Assuring that every dish will provide authentic Thai taste, the chef
recommended the restaurant visitors to “eat like Thai people eat”
so that they can enjoy it to the fullest, writes Umer Nangiana
If you are a fan of all those Thai curries, different kinds of savory soups and the sugary delights from Thailand but have been missing that original Thai tinge, here is a chance to satiate your taste buds.
Three celebrated chefs from Thailand are in town for almost a week and they are preparing some popular authentic Thai dishes with original ingredients. They promise if you keep visiting Crossroads Kitchen, you will get a different taste in Thai curries each of the six days.
The Crossroads Kitchen in Marriott Marquis City Centre Doha Hotel is celebrating a six-day Thai festival featuring some of the finest Thai food served in an authentic ambience with traditional Thai music streaming across the dining hall.
The festival also features a traditional Thai dance performance to be held today besides a cooking class for the spouse of the Thai ambassador to Qatar and her friends which was held on Wednesday. It will end on October 5.
In these six days, you can feast on the dishes prepared by Chef Supapit Opatvisan and his colleagues Chef Nuttaphong Teeranuntspichit and Chef Phonganan Sirisaengphaiwan. The three chefs are instructors at Suandusit Rajabhat University in Bangkok.
“We try to cover everything in terms of Thai cuisine: soups, curry, stirred and fried Thai dishes. We are preparing some dishes from the Thai street food besides the menu dishes of Tom Yum Goong, Thai Curries, Papaya Salad, Phad Thai, Satays, Thai Spring Rolls and much more,” Chef Opatvisan told Community.
Like a typical South East Asian cuisine, no one dish resembles even a slight bit with the other. The best way to experience the distinct taste of each one of these lightly prepared dishes is that you fill a plate with a chunk of everything on the menu and forget what is what.
Allow your taste buds to distinguish between tastes before you go on to confirm what it was that you ate! From fried meat dishes and curries to seafood, everything is cooked with a complete balance in spices. With the raw taste abundantly left in them, you can actually taste the authentic Thai spices that are used to prepare the dishes. This is what the Thai dishes are known for.
“For some of the dishes, we can’t find ingredients here so we brought them from Thailand. For example for today, we have stir-fried chicken with holy basil. Here we could not find holy basil, so we brought it all the way from Thailand. We have tried to make it very authentic in terms of Thai flavours,” said Chef Opatvisan.
The main menu will be changed every other day. However, the one for live cooking stations offering phad Thai, papaya salad and noodles will remain the same.
At the live cooking stations, the chef said, they make the sauce in advance. Then, they cook the ingredients with tofu, salad rice or noodles with phad Thai sauce. Everything is then mixed with the prawns and some onion.
They have two types of soups. One is a clear soup which is not spicy. “And we also have the spicy soup which is called Tom Yum. In tom yum soup what is different is only the meat. It is like the soup remains the same but we change the meat from chicken to prawn or fish,” said the Chef.
“For example, if we make it with fish, we may include something special for the fish while the main ingredient remains the same,” he added.
Coconut is an essential ingredient in all almost Thai curries. At the Crossroads Kitchen, they are offering multiple varieties every day including one of the world’s tastiest curries. “Our special one is the Beef Massaman curry which has become one of the most delicious dishes in the world,” said Opatvisan.
This particular curry has more than 20 ingredients included in the curry paste. “And it takes a long time to prepare it because we have to make the meat tender. It is a little difficult to make because we have beef and tomato; and we have to make everything tender at the same time,” said the chef.
Assuring that every dish will provide authentic Thai taste, the chef recommended the restaurant visitors to “eat like Thai people eat” so that they can enjoy it to the fullest. Opatvisan said the Thai dessert was the most special.
“As you can see it looks really beautiful and this specially takes a very long time to make,” the chef said referring to a table decorated with colourful and fragrant sweet dishes.
The festival, being held in collaboration with the Royal Thai Embassy and Qatar Airways at Crossroads Kitchen, will also allow its visitors a chance to win some fantastic raffle prizes. These include two tickets to Bangkok provided by Qatar Airways as well as vouchers including a three-night stay in a luxurious Executive Room with lounge access at the JW Marriott Bangkok Hotel.
“We are proud to bring yet another authentic experience to the people of Qatar with this six-day festival, featuring elements of the Thai culture including a traditional dance performance and a sumptuous array of national dishes,” said Andreas Wissdorf, General Manager of the Marriott Marquis City Center Doha Hotel.
Thai cooking places an emphasis on lightly prepared dishes with strong aromatic components and a spicy edge. It is known for its complex interplay of fundamental taste senses in the overall meal such as sour, sweet, salty, bitter and spicy.
At the Crossroads Kitchen, a traditional hay-tent designed in line with the Thai theme has been pitched in the food court to serve both conventional and traditional drinks to the diners during the festival.
The multi-cuisine restaurant offers, in its specials, Friday brunch, Indian Nights and Seafood nights. The Friday brunch is a delicious international brunch of Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian, Indian, Arabic and more.
Tiger prawns, mussels, tuna, oysters and the freshest sushi in town decorate the menu for the restaurant’s seafood nights every Thursday. You can try the Mongolian stir-fry station where the chef mixes chicken, beef, lamb or seafood with crunchy vegetables. They also have a mouth-watering chocolate fountain and pastries for that sweet tooth.
For the lovers of Indian cuisine, the Crossroads Kitchen hosts Indian nights every Wednesday. You can savour authentic biryani, curry, laksa, koftas, tandoori, samosas and more Indian dishes besides the live cooking stations featuring all your favourites from the North, South, East and West of India.
