For a room with a view!
by Miss Terry Diner
The Empress Chinese Restaurant is on the 9th floor of
the Dusit Resort, and as you enter the red-carpeted dining area you have
just arrived in one of Pattaya’s most spectacular observation posts.
Sweeping vistas of Pattaya Bay make a great backdrop for any meal, day or
night.
The Dining Out Team, expanded to four for the evening,
dined with executive assistant manager, Ingo Rไuber to re-acquaint
ourselves with this restaurant, being over three years since our last
visit - showing just how many fine restaurants there are in this city!
As already mentioned, with one curved wall being glass
from floor to ceiling, you are afforded a magnificent view. The tables are
generally of the circular variety, seating up to 8 or 10 people around,
with a carousel on top. There are also smaller alcove nooks with tables to
accommodate 2-4 diners. Tablecloths and napkins are white starched linen
and the chopsticks are silver as are the chopstick rests. The most
welcoming waitresses, of which there appears to be at least one per table,
are smartly dressed in traditional cheongsams. You can see immediately
that this is no tour bus stop for visiting Asian budget holiday tourists.
It is obvious this is fine dining.
The restaurant is open between 11.30-2.30 for lunch and
reopens at 6.30, going through to 10.30 for dinner. Lunch is mainly dim
sum with 26 individual items at 60 baht each. All the usual favourites,
both steamed and deep-fried are on offer such as steamed chopped shrimp
stuffed broccoli or steamed shredded duck and bamboo shoot rolls.
However, we were there for dinner and a large selection
is presented to the diner, beginning with appetizers. Like most items on
the menu, there are three sizes quoted (small, medium and large) and I
shall use the “small” serves as the guide in this review. Appetizers
range between 300 baht to 700 baht including steamed chicken with Chinese
wine at the lower end and fried shark fin with scrambled egg at the high
end.
Four soups are next (B. 150-220) with a spicy and sour
Szechwan soup or a fresh fish maw with black mushrooms in clear soup.
These are followed by four shark fin items (B. 650-750) and three abalone
choices (B. 1,000-1,700).
Poultry choices range between B. 250 for deep-fried
chicken with lemon sauce, up to B. 1,200 for Peking duck per person. Beef
items (B. 350-400) include a stir-fried beef with macadamia nuts. Pork
choices range from sweet and sour spare ribs (B. 250) to BBQ suckling pig
at B. 1,400 per person, while fish and seafood is generally around B. 500
with a good choice of imported and local product.
Of course there are the vegetable and bean curd items,
as well as rice and noodle dishes, all of which range around the B.
200-300 region.
I asked Ingo to provide some of the most popular items
for us to try and we began with deep-fried crab leg (very plump little
fellows too) and we washed them down with the Dusit house white, a very
pleasant Californian Chardonnay (B. 1,020). Next up was a shark fin soup
with bamboo pith and black mushroom, served in a clay pot, to which we
added bean sprouts and Chinese vinegar to taste. All this was explained by
our waitress (as were all the dishes), part of what Ingo describes as
Chinese cuisine with French service.
We did have a Peking duck, which our waitress prepared
at our request, and returned to our table wrapped and sauced appropriately
(I have never been successful doing it myself) and a wonderful scallop
dish as well.
We were left very impressed by the total package
presented by the Dusit Resort’s Empress Chinese Restaurant. The food
from Chef Thavorn (cooking Chinese food since he was 13 years old) was
excellent, the service attentive and the view worth a million dollars. Not
a cheap night out, but if you are eating to a budget, there are enough
different items on offer to keep the bill quite reasonable. Very highly
recommended.
The Empress Chinese Restaurant, Dusit Resort, 240/2 Pattaya Beach Road,
North Pattaya, telephone 038 425 611-7.
