555 Ice cream - Leo Lieng Seng Rama IV (Sam Yam), BKK

When TC told me it's a Thai style Hagen Daz, after I finally got to try it, I do agree to it since the texture is very condensed but smooth and melty enough. Yet, it's not too sweet at all. So who would think the look of this restaurant serves ice cream at Hagen Daz's quality, just like my friends consider the look of Mandarin Oriental?

1. The restaurant is located inside an old entertainment area which was once a glory over the time when I still didn't start my trips to Thailand. 2. the signature dessert of this shop.

3. I often told the others that to judge how good the restaurant is is to check on some minor things. The shine of this peanuts capture my eyes. Considering Bangkok is a humid hot city, keeping deep fried peanuts fresh and crispy is not that easy. Peanuts can become soft and "wet oil smelly" in a few days if the frying process, oil quality and storing is not handled well. This shop simply surprised me with this one and I kept on taking it. Besides, the light salt isn't overwhelming at all. So my first impression is "ok, something exciting is going to take place.". 4. the various sauce dipping.

5. Think it's a lost recipe. Steamed roll with pork but with some nice water chestnut. Texture wise it's not too mashy but not hard to chew. Quite a classic roll. 6. Deep fried crab meat pastry. Some semi-fat pork is inside and it's another classic one.

7. Stir fried "Shy" grass (not sure the exact term). This may be one of the few I found in BKK that be a real quick stir-fried dish. See it's not with any heavy sauce left on the plate. 8. Shark's fins. Nice broth, but the fins could have been double boiled for a longer time as it's a bit too hard to chew.

9. Salted veggie fish chunk soup. Again the broth is nice but somehow the fish chunks were not too fresh. If I made this one, I would first brown the fish chunks with some ginger, and put some Chinese celery in it to balance the fish smell. After all, I still took 2 bowls of the soup. 10. Oyster omelette. The chef is very good at cooking but the way the shop keep the seafood may have something wrong. When I checked out their kitchen's fridge, I found out they put everything in the same fridge. Next time I hope I can give them some advice in separating the seafood with some better seal boxes.

11. Stir fried black olive veggie rice. I took almost 2 bowls of it. Quite impressive - a very nice one and as good as the one I tried at Thung Kruen. 12. OK, 555 time. My first pick is Choco. Wow. the way they did it is very professional. Making ice cream requires much attention in the stiring and coolng process. During such process, better avoid as least air as possible getting inside of it. The chef really did a perfect job.

13. Vanilla. 14. Coffee.

15. We should have had 2 more cups. 16. When we tried to order the coconut ice cream, it's finished, but got told it'll be ready at around 3pm the next day. So the next day, we came here again for the coconut ice cream but the shop still isn't ready, we took a round for the choco. and green tea again.

17. OK, the coconut ice cream. Actually it's young coconut ice cream - very fresh in flavour. 18. the shop's poster about their ice cream.