Jok, a guy whose father and grand fathers; business is in the seafood wholesaling - for customers in Thailand, Hong Kong and other Asian places and they dominate quite a big market in Bangkok. As a kid, he ran with his father for checking out how the other restaurants making seafood, then he found his interest in cooking and developed his own skills in cooking. He then made meals for his friends and neighbours, and got highly commented. He then opened his place for entertaining more friends and other customers. His clientele now includes quite a number of high society locals and I heard that also some blue blood family members visited this shop. Anyway, my general impression is that it's really often a gimick. I think if Jok first did all the dishes by himself, it was such a nice surprise. However, I noticed some of the dishes like the prawn salad, not that fresh. Later on when I dropped by their kitchen, I realised the reason behind. He hired some people to do some preparation for him. Look at the 1st photo. See how big of that basin for those crab legs. Even though there are 4 persons making it, at such an open area of 33 degree celsius, any seafood to be exposed for more than half an hour would be a problem. So for the 2nd photo, this young guy cut the fish at a very slow motion. So look at how many fish fillets. It's the same problem. They should ask those people to put most of the cut seafood in the fridge, and take out a small amount to prepare and do that one by one. It's good though for me to notice on how a chef can keep the quality if later on I consider doing something like that. It's always some little details we would miss. OK, the 3rd photo is the sign of the shop. Quite difficult to find the shop actually and what's more you need to make a phone booking first. Now the booking is up to November for the dinnner. For the lunch, it may be 2 weeks in advance.
3 comments:
I think Sea has some similarity with Jok. Both families are in seafood business; both enjoy cooking and their friends enjoy eating their food.
My grand parents generation was on the fishing business, but not on wholesale. I still remember when I was a kid, there were lots of interesting seafood bringing to our apt., like "PP" shrimp and scallop. BTW, my father told me no one ate those food especially for mussels, they will throw away. My grand mom told me not to eat seafood attached on stones as it's considered as "wet hot" (hard to dissolve in our body). For fish, we only eat the red snapper and "big eye chicken".
You are so lucky Mr. Sea that you can get all these seafood cheap(or free). And you even throw away the mussels huh? Do you know Mussels is kind of popular here and my mom has to buy this every Sunday?
The "big eye chicken" is so rare here in LA. What we have(live fish) is the red or black Talapia, Sea Bass, and sometimes "Sink Dragon", that is about it.
Very limited.
Post a Comment