Michelin mastery by Le Ton | Le Du, Bangkok

The most exciting thing that I ate at this newly-anointed Michelin-starred restaurant was the simplest: a river prawn with pork belly jam. Everything about that sentence is evocative, like some prankish reinterpretation of the Surf & Turf. Pork belly jam sounds like something you’d pick out of your belly button, but I swear to you, it’s a proper culinary thing and an essential part of ThiTid Tassanakajohn’s – or ‘Ton’ to his friends – most famous recipe, Khao Kluk Kapi.

Chef Ton

Ton takes steamed rice from Pai in northern Thailand and stir-fries it with a fermented shrimp paste, called Kapi, for a nose-tingling waft of smashed crustacean innards. He then serves it alongside a butterflied river prawn from the Tapi river in Surat Thani in southern Thailand. It’s an authentically Thai dish, thought to have been adapted from a Burmese Mon dish during the late 18th century and reign of King Rama II. Although, I have found it more and more challenging to find at street stalls recently.

Le Du is located in a quiet Soi of affluent, common-flanking charm between Silom and Sathorn. It has none of the creamy linen napery evident in other so-called fine dining institutions in the city but rather an interior of simple industrial design. There are no salubrious French fabrics but filament lightbulbs and an assortment of indoor and outdoor plants. Across the back wall snakes a beautiful bamboo weave, caught like a frozen wave, designed by the Thai artist Korakot Aromdee.

It is a deliriously fearsome bash of fire and sour and salt and smoke

Like many contemporary Bangkok restaurants pushing for stars and international recognition, the food here is rooted in Thai history and culture – a tangled coupling that returns varying results across the city’s restaurant scene. While so much attention has been centred on this country’s multitude of magnificent street foods, tourist knowledge of Thai food and its Royal antecedent remains nadir. Ton, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America and undertook apprenticeships at The Modern, Jean-Georges and Eleven Madison Park, hopes to change this, refining recipes and shaping his nation’s food in a new mould. His experiences in such New York restaurants lend an undeniably French influence to dishes, but none of this is what drives him; it’s all Thailand.

The study and exploration of Thai food have been gaining purchase for some time. I don’t mean the clichéd staples of pad Thai and som tam, packaged and presented in a swanky setting, but a widening appreciation of its versatility and regional brilliance. Having evolved over centuries, with Chinese immigrants introducing and establishing many Szechwan influences and Buddhist monks bringing an Indian touch, Thai food is still seemingly on a journey. Europeans, meanwhile, came much later, with Dutch traders and Portuguese missionaries. Le Du is attempting to evolve the national cuisine further; it’s a green curry-free zone with recipes wandering restlessly from north to south. It is a deliriously fearsome bash of fire and sour and salt and smoke, of the high ethereal waft of Thai basil and lemongrass, with mint and coconut creams lending soothing depths. But then, just as quickly, your palate can be attacked by pungent fish sauces or mod dang – the eggs of red ants.

Ton opened the restaurant in late 2013 with his business partner Rungroj ‘Tao’ Ingudananda, naming it after a Thai word meaning “seasons”. They set about using the seasons to influence menus, despite the somewhat unpredictable weather that heats, batters, dries, parches, soaks the country. In northern Thailand, the dry season is between November and May, while June to October is characterised by heavy rainfall. In the south, it’s another story. Naturally, this impacts the growing and harvesting of ingredients. Add natural disasters to this, along with the highly competitive nature of the farming and agricultural industry, and it’s a demanding profession, certainly no easy feet for chefs to make the necessary contacts and purchases.

During my time living here, monsoon season seems to move with me as if a personal affront; violent storms and the brilliant liquid skies that follow, giving my neighbourhood archaic moods

During my time living here, monsoon season seems to move with me as if a personal affront; violent storms and the brilliant liquid skies that follow, giving my neighbourhood archaic moods. I’m often forced to find cover at a moment’s notice as things switch from a humming forty degrees to wild rains in a matter of moments. While the restaurant’s influences and core ingredients remain rooted in the Thai kitchen, much of this sourcing depends on such weather. Rain-fed rice accounts for about 80% of all rice fields grown on floodplains. While Ton leans heavily on local sea bass and beef from the northeast in Sakonnakorn, organic rice – still Thailand’s most exported crop, with an estimated 60% of the country’s 13 million farmers growing it – is paramount to his menus.

Le Du offers a choice of either a four-course or six-course tasting menu, priced at a very reasonable 2,290 and 3,590 Baht, around £55.00 and £85.00. Each consists of three plates, so four becomes 12 and six becomes 18; a very Thai approach to dining as plates and bowls consume the table so that dinner becomes a communal feasting experience between guests, all testing and tasting from an increasing pile of kaleidoscopic dishes. With local ingredients as the backbone, recipes are plated to demonstrate Ton’s regional supply chain – grilled pork jowl with jackfruit, larb abalone, larvae mod dang with seasonal flowers and coconut panna cotta with Thai melon ice cream. A standout is a Thai-Chinese signature called Spicy Khai Palo Five Spice Eggs, adding chillies, herbs and tom yum spices to a brown, soupy mix. Everything has the flavour of technicolour, all hot and prickly, sour and acidic smashes of loveliness which would make a heavy cold throw up its hands and shout, “I give up!”

Certain ingredients demonstrate better than others Ton’s forward-thinking. Take the Kao Khluk Kapi, an authentic Thai recipe re-imagined with liberal quantities of sticky-sweet piggy jam and a noticeable nose tingle from the pungent shrimp paste. It’s a contemporary take while taking nothing away from the original, a recipe that looks to the past to impact the future. Another combines Thai rice wine with smoked barracuda, and there’s a stunning assembly of betel leaf with mangosteen, coconut, ginger and fried shallots. Ton’s interest and education in wine, he is also a Certified Sommelier, also means Le Du has one of the city’s most impressive wine lists – between you and me, he’s one of the world’s top consumers of Krug. His brother also plays a key role in plonk acquisitions, with global pickings – not cheap with Thailand’s import and tariff costs – representing many of the best international wine houses alongside selected bottles from GranMonte, in the foothills of Khao Yai in Thailand.

This is adventurous stuff, a jumble of sour-sweet recipes, playful levels of spice and mingling mouth-puckering ingredients, all with an historical slant and cultural and historical appreciation. Ton and his team are well on their way to establishing a new narrative for Thai cuisine; those same recipes, but seen through a new lens. C

Le Du, 399/3 Silom Soi 7, Silom Bangrak, Bangkok, Thailand
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