Absolutely sweet Siam
The food outlets at Siam Center get decadent with desserts for the summer
DENTISTS MIGHT want to consider posting a warning sign outside Siam Center these days – not that anyone with a sweet tooth is going to pay attention, because all of the food outlets inside are touting “Absolute Siam” dessert menus that are absolutely irresistible.
The treats trail starts on the first floor at Au Bon Pain, where there are two new flavours in brioche, the soft, buttery French bread with glorious fillings. The Strawberry Cream Cheese Brioche bulges with custard cheese, strawberry, dried cranberries and raisins, while the Chocolate Lemon Brioche with lemon cream cheese is drizzled with dark chocolate and then iced. Each costs Bt69.
Adjacent is the open-air Coffee Gallery, where Mint Mania (Bt135) comes in three freshening flavours – Choco Blue Mint Frappe, Choco Green Mint Frappe and Strawberry Mint Frappe – each topped with fluffy whipped cream and chocolate chips.
Cafe Marmalade in the cosy and friendly garden on the third floor is a great place to relax with a bowl of Coconut Milk Ice Cream with sweet sticky rice (Bt110). The toppings are served separately in a little zinc bin, including palm fruit, lotus seeds, roasted peanuts and corn.
At the Greyhound Cafe, also on the third floor, the usual tempting array of savoury dishes is augmented with sweets like the must-try Happy Toast (Bt90). You get a thick slice of generously buttered bread that’s crisp on the outside yet still soft within. The accompanying dips include condensed milk, Thai-tea custard, coffee caramel, sea-salt caramel and marmalade.
Let Them Eat Cake on the fourth floor borrows the French queen Marie Antoinette’s famously dismissive quotation about her starving subjects, but it’s ready to spoil its own followers with magnificent choices. Even the decor is straight out of “Les Miserables”, the stage musical set in revolutionary Paris, but this is a place to get ignobly decadent.
Mille-Crepe Ispahan is layers of soft crepe filled with rose cream and lychee and drizzled with raspberry sauce. Mille-feuille Noisette is caramel-coated pie pastry filled with milk chocolate, baked hazelnuts and whipped cream. Each of these is Bt145.
Elsewhere on the fourth floor, fusion restaurant On the Table, a charming Tokyo-style cafe, proffers the Sweet Garden (Bt280) – soft cheesecake topped with edible petals of carnation and rose, the latter coated in sugar! On the side are panna cotta draped in rose-berry sauce and strawberry sorbet ice cream.
There are 20 different flavours of low-fat Italian gelato at Melt Me, but you also need to sample the Chocolate Toast, which arrives swaddled in vanilla ice cream and sprinkles of marshmallows, banana slices and chocolate sauce, and Matcha Toast, swimming in vanilla and green-tea ice cream, red-bean paste and whipped cream. These are Bt249 apiece.
Le Waffle By Love to Eat is no ordinary waffle house with its batter flavoured with Mediterranean shrimp, Parmesan chicken and baked spinach with cheese. The dessert menu is equally impressive with a freshly baked Triple Chocolate Waffle (Bt105), using authentic Belgian chocolate and served with chocolate ice cream and extra-rich chocolate sauce.
Korean restaurant Dak Galbi is best known for the hearty hot-plate dish of the same name – marinated meat stir-fried with tteok (rice cake, pronounced “tuck”) and vegetables. But there’s also the wonderfully refreshing bingsu, shaved ice with various toppings like mixed fruit, banana-choco and matcha-red bean. Choose any of these for Bt195.
