Lavish Meal at Sawatdee, Part 1

*Notice: Sawatdee has since been closed down for business.

If you have been following my blog, I’m sure you have read my praises for Sawatdee, a humble little Thai restaurant smacked in the middle of Bandar Puteri, Puchong. The food were gorgeous and the service was friendly.

I got a call from Somjit, the owner (can’t recall the date but it was before Chinese New Year for sure) after my first visit in November, asking me to drop by, as she’s gonna revamp the menu and will have a photo session (taking pictures for the menu) on that particular Sunday.

She got herself a real professional photographer that day. That guy was well equipped with lightings, Mac laptop, props, numerous camera lenses and so on. I just can’t resist to spy a bit on how he works – the food styling, the angles and the lighting. He was only there to shoot 7 pictures and that costs RM700 (including printing and framing, I’m not sure how large the pictures will be). O.O”

Somjit intended to take as much pictures of all the dishes that day, either they’re for the new menu or future use, hence she also asked a friend with DSLR to come along. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay there the whole day for the shooting, so I only managed to take some of them.

*Those who like fish might like the pictures below, else you might find the fish with its mouth opened a tad disturbing. 🙂

According to Somjit, she plans introduce more variety of dishes into her new menu and increase the serving portions too (something like banquet style). The Deep Fried Fish with Spicy Garlic and Sweet Basil Leaves was good; the meat were firm and fresh, laced with mild spicy garlic flavour. The deep fried basil leaves provides a refreshing citrusy taste and crispy texture to the fish.

The Deep Fried Fish in Three Flavours Sauce tasted pretty much like sweet and sour fish, except there were ginger and spring onion added to the sauce. The combination of sweet, sour and spicy goes well with the fish.

Have you tried Thai-styled otak-otak before? If yes, this Deep Fried Fish in Dry Curry Paste tasted pretty similar to that, except the cooking method (the fish for otak-otak were minced, while this one is deep fried and served with broccoli).

I think Somjit did a good thing by combining two different dishes into one, such as this Deep Fried Fish with Mango Salad. Mango Salad is my favourite Thai salad (read more here). The salad (prepared with shredded young mangoes, onion, cili padi and cashew nuts) lent a tangy twist to the dish.

A prettily garnished dish, Sawatdee Special Deep Fried Fish in Batter came with abundance of fish fillets, basil leaves, vegetables and egg. The batter was light, not too thick to mask the flavour of the fish.

Too much deep fried fish? Here’s a steamed version, Steamed Fish with Soy Sauce, served with plenty of vegetables such as mushroom, young corn, carrot, broccoli and cauliflower florets, chilli, ginger and parsley. A very healthy dish! The steamed fish doesn’t have any muddy or fishy smell and the soy sauce complements the fish nicely.

While I didn’t try the Steamed Fish in Yellow Curry as I am stuffed at this point, it looked rather delish. The gravy could be thicker though as it seems a bit watery here.

*to be continued in Part 2. No more fish in Part 2, don’t worry. 😛

Read my previous post on Sawatdee here, in case you haven’t.