Category: Haute Cuisine
RS took me to Nahm for my birthday. Very well chosen I have to say as I love Thai food and David Thompson’s Nahm is the first Thai restaurant in Europe to have received a Michelin star. Nahm is located at the Hakin Hotel in Belgravia well hidden away in a little residential side street. The restaurant is comfortably small and it must be one of the only Thai restaurants without Asian décor,which is not necessarily a bad thing… I found the atmosphere to be quite neutral (like hotel restaurants often tend to be) and the other guests all looked like bankers (you need good bonuses to afford dining there).
The waiter recommended us to go for the “traditional Thai meal” consisting of a starter,a salad,a relish,a curry and a stir fry dish which can be chosen from an array of dishes (all for 60 pounds). Apparently it also contained a dessert but we were so stuffed that we didn’t get this far unfortunately. We expected more like a tasting menu – little did we know! To start with we got a very pretty looking plate of Crispy Thai noodles with prawns and bean sprouts which was nice but uninspired and maybe a bit too fried for my taste. After this the other five dishes were dumped in front of us and we were scared! Huge portions,4 people could have been fed from this amount of food and we had to leave so much behind. In my case,seeing too much food in front of me usually negatively affects my appetite and RS is suffering from the same disorder. So we were kind of full before we had even started…
The beef salad with chilli and mint was enormous;we suspected a whole cow must have died for it. The beef was tender and was in perfect harmony with the fresh mint and the pleasantly hot chillies. Unfortunately it was far too salty which was overriding the other flavours and in the end we couldn’t eat much of it. I really liked the Tom Yum soup which was perfectly flavoured and made me feel like being in a street café in Bangkok. The curry of sea bass with white tumeric and Thai basil was delicious but didn’t really set itself apart from similar dishes you could get for a third of the price at your neighbourhood Thai. The same applies for the bean curd with Chinese sausage:very enjoyable but not very special. The food was served with a massive amount of nicely cooked Thai fragrant rice.We couldn’t finish even half of the dishes and we wondered afterward if we would have enjoyed the dinner even more had the portions being smaller.
The service was good but like most restaurant nowadays suffers from the ‘pouring wine when you have hardly drunk anything yet’ disease which I find increasingly irritating.
Was the food good – yes;but was it what you would expect from a Michelin star place – unfortunately no. The food,even though tasty and very well prepared,just lacked the wow factor (which only came after we received the bill..) Less salt and smaller portions would have gone a long way!
http://www.halkin.como.bz/eat-and-drink/nahm
The Halkin,Halkin Street,SW1X 7DJ
020 7333 1234
- Food:7.5/10
- Ambiance:6.5/10
- Service:7/10
- Value for money:6/10
- Chances of returning:50% (if I get taken)
- Verdict:Nice Thai but I question the Michelin star.
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