The Local: What’s in a name?

COCONUTS CRITIC’S TABLE – Strange days, these. A restaurant called “The Local” has opened in Bangkok, perhaps heralding the mainstream arrival of the locavorian movement on these shores. It’s hard not to be struck by the weirdness of this. For the aeons in which we all existed as monobrowed cavemen, muck-encrusted peasants and jungle-based hunter-gatherer folk (I believe this encompasses the full gamut of human lives till roughly the mid-second millennium), we ate local food because that was all we could get. Then global trade took off and suddenly we were all gorging ourselves on kiwifruit.

Now, from its arguable beginnings in California, the “eat local” meme is conquering the planet and chefs from Bombay to Brussels are tossing out the kiwis in favor of… well, the local equivalents. It’s the globalization of anti-globalization. This is more than mere rain on your wedding day; this is ironic.

And so back to Bangkok, where The Local is certainly not the first restaurant to hitch its wagon to localism. Perhaps no-one else, however, has really tried to own the idea the way The Local has, what with the name and that audacious definite article. So the obvious question is this: how local is The Local?

The answer? “Kind of, but not really, and sometimes too much.” That’s as clear as I can put it right now, I’m afraid, but I can also tell you this: if it keeps on serving up dishes like its fabulous kaeng kati sai bua pla thu mae klong (Thai mackerel in coconut milk and lotus stem), the restaurant will win itself fans.

Set in a 70-year-old house – pretty ancient for Sukhumvit – the restaurant exhibits a style I like to call “Ye Olde Siamese Restaurant”. If you have dined at The Blue Elephant, God ‘elp ya, you will be familiar with it. It’s all antiques and teakwood and staff in old-fashioned rustic garb. Ye Olde Siamese Restaurant conjures up a Thailand that never existed, except in certain people’s minds. It’s pleasant enough, if you don’t object too much to being spun a yarn.

The menu, one of those flowery affairs where the dishes aren’t just named but explained in soothing calligraphy, is keen to show off that dreadfully quixotic thing, “authenticity”. Many of the recipes, it explains, have been taken from old Siamese cookbooks. And – you guessed it – the word “local” appears. A lot. Scattered among the gastroblurbs are phrases like “local Thai appetizers”, “stir-fried Southern local vegetables”, “Southern style local soup”, “Thai local fish” and “local crispy miniature fish”. Yes yes, we get it. Local.

Truth to tell, it’s tough to figure out if the word really means anything more than “Thai” here, since the dishes and produce come from across the Kingdom. What’s certain, thankfully, is there are no clumsy attempts to shoehorn things like foie gras into perfectly good Thai dishes. (Though a shoehorn actually makes a pretty good scoop for foie gras. Just sayin’.)

The appetizer set (THB250) was a promising start, with five enjoyable tasters from different parts of the Kingdom arranged in couplets. Among them were a creamy khao soi kai (Northern curried noodle soup with chicken), fragrant lotus-leaf miang, shrimp and lemongrass salad, rice cracker topped with curry and a pandanus leaf encasing juicy roasted chicken.

We also went for massaman curry with chicken (THB350). An unoriginal choice, yes, but we were sucked in by the menu’s reminder that CNNGo last year anointed the dish “the most delicious dish in the world”. That’s not a thing to turn down, is it? The rendition here was its creamy-yet-robust self, if a little sweet. The potatoes were well cooked, the chicken tender and our bellies satisfied. A refreshing pomelo salad (THB220) earned its keep as a side-cum palate cleanser.

The tom jew, a hot and sour tom yam-like soup that apparently dates from the Rama V era, was rather fine too, with huge, meaty prawns and diced sweet potato. We felt it was underspiced, though it’s difficult to verify if that’s how it’s supposed to be without renting a TARDIS. (Or a deLorean. Or one of these.) The star of the show, however, was the aforementioned kaeng kati sai bua pla thu mae klong (THB240), a heavenly triumvirate of juicy, salty fish, creamy sauce and the vegetable’s crunchy counterpoint.

Alas, things took a dive on the drinks menu, itself a shabby affair in crumpled paper. The chief offenders were cocktails containing “local” Mekhong whisky and white spirits. We quaffed a few and were left feeling a bit like we’d spent the previous two hours sniffing butane. I’m sure you know how that feels. The flavors, too, were let down by the taste of cheap liquor. It’s something you just can’t mask with the likes of saffron, Thai basil and dragonfruit (actually, you can’t mask the flavor of anything with dragonfruit, fruit’s answer to polysterene). One question The Local might like to ponder is this: Do any Thais actually drink these local spirits if they can afford better?

One final point. The crowd on the evening we visited was very farang. This isn’t a bad thing per se, though it would have been reassuring to see more Thais in there. Shouldn’t a restaurant aspiring to be oh-so-very “local” serve a few more, um, locals?

The Local
02-664-0664, 02-664-3360-1
32-32/1 Sukumvit 23
Klong Toey Nue, Wattana
Bangkok, Thailand 10110
facebook.com/thelocalcuisine

Coconut’s Critic’s Table reviews are written based on unannounced visits by our writers and paid for by Coconuts Bangkok. No freebies here.

Follow Dan Waites on Twitter: @DanWaites



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