DINING OUT - ENTERTAINMENT

Hoo Kwang Seafood

Great place but you have to like hide ‘n seek

by Miss Terry Diner

The Dining Out Team went a little further afield this week, down to Ban Amphur, the next “village” after Jomtien (about 8 km after Lotus on Sukhumvit Road, heading towards Sattahip). As you come into Ban Amphur, turn right at the traffic lights and follow your nose, winding round to your left till you come to the seafront. On the right will be a large car parking area servicing an even larger covered restaurant. This is not it! Go past and look for a “Coke” sign on the left and a “Pepsi” sign on the right and you are there.

There is a small off-street parking lot next to the road and a walkway into the restaurant, which has its name (in Thai - no English) carved into the wooden lintel. After walking through and down a couple of steps there is a bar area on the left and a covered dining area on the right, but keep on walking down to the sand where there are tables set up, with oil lamps on bamboo poles on the beach itself. Once you have settled in you will see the previously mentioned large concrete slab restaurant 500 metres up the coast-line and another similar edifice another 500 metres down, neither of them having a patch on the beach-side character of Hoo Kwang Seafood. The effect is heightened by the lamps on the palm trees, and even the odd beach fisherman hoping for a bite.

Being a typically Thai restaurant there are no small bottles of beer, and a large Heineken is 90 baht. The menu (in English) starts with appetizers, generally around 50-80 baht, and then runs into salads (crab, pork or chicken) also B. 80. From there, the next section is called Thai food and includes omelettes and stir-fries (B. 80-120).

Next up are soups, which come as small or large (B. 90 or B. 150) and covers all the usual favourites, including tom kha gai and tom yum goong. These are followed by fried rice dishes (B. 50-100-150 for small-medium-large) and then “spicy” salads, generally around B. 80. The next sections are seafood proper, with most being at seasonal price and done in the usual steamed, grilled or deep-fried manner of cooking. They do have oysters and even Phuket lobster on the menu.

We began with a spicy salad (and it was, beware of the prik kee noo, the small green, very fiery, chillies) and a mixed tempura seafood, which came with two different dipping sauces. This tempura was excellent (Miss Terry’s choice of the evening), the batter light with a great flavour and the end result was not soggy or greasy and oozing oil, as is presented so many times, even in some of our better hotels.

We also had a crab leg dish, with giant crab claws done in a choo chee style curry. This is not a dish to be eaten with decorum. This was one to be attacked by hand, the only problem being a lack of a finger bowl at the end. I poured the cold drinking water, which was supplied, over my sticky paws. Next time we go I will take some of those pre-moistened towelettes for this purpose.

Our final dish was a plakapong steamed with a lemongrass sauce. A large fish, it was very soft, with the white meat releasing the bones very easily. This was another very flavoursome dish and Madame’s choice.

The four of us in the Dining Out (exploration) Team were unanimous in our verdict on this restaurant. The food was excellent, and the tempura probably one of the best in this region. The ambience was superb, and it was nice to wriggle one’s toes in the sand. If you are going to eat seafood, what better place than beside the sea - on the beach. Great place, great food and worth the time discovering. By the way, we were not the first farangs to discover this restaurant, there were about 20 personnel from the local BMW assembly plant there that evening as well.

Hoo Kwang Seafood, 34/1 M.4, Na Jomtien, Ban Amphur, telephone 038 235 292.