Telephone: 020 7333 1234
Address: Namh, The Halkin, 5-7 Halkin Street, London SW1.
Dinner for two, including wine and service, £120.
Why is it that restaurants in fancy hotels always seem to look like club-class airport lounges, only without the free drinks? The restaurant at The Halkin in London's Belgravia, called Nahm (the Thai word for water), has the added bonus of looking like a club-class lounge built from Ikea flat-packs. It is an orgy of blonde wood - floors, room dividers, tables - so pristine it could easily be mistaken for laminate. The effect is not helped by the bright lighting which makes it feel like somewhere you are meant to move through rather than linger in.
The chef at Nahm is the Australian David Thompson, regarded by some as the greatest Thai chef in the world. I find it a little odd, not to say uncomfortable, that the man regarded as the world's greatest Thai chef by the restaurant world should be a white Australian. I don't doubt his breadth of knowledge: he lived there for years and has advised the Thai government on the country's culinary history. It just feels a touch colonial; an uneasy impression not helped by the pecking order among the front-of-house staff, where Asian waiters often gave way to more white Australians. We asked one waiter for help navigating the menu who, after a feeble attempt to make us give up and order the £47 set menu, told us he would send over the expert, a white Australian woman. Why couldn't he do it? I'm not suggesting racism among the staff; just some bizarre, unconscious notion about the way service in expensive hotel restaurants is performed.
Our waitress tried, like her predecessor, to suggest we go for the £47 set. Again we declined. Order what you like, she said. Yes, but are the ones at the top starters or main courses and how many do we need? The prices, so often a reasonable guide to where a dish should sit in a meal, rise and fall like waves on a stormy sea: from £9.50 then up to £16.50, back down to £10.75 then up to £21.75. One thing is clear. All of them are far higher than the prices I have seen in any other Thai restaurant, ever. In a world defined by price tags we surely, therefore, had to be on for something terrific, unusual, even unprecedented.
I think you can see this coming. The food eaten by myself and my companion, Danielle, who has spent time in Thailand, was certainly good. There were a couple of high points. But it did not redefine my understanding of Thai food. I was left with those familiar flavour memories: of sweet and sour, of nut and chilli and coriander, just as I am after any good Thai meal.
We began with tiny mahor, curious servings of minced prawns and chicken cooked in palm sugar and served on pieces of pineapple or stuffed inside mandarin segments. They were trumped by the one dish I would describe as truly diverting: a dainty mixture of ground salmon and watermelon wrapped inside a green leaf.
After that, the dishes were fine and workmanlike but, apart from one instance, rarely more than that. An aromatic duck curry with potatoes was a good, dun-coloured stew with tender meat, but it hardly warranted the price tag of £20.75. The aubergine in a salad had a strong smokiness and came with expertly soft-boiled eggs which, Danielle said, was an authentic touch. The most alluring dish was a plate of outrageously tender honey-roasted belly pork. I could have eaten a huge plate of that - and died doing so.
It was served with an over-powering relish of salted duck eggs and a crisp fish cake, which reminded me of something. For a minute or two, I couldn't put my finger on it. Then it came to me: gefilte fish. This opens up possibilities for a new school of Thai-Jewish fusion cooking. Green curry with kneidelach anyone? No, perhaps not. Unfortunately, the rice served with the mains was dry and lacklustre rather than moist and sticky. Happily, a dessert of sticky black rice with a coconut cream, which we shared, was rich and lush.
Service was slow and tentative, with under-waiters occasionally holding a few feet from the table with our dishes until the person with the appropriate authority to place it before us arrived. Eventually we had to tell one of them that it was OK for her to complete the job herself. We drank a bottle of Alsatian Riesling from the list of house whites at £22.50 and the bill came to just shy of £120. The pity is that I really wouldn't mind eating this food again. But not at these prices, not with this service and not in this room. Which probably means I won't.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
