Tuesday, March 18, 2014

TOM TOM


My love for Thai food begins around 3 years ago when I was in the period of travel back and forth to Bangkok for buying trip. Those buying trips for Lemon were tiring and super exhausted, but boy I loveeeee those times. The city is definitely one of my favorite in Asia. If you are a foodie and haven't stepped foot in Bangkok, I strongly suggest you to. The city is heaven for foodie. Everything is so delicious and cheap! 

It wasn't easy to find good Thai food in town and I always excited to try one. Last Saturday night, my family and I went to try Tom Tom, the newly opened Thai at Grand Indonesia. I've spotted the place during my mouthwatering martabak time at the coffee shop in front of them weeks ago and wanted to try ever since.


They took place at the former location of Jun Njan. It was super packed that we have to wait around 15 mins for a table. The interior was designed in a modern minimalist way. Color shades of chairs and sofas, open kitchen concept, shelves with displays resembling of Thai's culture and the elephant hand painting at the back of the walls. It was pretty good for a local Thai restaurant. The owner, who happen to be around at the time did share that their chef is Siamese (Thai).


Yam Ma Muang (38k)
Refreshing mango salad comes with choices of calamari for 38k or shrimp for 48k. We chose the first one. The salad was sweet and sour, nice flavor very refreshing. The calamari was nicely fried, crunchy on the outside, tender on the inside.

Kai Ho Bai Teay (40k)
Deep fried chicken wrapped in pandan leaves and served with sweet soya sauce. The chicken was surprisingly tender. A bit lack of seasoning but it was covered when it was dipped with the sauce. 

Pad Keprau Kai (48k)
Stir fry of minced chicken with sweet basil and red chilli. This was my favorite Thai dish back in Bangkok. There was a hawker stall I regularly go to back then and I always always order this to top on my steamed rice. Tom Tom's version was pretty good. I believe the key to a good Thai dish depends on the seasoning, and they put it just right. Only too bad it didn't comes with options of beef.

Pad Prik Pao (50k)
Their white mussels cooked with Thai chilli sauce was so goood that even mom can't stop sipping on the sauce. It was spicy with a hint of sourness. Generous of mussels too.

Red Curry Duck (78k)
Tom Tom have three choices of curry:
Panang (a mixture of red chilli paste with ground peanut curry)
Red curry (red chilli paste with pineapple and sweet basil)
Green curry (green chilli paste curry with eggplants, kaffir lime leaves and sweet basil)

Each of the curry comes with choices of chicken, duck, beef or vegetables. We chose red curry with duck meat and oh it was so good. It was my favorite dish of the night. The curry was light yet full of flavor. Fragrant and the duck meat was just so tender. Delish! 

Khao Niaw Durian (45k)
Sweet glutinous sticky rice topped with durian cream and coconut cream. Initially we chose the one with mangoes but they ran out of it, so we kuai kuai went with durian, though I never really like sticky rice with durian, it was just too sweet combination. Tom Tom's one didn't meet our expectation. Well the sticky rice was moist and good, but they didn't use real durian, instead it was mixture of durian fruit with some sort of pandan cream or sugar, tasted like jam. Plus super pricey too! 45k for the dessert was way too pricey.

Ruling out the desserts, I would say we had a great dinner experience at Tom Tom and they are a good addition for Jakarta's Thai food scene. 

TOM TOM
Grand Indonesia 5th flr West Mall
Jl. MH Thamrin No.1 
Jakarta

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I've never found any thai restaurant here in Jakarta that can resembles the original taste of super delicious and tasty thai food in Bangkok. Except maybe for Chandara, that one is acceptable. But no one can deliver the good Thai dessert yet! Most of them are disappointing, I don't just know why.

Crystal Tika said...

LOVE THAI FOOD! you should try mango sticky rice when you see one on a menu.. definitely worth it <3

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