Baking beautiful

IT’S DEFINITELY not the place to stop if you are in a hurry but anyone looking for a comfy cafe that offers great food would do well to choose Pastale, a small and friendly bakery and coffee shop on Wireless Road Soi 1.

Throbbing at lunchtime as owner Benjarat Itsarayanphong juggles baking, cooking, preparing salads and brewing the coffee, the 20-seat eatery has become a favourite with office staff working nearby. 

“I offer home-made bakery items as well as the same easy-to-cook dishes that I prepare at home. The service isn’t fast and it takes a while for the orders to reach the table. But customers still like Pastale,” says the 30-something Benjarat with a smile.

Located in a quiet residential building, the 50-square-metre eatery is simply decorated with wooden tables and chairs dotting the white ceramic floor. Books and magazines on food, home decor and art and design, most of them from Benjarat’s personal collection, line the shelves, offering the opportunity to escape the mad world outside for a while.

Benjarat’s mother was a great cook and she spent a great deal of time in the kitchen as a child. After graduating with a degree in sociology, she headed to the UK to study marketing and found part-time work in a local restaurant there. Back in Bangkok and with a good job in a marketing company, she decided one day that she could no longer cope with the fast life and quit.

Benjarat later signed up for a workshop at Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Culinary School where she learned the basics of the bakery business. She started selling her sweet treats through Facebook two years ago and has also shared her recipes on Instagram, where she boasts more than 3,000 followers.

“One of my followers told me about this space for rent on Wireless Soi 1 and said it would be an ideal location. It was challenging financially but these days Pastale is doing well,” she says.

She bakes about five sweet treats a day and a firm favourite with her customers is classic butter or lavender scone served with clotted cream and preserve priced at Bt70 a set. The soft bake cookies served warm with Valrhona chocolate and topped with vanilla ice cream (Bt95) are also popular as is the latest addition to the menu, red velvet strawberry crumble waffle (Bt125) – a delicious combination of the crumbling and the chewy topped with strawberry sauce, fresh cream and almond crumble.

Benjarat also offers 10 savoury dishes. For a light snack, go for the smoked salmon salad with ebiko spicy cream sauce (Bt165), which sees the Scottish smoked served on a bed of salad vegetables and home-made waffles. The cream sauce, which contains ground, dried chilli, adds a hefty kick.

For a heavier dish, opt for hamburg beef or pork steak with demigras sauce (Bt155 for pork and Bt175 for beef) and enjoy it with a warm waffle or jasmine rice. 

Another pleasing dish is chicken mustard with rice (Bt165). The chicken thigh is marinated in three kinds of mustard – brown, wholegrain and Dijon – then cooked for seven hours at a very low temperature. Other options include pasta pork meat ball, stewed beef/pork green curry with rice, and slow-cooked pork rib with rice – Bt165 a dish.

Pastale also offers a variety of hot and cold coffees, teas and chocolate priced from Bt65 to Bt105.

 

 

SWEET TREATS

>>Pastale is at Suthawong Building on Wireless Soi 1 of Wireless Road. It’s open Tuesday to Saturday, from 11am to 5pm. Call (089) 811 2576 or visit Facebook.com/The Pastale.