The heat is on

Published on January 25, 2008

Hot-pot meals are a popular and fun way to spend time with friends or family. But at the most suki places, there is a problem. As much as the flavour of the healthful medley of veggies and meat is enjoyed, the steam is not particularly pleasant. Also, the broth used at many suki restaurants has MSG, which only makes you thirstier (though at least there are also glasses of weak tea available to help achieve a balance in the body).

But at My Place Suki, diners can enjoy delicious hot pots that are not only MSG-free, but also healthful. After the success of her My Place Restaurant, which serves Italian-Thai fare, and a cooking school of her own, Duangkamol "Prae" Vephula decided it was time to open My Place Suki after her personal love for the food and occasional craving for home-style hot pots with good ingredients.

"I am a suki lover, but I was always frustrated at the lack of good fresh ingredients at suki places," explains Duangkamol. "So, after getting good at cooking home-made suki meals for friends and families, I decided to open up this place as an option where guests can enjoy home-style hot pot with carefully selected fresh ingredients."

You get home-cooked, MSG-free soup to go along with wide selections of your favourite fresh ingredients. But who would volunteer to do the clean-up afterward? At My Place Suki, you have to do the cooking for yourself, but at least you can leave the washing up to employees

A suki meal at My Place begins with a choice of drink. You can opt for the place's home-made and refillable green tea with matoom or bael fruit infusion (Bt50) or Thai tamarind soda or sala (salacca) soda. Then, it's time to select the fresh ingredients to go into your hot pot.

My Place's two-page menu is packed with dishes to choose from. If you like beef, the restaurant serves rib-eye slices and marbled slices. You can also order lean beef, pork and lamb as well. Their amazing seafood selections include fillets of salmon, mahi, mullet, oysters, prawns, scallops as well as crab sticks and arrays of interesting-looking fish balls the owner exclusively orders from her special sources. We liked the moji prawn garlic, three-tiered fish cubes, lobster balls, fried salmon balls, seaweed fish fingers as well as their home-made pork-seaweed, crunchy prawns and flavour heaven fish.

For mushroom and tofu lovers like me, large selections of both make me a fan for life. I also recommend an order of a vegetable set that comes complete with fresh taro, pumpkin and sweet corn to elevate the subtle sweetness of the soup.

Prae makes as much as five different dipping sauces that stand her place out from other suki venues. You have everything from the tasty traditional preserved bean sauce, Thai-Isaan toasted chilli sauce, Taiwanese clear sour/salty sauce, Kikoman-based sauce and My Place's own concoct of all the above. You must try dipping the cooked beef into the Taiwanese (complete with fresh chopped chillies and spring onion to taste) and then briefly to My Place's sauce before eating and they doing the same with other different combinations just for fun.

Some recommendations, though. Their frozen fish balls need to be boiled for at least five minutes, so they are the first thing to go into the pot. For other fresh ingredients, use your common gastronomic sense. An a la carte meal here will normally set you back about Bt350 to Bt400 per person. If you're a big eater, come on Wednesday, when you can eat all you want for Bt390 (Bt250 for children under 12). The meal must not exceed two hours and those ordering too much for their stomach are subjected to a penalty for being "greedy".

The restaurant offers 20 per cent discounts until February 29. A VIP room sitting 15 people, a large counter of individual pots and free parking available at the premises.

My Place Suki

BCD Room, Ekwanit Building (next to Market Place), 158/1 Soi Thonglor

(02) 392 1252, 081-820-1000

Weekdays, 11.30am to 2.30pm, 5 to 10pm; Weekends, 11.30am to 10pm

Sirin P Wongpanit  

For more food reviews, go to ohsirin.blogspot.com.