Gone is the traditional Thai teak house with dim lighting, authentic artefacts and silverware. In its place is a contemporary building in warm wood with tall latticed windows that allow the light to stream in and offer a view of the garden and fishpond.

The main dining room can accommodate about 70 people and those wanting space to themselves can opt for one of the two private rooms. The alfresco dining area next to the fishpond is a pleasant place to relax when the weather’s nice. And there’s also a new bakery corner featuring pastries, cakes and confectionery created by pastry chef Sebastien Gyre that’s open from early morning until late at night.

The Thai culinary delights are still under the baton of chef Santiphap Petchwao and he’s injected some premium Western ingredients like foie gras, wagyu beef, lamb, salmon and Kurobuta pork while retaining and refining such local favourites as ultra-spicy Northeastern-style som tam with fermented fish and tangy beef soup made to an old recipe. The presentation of the food has also been given an update to match modern times though not at the cost of the authentic Thai taste.

“About 70 per cent of the menu has been changed. The new Western ingredients have been added to bring diners’ attention to traditional menus,” says chef Santiphap.

The first dish to arrive at our table is the traditional Thai appetiser Chor Muang – savoury dumplings crafted in the shape of a flower and dyed purple with butterfly pea flowers. In place of the traditional filling of minced pork is salmon, which has been stir-fried with coriander root, garlic, pepper, ginger and seasoned with plum sugar and fish sauce. The dumplings are steamed for several minutes and served with chilli, lettuce and coriander leaves. Served on the same plate is Kanom Jeeb Goong – white steamed dumplings stuffed with shrimps, which are prepared in the same way as the Chor Muang but with roasted peanut replacing the ginger for more crunch. The dish is priced at Bt310.

Served next on a long plate is the Suan Bua Mixed Appetiser (Bt320). It boasts grilled and marinated organic tiger prawns from Vietnam with peanut sauce and a tart relish, and organic vegetable spring rolls with chilli and lime sauce. Also on the plate is the traditional finger food known as Ma Hor – sweet marinated minced pork with ginger topped with fresh pineapple slices and edible lotus leaves, as well as Rarai – steamed rice thread noodles topped with crabmeat and flavoured with coconut sauce.

Santiphap’s new take on meat and vegetables tossed in a spicy lime sauce is a sweet and tangy winged bean salad topped with seared foie gras (Bt330). It’s served with half a boiled egg.

“I opt for the 50-gram foie gras fillet imported from France instead of the familiar minced pork and shrimps. The foie gras is slightly battered before being seared and its creamy taste goes well with the sweet, tangy, slightly spicy salad,” says the chef.

Though a restaurant in a hotel is not generally regarded as the place to eat som tam, Suan Bua serves several choices of this “national dish” and other Isaan favourites in contemporary style. For a true taste of Isaan, go for Som Tam Laos (Bt320) with fermented fish that’s as strong and fiery as it should be. It comes with tender and tasty sun-dried pork and sticky rice.

River prawns from Myanmar are grilled on volcanic rocks (Bt590) before being topped with spicy fried clam meat cooked with ginger and kaffir lime.

Based on a century-old recipe and an ideal remedy for a cold is Tom Jiew (Bt350), a clear beef soup with sweet potato and herbs. Braised for three hours with a variety of herbs including red onions, chilli, sweet basil leaves, holy basil leaves and coriander roots and flavoured with lime and tamarind juices, the thin slices of Japanese wagyu beef give the soup, which is milder than tom yum, a tender texture.

New Zealand lamb shank is slowly braised for six hours for the massamam curry and served with roti (Bt690). Another must-try is the red curry with Phuket spotted babylon meat and wild betel leaf. Dried fish and shrimp are added to the curry paste along with young cha-om leaves to enhance both aroma and flavour..

Do leave room for the traditional dessert of Bua Loy – taro, pumpkin and pandan flavoured dumplings with young coconut meat in warm coconut cream together with egg in jasmine syrup (Bt190). For a more refreshing kick, opt for shaved ice with condensed milk and condiments (Bt190).

THAI TASTES

>>Suan Bua at Centara Grand at Central Plaza Ladprao is open for lunch, 11.30am to 2.30pm, and for |dinner, 6 to 10.30pm. The bakery corner is open from 9am to 10.30pm.

