David R. MacIver's Blog

Plaza

It’s day two of the daily writing and I’m already struggling, so I’m going to adopt my advice to others: You can write about anything!

Anyway let me tell you about my current second-favourite¹ restaurant in London, Plaza. It’s actually a small chain, but I’ve only been to the Borough market one (because it’s near enough to work to be convenient).

I eat a lot of Thai food, because it’s a pretty reliable way to satisfy my dietary requirements. Most of it’s… well, it’s good, but it’s not good Thai food, it’s just that it’s a perfectly serviceable rendition of a cuisine that’s pretty good by default. It’s also presumably quite westernized. It’s also very standardized, as part of the Thai government’s program of “gastrodiplomacy”, which among other things promotes a fairly standardized menu, more representative of central Thailand and Bangkok than the whole of the country.²

Plaza isn’t that.

I’ve never actually been to Thailand, but when I’ve taken people there who have, they’ve always been impressed at how authentically like being in Thailand it feels. There’s a lot of Thai signage, inconveniently bad canteen-style chairs and tables, Thai movie posters up, etc. The way I’ve described it is “trying too hard to seem authentic, but also succeeding at it”. It’s a tricky balance to strike, but they seem to have managed. Oddly, I think if they’d tried slightly less hard, it would have ended up seeming more fake, but it goes so far that it ends up seeming slightly self-aware.

The food is also really good. Partly this is novelty - I’ve not had much exposure to Southern Thai food - but not actually that much because I keep ordering the same dishes over and over again (though I do also try their specials when they sound good). Mostly it’s that it’s well-prepared, extremely flavourful, and distinctively itself.³

My standard order there is Jasmine Rice, Yam Strawberry (a spicy strawberry and fish salad), Khua Kling Muu (stir fried ground pork), and a fried egg. You should not order this unless you have a high spice tolerance. The Yam Strawberry has a bit of a kick to it, and the Khua Kling Muu is literally the spiciest thing on their menu. Slightly too spicy for me if I’m honest, but so flavourful that I keep coming back to it anyway. I don’t always order this combination, but particularly if I’m in a large enough group that we’re sharing dishes I’ll try to make sure they’re all on the order.

I’m also a big fan of the Pad Phet Pla Tord - whole crispy sea bass. You can really only order that to share though. It’s not that much food (it’s priced at two mains, but it’s not really quite two mains quantity of food), but it feels inappropriate to eat one on your own, and also it feels like it doesn’t quite want to be the main meal. When we ordered it this Friday, we picked the fish clean absolutely down to the bones, and also drained most of the sauce from it to season our rice.

One of the reasons the food is so good is that it uses actually authentic ingredients: They’ve got a nursery in Dorset where they’ve built a jungle microclimate, so are able to grow many of the herbs, spices, and vegetables that you’d actually get in Thailand. Most Thai restaurants have to make do with small quantities of expensive imports or their best attempts at local substitutes.

This is, unfortunately, an instance of the classic problem of “white guy gets praised for his mastery of other culture’s cuisine”. There are plenty of Thai people working there (though it’s very mixed. I think about half of the front of house staff are Thai), but the owner, Luke Farrell, is a white British man. He did live in Thailand for 20 years, and these restaurants are apparently a recreation of his favourite places there, so I think he has legitimate credentials. Certainly the results bear this out.

I don’t necessarily think this is bad. Certainly I don’t think Farrell has done anything wrong by running these restaurants - I think he’s done something great actually. Not necessarily in some sort of altruistic sense, but he’s made a great restaurant (presumably several, but I’ve no first hand evidence of the others). I’d like to live in a world with more restaurants like this, and I’d like it if it were easier for immigrants to be the ones running them, but I think in the absence of that world I don’t want to object to others doing it.⁴

There are a few somewhat less authentic elements to the place too. They’ve got a great drinks menu, which I rarely partake of because I’m usually there at lunch, but it’s definitely more like a London drinks menu with a lot of Thai inspiration and some genuinely Thai entries. They’re still pretty good. I had the Tang Duan Durian the other day, which was a really interesting drink. My only complaint is that it needed more durian.