, chef Jason Bailey let me taste some northern Thai pepper (actually a berry), in the same family as the Sichuan pepper (the kind that makes you mouth numb). It tasted incredible, a little less strong than the actual Sichuan pepper, but it did tingle my tongue and offered an almost citrus flavor.

This half a free-range duck (เป็ดมะแขว่นเสิร์ฟกับซอสส้มและโป๊ยกั๊ก) was intensely rubbed with the northern Thai pepper (mahkween มะแขว่น) and sea salt before being submerged in hot oil.

After being cooked, the duck was drizzled in a fresh orange glaze that was well flavored with anise and cinnamon and then garnished with orange segments and sticks of cinnamon. It was another stunner, extremely flavorful and the duck had that lovely natural texture to it, while being crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.

The final Thai dish we sampled was a scallop and mangosteen salad  with roasted chili jam (ยำมังคุดกับหอยเชลล์).

This is another example of the modern Thai philosophy that the chefs at Paste Bangkok push for: mangosteen and scallops, and all the other ingredients in the dish are popular in Thailand, yet mangosteen is seldom (if ever) used in Thai cooking. So their version of mangosteen salad is a creative combination of Thai ingredients, a progression of Thai cuisine – modern Thai food!

Paste Bangkok Video

Ok, so finally, above is the video of my meal, only including the latter three dishes mentioned above. It was an awesome feast and the high quality ingredients and flavors that Paste Bangkok promotes, are absolutely amazing!

Paste Bangkok Restaurant

If you’re are looking for an exciting upscale Thai restaurant that will tingle your taste buds and make you melt with satisfaction, Paste Bangkok is one of the top choices in Bangkok.

Prices are around 900 – 1000 THB per person, including a drink.

Check out their full menu on their website here.

I think the food at Paste Bangkok is creative and extraordinarily delicious. Enjoy the food and the video!