Sorn - Bangkok
Dining rooms with a view of the kitchen
Rating: 17/20
Where: Bangkok, Thailand
When: Dinner for 2 on 24 February 2025
Cost per Person: Tasting menu 7200 THB, Wine Pairing 4900-8800 THB
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars, #38 on World's 50 Best Restaurants list (2024)
Why: An intensely flavorful (and spicy!) tour of Southern Thai cuisine
In November 2024, for the first time ever, Michelin awarded three stars to a restaurant in Thailand. “Sorn”, located near the center of Bangkok, serves an elevated Southern Thai cuisine, which means lots of seafood, lots of flavor and lots of spiciness. Intrigued? I sure was. Unfortunately, the first hurdle for anyone interested in dining at Sorn is the tricky reservation process. Essentially, there are three ways get a table. First, on the 15th of every month, following a post on Facebook and Instagram, the restaurant accepts what are essentially applications for reservations for the following month. Diners have to detail their travel plans and social media presence(s). It's not clear how Sorn then decides on who gets a reservation, but having lots of Instagram followers probably doesn't hurt. I got my reservation via this process, though presumably less due to my modest social media following, but because I pointed out that (at the time) it was the only three-Michelin-starred restaurant that I hadn't visited yet. The second option for reservations is to snag a table on TableCheck when they are released at noon on the 25th of every month. When I looked, tables were literally gone within seconds - demand clearly hugely outstrips supply. The third and final method is to have the right friends. Frequent visitors apparently can make reservations directly with the restaurant, and, when in a generous mood, they might just take a lucky first-time diner along.
Once that precious reservation is secured, one “only” needs to navigate the notorious Bangkok traffic to make it to the restaurant on time. Our reservation was for 6pm, but the staff was more than happy to seat us when we showed up 15 minutes early. The restaurant seems to have several different dining rooms. Ours, which was right next to the entrance, only had a single table for two. But we also saw a glass house with two tables of four that had a view of the kitchen (see photo above), and another table of four in the middle of the building. Not a tiny restaurant then, but if the table layout we saw was representative, then getting a reservation for a larger party might be considerably easier than just for two.
Sorn serves a single tasting menu, starting with individual dishes and ending with a family-style main course. Some dietary restrictions were accommodated, which in the case of my wife's pescatarian diet only required minimal changes. Two wine pairings were available, one with six, the other with nine glasses. The two pairings had only a single wine in common - a sweet vermouth. I went for the longer pairing, and the wines were all quite good, and in some cases life savers helping us cool down after the spicy cuisine. Definitely recommended for that reason alone. I was pleasantly surprised when the sommelier announced that the red wine served with the (quite extensive) main course would be refilled as needed. In fact, the sommelier was a highlight of the service team, discussing the wines as well as his reasoning behind the pairings, and even asking for feedback on his choices - an openness that's rare at this level of restaurant.
Before the our meal began, the chef himself stopped by our table to double-check any allergies or intolerances, and - most importantly - to inquire about our spice tolerance. While it's presumably possible to ask for no spice whatsoever, that would be akin to going to a sushi restaurant and asking for no fish or seafood - it's missing the point of what makes the restaurant special. We asked for a “medium” level of spice, which translates to half the regular amount. We were a bit worried, though - were we watering down our experience due to our wimpy Western palates? “Don't worry”, said the chef and continued to explain that there was no “correct” level of spice: according to him, young Thais these days have grown up on “bland Japanese food”, and would be able to tolerate hardly any spice, whereas his parent's generation might ask for twice the normal amount. And if we changed our minds, we could always alter the spice level later.
The intensity of spices is really what makes Sorn stand out from all other three-starred restaurants in the world. The flip side of this uniqueness is that it's a bit hard to “rate” the restaurant, for lack of any reasonable comperables. At times, the dinner made me feel like my first fine-dining meals, many, many years ago - overwhelmed by the experience, and not quite able to fully process it. Maybe one has to visit Sorn a few times to fully “get” it.
Throughout our dinner, the ingredients for each course were presented in a bowl - a very nice touch (see the picture above for the first course). At that point, we were also introduced to the history and significance of each dish. Overall, the service was very polished, I just wish that the courses hadn’t arrived at quite such a rapid clip. And our server's first reaction when asked to repeat a part of a dish’s description was to point out that we had a printed menu right next to us. True, but maybe not the ideal answer at a three-starred restaurant.
Anyway, finally on to the food. Our first bite was a river prawn seasoned with coriander root, garlic, black pepper and green mango, served over jasmine rice and a sago cracker. The dish was served lightly warm, the prawn was lovely and the crunchy base of sago added some good texture. This was a perfectly seasoned dish - spicy, but not too spicy 18.
Next up, an abalone from Phuket, served with green mango, ginger and mangosteen. The ingredient presentation included a live, opened abalone, which looked like it was trying to crawl off the plate - a display that I hadn't seen before, even in sushi restaurants. The (cooked) abalone was only minimally chewy. Overall, this was a sweet and acidic dish with a taste reminiscent of apples. Clearly, serving a refreshing dish after a spicy one was intentional - a pattern that would keep repeating during our meal 17.
A little deep fried fish, a silver sillago from Phuket, was served with a scallop sauce, seasoned with turmeric and topped with fried red curry leaves. The fish was very crispy, and while its head didn't taste of much, the rest was full of flavor with a lingering spiciness 17.
Three kinds of “sashimi” came next. The claw of a blue crab was topped with pickled kumquat. The crab's texture was interesting - it almost melted in one's mouth -, and it tasted fruity and lightly sweet 17. A piece of lobster from Phuket was topped with three sauces, made from mango, watermelon and cilantro, respectively. The lobster's texture had a pronounced bite, and the lightly flavored toppings gave it a nice freshness 17. Only the last of the three items, a spotted Babylon snail, was a bit spicy. The snail was tender, but still had a noticeable bite. A slightly sweet sake was paired with this course, and it countered the spiciness nicely 17.
