Restaurant-Dining Critiques

89 Sukhumvit Soi 24, Sukhumvit Rd.
Klongtoey, Bangkok 10110
946 Rama IV Road
Bangkok 10500
+66 (0) 2 2661 1252-9
Fax. 02-2661-2073
Website: http://www.seafood.co.th
Opening Hours: 11:30 am – 11:30pm
Credit Cards: All Major
Moderate – Expensive

A battery of chefs are cooking on a long kitchen line, just to the left of the main entrance, where you enter an enormous room filled with literally hundreds or tables and chairs. Models of various fish are suspended from the ceiling and a large fabricated orange tree is plunked in the center. A vast counter, filled with crushed ice, is at the rear of the dining room that holds all the different fish, shellfish, and crustaceans. A sign in large letters above the fish counter states: No Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) Added, which pleases me and one of the reasons I keep coming back. To the far right of the fish counter is a wine room where you may purchase wine and water.

At the Checkout Counter The system works like this: you are seated at a table and then you arise and follow a girl to the fish counter, she then helps you to pick out the fish, vegetables and places them into a supermarket cart along with any fruit, if you are so inclined. Then, you are led to the checkout counter and pay for the food, the wine is paid for separately at the wine store. You are led back to the table where after you are seated you tell the captain how you wish to have each ingredient prepared, and you then receive another bill for the cooking fee.

We typically order: clams cooked with garlic, basil and chili; red snapper sweet and sour style (in Thailand it is not the sickening sweet & sour found in some inexpensive Chinese restaurants); sautéed morning glory with chili; mixed vegetables (pea pods, bean sprouts, large round special variety mushrooms in oyster sauce); whole crab in curry sauce; large river shrimp or rock lobster simply grilled.

The service is usually very attentive and they have a large staff to accomplish this; the cooking is consistently good and seafood always fresh.
If it is available, we order a bottle of Muscadet of the latest vintage, at this writing 2006. We always enjoy dining here even though it is considered somewhat of a tourist spot.