>>Call (02) 541 1234 extension 4068 or visit http://www.CentaraHotelsResorts.com/cglb.

“My guests are not yuppies who eat Pinoy fusion,” he says. “They come from Cavite and Batangas. They want the real thing… Adobo with foie gras, for instance, has no place at Balay Dako.”

Balay Dako is the third restaurant of the Antonio Group of Companies after the award-winning Antonio’s in Barangay Neogan, Tagaytay, Breakfast at Antonio’s and Antonio’s Grill.

Accustomed to the resplendence of Negrense hospitality, Escalante recalls traveling to two towns outside his family’s native Cadiz just to gather hibiscus flowers for a party in his grandfather’s house called “Balay Dako.” The grandchildren would then line up the staircase and give hibiscus garlands to guests.

His grandfather, Manuel Escalante, loved to hold parties.

“Desserts would be prepared three days before the party,” recalls Tonyboy. “Drinks were served in the trolley before the bar became fashionable in the home. I still prefer the trolley for drinks.”

For Balay Dako, he closed down Antonio’s Grill and leased the adjoining property. He tapped architect Kathleen Henares to design a contemporary structure. The three-level house follows the layout of the Escalante ancestral home.

The silong or basement has the function rooms that overlook Taal Lake. As in the houses of old, the second floor has the living room and main dining area.

The top floor, a breakfast area by day and a bar at night, is an eclectic mix of industrial finishes and patterned tiles inspired by prewar patterns. Guests can chill at The Terraza which opens to the view of the lake and sky.

Escalante puts his chefs on the frontline: Joselito Santiago was a provincial bus driver with a gift for cooking; and Ricky Sison was a butcher of the now-defunct Mandarin hotel for 15 years.

Ilonggo cuisine

One of Balay Dako’s specialties is the Ilonggo chicken inasal, grilled chicken with crispy skin and extra luscious meat with a hint of annatto.

The menu includes items from the old Antonio’s Grill such as Ilonggo comfort food, kadyos, a meal of pigeon peas, jackfruit and tender pork belly, spiked with a souring agent called batuan.

The ginataang monggo with flaked tinapa is a bestseller. The batchoy, an Ilonggo staple, is made from scratch with soup stock boiled for hours and fresh noodles and pork innards. The piyaya, following an old recipe from Silay, Negros Occidental, is a delicate crispy flatbread with melted muscovado sugar filling.

There are familiar favorites. Chef Sison’s version of the bistek Tagalog has the subtle balance of soy-sauce saltiness and calamansi zing.

The crispy pata, lechon kawali and barbecue are brined for days so that the meat still looks healthy pink and not brown. The chicken and pork adobo is marinated for hours, pan fried and boiled to retain its chewy texture. The adobong pitaw or cultured squab is perfectly golden brown and crisp, its moist meat and robust flavors are derived from the briny solution of souring agents and spices.

Plated bulalo

An iconic Tagaytay dish, the bulalo or beef shank and marrow, is cooked for half a day until the fat completely dissolves into the soup. The outcome is a clear soup with no tallow or gruet even after several hours.

Unlike the local tradition of dunking and braising to make stewed kambing, Balay Dako’s version uses the classic technique. The meat is marinated overnight, pan-fried, and braised in tomato sauce. It is then cooked in slow moist heat to preserve the succulence.

The laing, tofu wrapped in taro leaves, is cooked the traditional way, from the removal of the midrib of the leaves to the long hours of simmering. The shredded water spinach (kangkong) salad is topped with shrimps and dressed with a sweet sour mixture of vinegar, sugar, garlic, calamansi and chili.

The dishes can be accompanied with purée pickle relish, blackened onions and baked chicharon.

The desserts include papaya sago, satin-soft maja blanca, puffy ensaymada with a buttery top, and turon with purple yam and custard, wrapped in sweet sticky rice.

“You bring your family here. This is what they look for,” says Escalante, who credits his collaborators such as Jill Sandique, the celebrity chef-baker who shared the recipe for the perfect pie crust of the buko pie.

Another Tagaytay signature, the buko pie is topped by a light, flaky crust and filled with slices of coconut meat, unlike the popular version of an extended filling.

