Thursday, January 15, 2009

Daeng Seafood Restaurant

We were heading back to Bangkok from a weekend in Hua-Hin. We called a friend who was an expert on restaurants along the long stretch of highway between Hua-Hin and Bangkok. Right away he recommended that we eat at Dang Restaurant. Apparently, everyone knew about Dang Restaurant (of course we did not). He gave us directions and we thought it would be easy to find. Well, let's say it was NOT. We had to ask for directions twice. The locals probably thought; 'these Bangkok people are idiots'.


We finally saw a restaurant with tons of people and the parking lot was packed full. So, we assumed that this was the restaurant. When we entered the restaurant, there were newspaper clippings hanging all over the walls praising how wonderful this restaurant was. We were so happy that we finally found the restaurant and we were finally going eat dinner. Dang Restaurant is very famous for its seafood. Bangkok residents drive out of the city just to eat here. We were lucky to even get a table right away.

We had a very good waiter. He was maybe only 14 years old, but he had the ability, good sense, intelligence and sense of humour of a professional waiter. It was actually incredible. He knew right away that we barely could read the menu. He right away described to us what was on the menu and even recommended some dishes.

We were very hungry and wanted to try everything. We assumed that the amount of food for each dish would be small like most restaurants. Boy were we wrong. The problem was that boy did not tell us that the portions of each dish was going to be monstrous. He just let the us be greedy and let us order dish after dish without warning us that we ordered enough food for a small village.


The first dish was a deep fried seabass in fish sauce. This dish was amazing. The fish was fried to a beautiful golden brown. When we stuck our forks into the fish, we heard a lovely crunch of the crispy skin. Once the fork passed through the crispy skin of the fish, we found the beautiful white meat which was tender and juicy. The fish sauce added the necessary saltiness to the dish. I still cannot believe we ate the whole beast.



The second dish was shrimp fried rice. A kilo of fried rice for three people. But that did not matter. The fried rice tasted very good. I am not sure what type of curry paste they fried the rice in, but it was lovely and not too oily. The shrimp was a nice addition to the dish.


The next dish was steamed prawns. This simple dish is always my favourite. The prawns were huge and full of flavour. The green sauce that accompanied the shrimp was spicy but we always love that.


The next dish was squid in lime & lemon juice. When squid is this fresh, you cannot but love it. This salad is so simple to make; lemon & lime juice, chilis, garlic and chopped herbs. All tossed in a pot and warmed up over a low fire. The outcome is such a lovely tasting dish.


The next dish was tom yum seafood. WOW, the taste of the tom yum was amazing. The seafood was not overcooked in the soup, which we often do not find in a tom yum. The tom yum had the right balance of sourness, saltiness, sweetness and spiciness.


The next dish was steamed crab. We were not expecting the crabs to be so big. But we were very happy they were. The messiest seafood dish to eat but it's worth the mess and every single minute we stuggle to get every piece of meat out of the crab legs and shell. The flavour was of the crab was outstanding. We did not even need the spicy sauce that accompanied it.


This was an amazing dinner. The restaurant is split into three sections (due to extending the building). The rooms are basic in decor. The service is very very young but very attentive. The enormous open air kitchen is as big as the restaurant. We could not believe how big it was. It seemed like they had an army of chefs cooking. No wonder the food came out so rapidly.

Our table was the show of the evening. We had stares from the other tables because we ordered so much food. They were actually laughing at us. However, we did not mind because we were in seafood heaven.

Click here for directions to Daeng Seafood Restaurant

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