Dinner on the fifth

KNOWN FOR its cutting edge, multi brand fashions, Siwilai now appeals to shoppers’ palates too with two dining destinations, Siwilai Cafe and Siwilai City Club, on the fifth floor of Central Embassy. 
Boasting a cosy and family-friendly ambience, Siwilai Cafe is a relaxing all-day dining hangout right next door to the Siwilai fashion store and aims to complement the retail experience with an offering of comfort foods. Wood dominates the space, which also features a marble counter bar, a large window that allows the light to stream in and a spacious terrace overlooking the rarely-seen downtown gardens of the British Embassy and Nai Lert Park.

Siwilai Cafe is a relaxing allday dining hangout offering a wide range of comfort foods.

With the festive season rapidly approaching, Siwilai Cafe is offering a set menu full of seasonal cheer, mixing beetroot, mixed berries and green leaves to present a joyful collation in red and green. The healthy Roast Chicken Breast seasoned with salt and pepper is served on a bed of quinoa and barley cooked with beetroot, cherry vinegar and olive oil and dressed with sunflower sprouts, cherry tomatoes and roasted cashew nut. The set is completed with Mixed Berries Trifle – a cold pudding made of layers of chocolate sponge cake with raspberry jam and vanilla mousse and decorated with granola and pomegranate seeds.

Roast Chicken Breast and Mixed Berries Trifle

There’s even a matching drink of the month – White Chocolate Cranberry Frappe (Bt220), which blends fresh milk, white chocolate and cranberry sauce then tops the mix with whipped cream and dried berries. 
Another dish is the classic Thai breakfast dish of joke or rice porridge (Bt210) that comes with a sous-vide onsen egg, chunks of braised pork belly with Chinese five spices, pickled radish and fried garlic.

Grilled Brioche with Chicken Livers

A must-try is the Grilled Brioche (Bt280) topped with sauteed chicken livers, bacon, mushroom, onion jam and Chinese spinach. 
Opposite Siwilai Cafe is the brand-new, restaurant-and-bar complex Siwilai City Club, which offers an eclectic array of dining and recreational options in seven zones across the 1,200 square-metre area.
With multiple points of access from within Central Embassy, the experience and approach changes with each visit. A city-meets-beach concept is communicated at the boardwalk entrance, where blue ombre-stained white oak planks of various sizes and thickness, are paired with indigo teak shutters and corrugated metal planters in various shapes and sizes.

 

 Siwilai City Club employs city-meets-beach concept with an array of dining options and multi zones. 

The shutters are then overlaid with a curvilinear neon light installation, acting as a beacon from within the mall. Visible from all levels in the mall’s central atrium, the neon light installation is experienced differently based on the vantage point, From above, and straight-on, the installation is abstract, but from below, it reads “Beach in the Sky” in Thai script.

The Eatery is decked out with tree installation by Seijun Nishihata.

For this special month, Siwilai City Club has worked with Japanese botanical gardener Seijun Nishihata to create a festive atmosphere with tree and plant installations. The indoor dining option called the Eatery is decked out as a white forest with pine trees evoking a snowy ambience while the outdoor terrace is home to a three-metre-high Christmas wreath composed of different rare local plant species.
The cabanas on the Terrace are popular options when the weather is fine and great to kick back and enjoy good meals with live music and a city view as the backdrop. At new zone the Grill, you pick your preferred meat from the chicken, pork, beef, lamb and sausage on offer and it’s then grilled to order.

The City Lounge

Designed as a social club, the air-conditioned City Lounge has comfy sofas perfect for conversations over cocktails and tapas. Adjacent is the Sports Bar equipped with a long table and LED screens attached to all four walls ensuring you never miss matches no matter where you’re sitting. 
“We try to use local, seasonal ingredients as much as possible and our cooking style is contemporary. Each of the dining zones has its own menu. We want to offer a variety of food options with easy-to-understand approaches that cater to customers of different ages and lifestyles,” says chef Pita Visaratanond.

Soft Shell Crab Garlic Salad and Herbal Honey Clementine Mole 

The Eatery has a bistro-style menu that includes nibbles, single dishes and plates to share. Special this month is Soft Shell Garlic Crab Salad (Bt440). The local crab is sauteed with garlic and chilli and served with fresh leaves of mizuna, red spinach, sunflower sprout, as well as tomato and thinly sliced fresh mango, radish and onion. The clear dressing is a sweet-and-sour combo made from lemon juice, fish sauce, and sugar.

Ocean Trout

The East-meets-West delight is Ocean Trout (Bt850). Here the generous chunk of seared trout is served with rice noodles and spicy crabmeat yellow curry and local cha plu leaves.
Quick meals including freshly made sandwiches and burgers can be ordered at the Deli. The most popular dish is the Cheese Burger (Bt380) made with juicy Angus beef, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickled cucumber and mayonnaise-based sauce in a home-made bun. It is served with fries and for an extra Bt50 you can enjoy a few strips of bacon too.

Cheese Burger

The Terrace offers an extensive list of drinks from cocktails and spritzes to the much-loved classic gin and tonic as well as non-alcoholic options like home-made artisanal sodas and freshly brewed iced teas and coffees.
Mixologist Narakorn Jiracharoensri has whipped up special cocktail of the month, Herbal Honey Clementine Mole (Bt290). It’s a combination of infused orange vodka, smoked honeycomb with cloves, ginger beer, kumquat orange, and sage leaves.
Siwilai’s signature cocktails include the SOX (Bt350) and the Earl Grey Longan Gin & Tonic (Bt320) in which dried longon and Earl Grey tea leaves are infused with gin for a unique flavour before being dressed with pomegranate seeds and thin slices of cucumber.

 SOX and Earl Grey Longan Gin & Tonic

“The ‘S’ in SOX stands for Siwilai’s secret blended rum and the ‘O’ for orange cardamom syrup. The ‘X’ refers to Xocolatl bitters and the spicy chocolate flavour,” says Narakorn.
Siwilai City Club also offers Christmas treats with all-you-can-eat buffet on December 24 and 25, from 6 to 10pm with jazz performances by Didier Mpondo and Darrel Kelly. The menu includes soft shell crab burger, grilled pork neck hotdog, fresh and fried oyster pancakes, grilled whole pork and seafood. It costs Bt3,800-plus per person.

FESTIVE FLAVOURS
Siwilai Cafe is open from 10am to 8pm from Sunday to Thursday and until 9pm on Friday and Saturday. Call (02) 160 5836.
Siwilai City Club is open daily from 11am to midnight. Call (02) 160 5631.
Keep updated at www.SiwilaiBKK.com.