A grilled squid was filled with burnt eggplant and lobster trimmings and topped with a squid ink sauce and pickled chilies. The squid was fresh and quite chewy, texture-wise the opposite of the creamy eggplant filling. The spice level was a step up from the sashimi 17.
Just when the spiciness was getting to us, we were served a refreshing palate cleanser: a sorbet made from a local orange variant. It only had a light citrus flavor, but this was no time to argue - really anything cooling was welcome at this moment 17.
One of the Sorn's signature dishes was next, the “crab stick”. Live blue crab was coated with a yellow chili paste and crab roe. The crab's texture was almost meaty, thicker and less airy (if that's the word) than most crabs. The roe added some creaminess and the curry paste provided an almost fruity flavor - I was reminded of tomatoes. Lastly, but not least, the dish was very, very spicy - the most of any course so far. Mostly for that reason, it was paired with a sweet vermouth, which helped a bit to alleviate the spiciness 18.
Cooling the spice down was also the purpose of the next dish, a kind of coconut soup. It incorporated coconut shoots, coconut meat, dried shrimp, dried squid and scallop oil. Very aromatic and a little bit sweet, it was simply the perfect way to cool the palate after the spicy crab stick. Very good, and just for saving our taste buds to eat another day, it deserves a 19.
Next, we got grilled cockles that were seasoned with garlic, a curry paste and topped with grated sun-dried abalone. A nice bite, not too spicy, with a fruity-ish sauce 17.
This brought us to another signature dish, a fresh vegetable salad. Its long and (too) quickly recited list of ingredients included pomelos, green mangoes, torched ginger, and mungbeans among others. The salad was mixed and served table-side. This was another dish with a hint of sweetness, and it also had some nicely crunchy rice for texture and the aromatic mungbeans to add some freshness. Very nice 18.
The main course of our dinner was centered around rice - the core of any Thai meal. After several years of experimentation, the kitchen had finally perfected a way of cooking "dancing rice". If done correctly, the rice kernels at the top layer of the clay cooking pot are standing up, having been pushed that way by the escaping steam.
Along with the rice, we were served several condiments, variously meant to spice up or cool down the dish. There was a “som hoak” chili paste, pork rinds (or dried stingray for pescatarians), sweet shrimp, a yellow curry paste, fish sauce and a raw quail egg. Also available were red guava and another fruit to cool down the palate. We first tried the rice by itself, and then with the slightly salted egg - lovely.
Afterwards, we were served a series of dishes to eat with the rice and its condiments. The first one was a catfish that came with “stinky” beans and curry. A nicely cooked fish that was not too spicy, with a nice crunch from a bean cracker underneath 18.
An omelet made with shallots and sweet basil leaves was topped with tiger prawns. The omelet was eggy on the inside and crispy and almost hairy in texture on the outside - similar to what we had seen the day before at Baan Tepa, so maybe not that uncommon in Thai cuisine. The prawns seemed a tad overcooked, but otherwise were quite good with a solid bite 17.
Stir-fried morning glory was seasoned with an abalone liver sauce, dried scallops and dried shrimp. They made for a near perfect fried vegetable course: crunchy, tender, fresh tasting and not too spicy 18.
The main dish of the main course was a green curry with beef, winter melons and roti on the side. The roti was cut into flaky pieces that were visually more similar to hash browns than the classic roti pancake shape. But otherwise, they were airy and quite good. The beef was extremely tender, it practically fell apart - very, very good. And the green curry? At some point, our server mentioned that green curries are the spiciest in Southern Thai cuisine, and she was definitely not kidding. This was the spiciest dish of the night by a considerable margin. But very, very good 18. The pescatarian version of this dish replaced the beef by a crab, which was also nicely cooked, but not quite as memorable as the beef 17.
The final part of the rice-themed main course was a plum soup made from chicken broth and fish bones that contained a charcoal-grilled stingray. This dish was actually more sweet than spicy, but at this point, our tastebuds had pretty much given up the ghost 18.
Without preamble the menu switched to desserts. First, we got a coconut ice cream with black jasmine rice, a cashew cracker and a taro pancake. The ice cream was not that sweet, which was balanced by the sweeter, nutty cashew cracker. The taro pancake had a mealy and creamy consistency. A nice combination of textures and flavors 17.
The next dish was a sago sorbet served with coconut and lotus root. Another mix of sweet and savory 16.
Recalling the chef's time in the United States when he could only get canned versions of Thai fruits, the next dish was a canned plum with plum sorbet. Slightly sweet and very fruity 17.
Then it was already time for petit fours, which were served with either Thai tea or coffee. An egg cake was fine, but not terribly exciting even after dipping it into the coffee and/or tea 14. A cassava cake was gelatinous and not very sweet 15. A watermelon rice cracker was sweeter and crunchy, but ironically didn’t taste much of watermelon 15. Roasted sticky white rice had a mochi-like consistency 15. Grilled corn and coconut tasted strongly of corn and were not very sweet 14. A mungbean cake was mealy and lightly sweet 14. Green mangoes, tamarind and agar made for a lightly spicy jelly 15. A steamed pandan layer cake was sweeter than most of the other petit fours and had a light fruit flavor 15. Finally, a coconut pancake was not sweet by itself either, but tasted amazing when eaten with the sugar provided next to it 18.
Overall: An amazing tour of Southern Thai cuisine, executed in a menu that went from spicy to cooling many times over. Almost all dishes had lots of flavor, which made for an exciting and a moving experience - a dinner unlike any other that I've had before. Together with the excellent, polished service that definitely makes it worth trying for any adventurous eater 17.