More than the fact that its flesh is sweet and tastes like melon, the fish is deeply connected with the Japanese culture. Ayu, also known as Sweetfish, has been likened to the cherry blossom, heralding the arrival of summer just as cherry blossoms signify spring – or just as grilled hot dogs and hamburgers spell summer in the US.

“Ayu makes us feel the seasons,” says a Japanese connoisseur I meet at the Gifu Ayu promotion at Ten Japanese Fine Dining at the Marc Residence in Kuala Lumpur. And seasonality is the soul of the Japanese.

Ayu is born in autumn, swept out to sea in winter, swimming upstream in spring, bulking up in summer and spawning and dying the next autumn. It lives briefly, for one short year.

The Gifu Ayu Cooked Three Ways presents the three chefs best interpretations of the iconic Japanese freshwater fish.

The very transient nature and elusiveness of the ayu makes it desirable; like how a weak and fragile child has a special place in your heart. Even in Japan, ayu is only eaten fresh next to the river. Wild caught ayu is hardly found away from its source. If available, the price would be prohibitively expensive, in the region of ¥1,000 (RM38) for a little fish the size of a kembung, says Yuki Yoshimi of Akindo Inc. Tokyo, a facilitator for the ayu showcase.

Ten Japanese restaurant Signature Ayu menu promotion with chefs (from left) Chikara Yamada, Daisuke Miyake and Hisashi Yamashita.

Ten Japanese restaurant Signature Ayu menu promotion with chefs (from left) Chikara Yamada, Daisuke Miyake and Hisashi Yamashita.

Ayu thrives only in clean rivers and dam building across Japan has wiped out suitable habitats for fish, and the ayu finds itself in the middle of stimulating a growing environmental awareness in Japan.

The region famous for ayu is Gifu in central Japan where the three great rivers of Nagara, Ibi and Kiso flow. The deeply cleft mountains of Gifu hide many cold, clear springs and brooks where the finest ayu are caught.

Come June, the start of the official ayu fishing season, anglers whip out their 10m long rods and head for the mountain streams. Fishing for ayu is prohibited except during a specified season, to make sure the ayu remains a plentiful species.

Anglers bait ayu with another live ayu – ‘buddy fishing’ – taking advantage of the fish’s territorial instinct. Each ayu defends a 10m to 20m territory where it feeds on algae that clings to rocks and will attack any fish that comes near. It gets hooked when it rams the live bait.

Yamada’s sashimi starter platter of two kinds of tuna, octopus, scallop, prawn, and sea bream with el Bulli inspired “nube” soy sauce cubes.

Later in the season, in early autumn, they begin to swim downstream, growing meatier and larger. Now they are caught by diverting part of the river into a broad bamboo deck – a yana – where they are collected in a traditional fishing technique. One yana can catch tens of thousands of ayu a day.

Yamada’s sashimi starter platter of two kinds of tuna, octopus, scallop, prawn, and sea bream with el Bulli inspired “nube” soy sauce cubes.

Yamada’s sashimi starter platter of two kinds of tuna, octopus, scallop, prawn, and sea bream with el Bulli inspired “nube” soy sauce cubes.

On the Nagara River, bonfires are lit to attract ayu to fishing boats, and trained cormorants are sent to catch the fish and bring them back to the boat. This ancient way of fishing dates back 1,300 years and now serves as a tourist attraction – Charlie Chaplin was so moved by the experience he came to see it twice. Edo poet Matsuo Basho wrote two haikus about it.

Ayu of the Nagara River has been mooted for United Nations certification under the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) for sustainable, significant agriculture to safeguard indigenous knowledge and resilient ecosystems. As of 2015, it is pending approval from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Considered the most important species in Japanese freshwater fisheries, farm-raised ayu, as for wild ayu, survives in pure, fresh water. In Gifu, ayu farming channels natural spring water flowing from the same mountain streams that harbour wild ayu and Gifu’s ayu farming leads the world in both technology and technique, according to an official brochure on the region.

READ FULL STORY

http://www.star2.com/food/eating-out/2016/01/14/ayu-fish-sweet-sign-of-summer/

Ten Japanese Fine Dining

A-G-1 Grnd floor, Marc Residence

3 Jalan Pinang

50450 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-2161 5999

Open daily for lunch and dinner