Telephone: 020-7333 1234
Address: The Halkin, 5 Halkin Street, London SW1
He looked a bit harassed for a legend. David Thompson had clearly had a pressing day in the kitchen. He may not be a household name here, but in his native Australia the man is a god, and in Thailand he's one above that. Once upon a time, he owned and cooked in the most celebrated restaurant in Sydney, Darley Street Thai (as well as one or two others). Then, one fine day, he closes them all down and offs to Thailand to consult at Suan Dusit, the Thai cooking institute in Bangkok and further his collection of Thai classic recipes. That was about three years ago. Now, for some reason best known to himself, he has moseyed on into London with quiet purpose, in much the same manner as Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider, and taken up residence at the Halkin Hotel, where he is doing what he does best.
I don't claim to be a world authority on Thai cooking, or, indeed, anything, but most of what I have eaten in this country has struck me as being a bit on the crude and coarse side. This is perfectly acceptable in cheapo places such as the Bedlington Café, the immortal Anna's Café and the innumerable pub dining rooms that Thai cooking seems to have colonised, but less so in pukka restaurants. I've been able to appreciate the appeal of Thai food, its fresh flavours, the zing of chilli, the crunch of sugar, but I haven't grasped its soul. Now, I think I may have.
The Doc and I settled in for nahm arharn, for what is described as a traditional Thai meal. It turned out to be a lunch of many parts. This sense of multiplicity is increased by the fact that several individual dishes themselves come in any number of individual bowls, from which you are invited to compose your own helping. So, for example, yam pla grop gap prik yuak pao, or salad of salted trout with grilled corn peppers, to give the short-form version, came as about four separate elements - fish, peppers, relish and veg. So you get quite a bit to eat, even if there are nominally only five courses.
The second thing that struck me was the superlative quality of the ingredients. The betel leaves, which held the ground salmon, salmon eggs and watermelon, had not been sitting around outside some store in Chinatown all week. They were bright, glossy and delicately perfumed. Ginger, where used, has a fruity roundness I don't remember noticing before. Coconut was light and fragrant, pineapple sweet and unassertive, and so on and so on.
The third aspect to Thai cooking on this scale is its labour intensity. That's why you go to restaurants, I suppose. It's not just the dicing, chopping, marinading, and frying or stewing. The many elements to one dish is one aspect of this, but equally there are obviously several stages to the preparation of many of the elements, as well as to their final assembly. There's trout to be salted, prawns to be minced, relishes to be made. I worked out that the geng jeut pla meuk yord sai, or clear soup of squid with chicken, samphire and shitake mushrooms needed no less than 15 ingredients to pull off.
Fourth, and finally, this is virtuoso cooking of the highest order. It is subtle, profoundly flavoured, artfully composed and beautifully balanced. Each mouthful brings a sequence of tastes. Each taste is vivid, clear and precisely defined: ginger, chilli, coconut, palm sugar, garlic, chicken, one after the other. It's like having a mouthful of wind-chimes. The tastes are complemented by an equally mouth-popping range of textures, from the almost dry and chewy crisp salted trout to the crisp white around the deep-fried egg to sexily slippery sago in one of the puddings. But every flavour, every texture has its point or counterpoint. In short, and in long, it was damned yummy.
The prices at Nahm will come as something of a shock to those used to Thai food as the new Indian or Chinese - ie, cheap filler. It isn't cheap, though it is filling. The nahm arharn is set at £47 a head. Individual courses go as high as £20.50. (And that's before you tiptoe around a stiffly overpriced wine list.) But very fresh ingredients from the other side of the world, highly skilled, highly geared cooking and food as dazzling as any being currently cooked in London, won't come cheap. But then, neither do they at Gordon Ramsay, Neat or the Lindsay House, and that's the kind of class we're talking about.
I wouldn't recommend Nahm as one of the world's great visual experiences. The marblised floor is like that in an Italian railway buffet, and the lights seem to have been lifted from an airport waiting area, circa 1950. The decor has a subtly Oriental cast to it, perhaps the product of the prevailing old gold colouring, teak tables and some vaguely Asian screens. It's all very comfortable in an utterly unmemorable kind of way. But the service is knowledgeable and canny, and the food - well, the food is from another universe.
· Open Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12.30-2.30pm; dinner, all week, 7-11pm (10pm Sun). Menus: Lunch, Nahm arhan (set-price traditional meal), £47; dinner, three-course set meal, £22.50. All major credit cards. Wheelchair access and WC.
