Breakfast in Bangkok
We’re back home from our 5th stay in Bangkok in 9 months and I’m getting used to the city and finding my way around. We’ve stayed for a variety of reasons, time periods and in most cases in 4* accommodation but what is depressingly consistent every time is that breakfast is really bad.

Now I love a good hotel breakfast and the British B&B’s can’t be beaten in my eyes. So I wasn’t expecting to be blown away but I was expecting, well, somehow, more. Take the last place we stayed in, The Davis Bangkok http://www.davisbangkok.net/ courtesy of Pete’s medical insurance so we can’t really grumble. Unbelievably we had stayed across the road at the President Park previously and at that time I had said I would love to stay somewhere like The Davis one day; it looks all swish and art deco from the outside and styles itself ‘Bangkok’s first boutique hotel’. The room was certainly elegant with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths big enough to swim in. But breakfast! The juices were not fresh and too sweet and over the 8 days we stayed there no variety, just orange, pineapple and tomato every day. Three types of tired cereal on offer; corn flakes, chocolate flakes, muesli. Yuck. Three types of yoghurt, all sweet, even the plain one. Always papaya, watermelon and pineapple; fresh at 6am maybe but by 9am it all looked, well, tired again. Horrible, horrible chicken sausage on the hot selection, dreadful plastic ‘bacon’, some very odd scrambled egg and completely tasteless pancakes. The maple syrup was not maple syrup but maple flavoured syrup. The jam was strawberry, there was marmalade and it was all tasteless, over-processed and sweet. The pastries lived in a warming case rendering them dry and inedible, the bread basket was full of bread that was full of air and even the toast was limp and tasteless. There was an egg station! With a tired chef making omelette and such. He couldn’t poach eggs and you had to watch him like a hawk so he didn’t overcook the scramble (no-one touched the stuff on the hot plate). A cauldron of boiled eggs provided eggs with loose white and black-rimmed slimy yolks, quite a feat day after day. It was just yuck! We thought at first the coffee was decent but it was a mirage; it was in fact watery and cold. They managed to provide cafetieres in the rooms, why not do the same downstairs?

Frustrating, but on that occasion at least we didn’t pay. We’ve also stayed at The Chatrium (see post One Night in Bangkok) where they even had a sushi station for breakfast. Alas, much promised but not much delivered. The President Park http://www.presidentpark.com/ nice rooms and good location but again, totally forgettable and boring breakfast, somewhere up on the 6th floor so you felt like you were in an airport lounge. The worst place we stayed was The House by the Pond http://www.housebythepond.com/ which again promised so much (old colonial building, smothered in greenery and statuary etc) but the rooms were not only old, darkly panelled and small, they were dirty. The bathroom ceiling was falling in, the lights and the aircon didn’t work, terrible reception on the TV and our balcony didn’t lock. OK for us but definitely not OK with a toddler around, especially as the ‘balcony’ was essentially a space for the ancient aircon units. Luckily for them they didn’t even provide breakfast so we didn’t have that torture to endure.

But that was in fact its saving grace because across from the entrance was the amazing and fabulous Gastro 1/6. To our total surprise (and I was very cross on finding out we had booked somewhere without breakfast) it served easily the best breakfast either of us have had for years. The full English was fresh and tasty, with the addition of spinach and the sweetest tomato, beautiful bacon and sausages and what tasted like home-made bread. Proper coffee, French jam and butter and freshly pressed juices of your choice. We tried the French toast, divine! And even ordered peanut butter and banana on toast for Alfie which I assumed would be yuck but turned out to be heaven. Truly, this breakfast was so good that on our last visit we made a special visit for a treat one day. They only open at 8.30am so not always practical for those of us with small children, and they close at 3pm as they also serve lunch (which we never tried but going by the breakfast should be awesome). They are not open on Mondays. They do have a Facebook page where people send photos of the food!

Nestled in a leafy corner by an art gallery (RMA) on a little soi near Sukhumvit 22 it really is well worth a visit and we can HIGHLY RECOMMEND it should you be in town. I for one can’t wait to go back!

http://bk.asia-city.com/restaurants/bangkok-restaurant-reviews/gastro-16-rma-institute