“That’s such a gorgeous looking building”, exclaim people as they promenade past the exquisite Thai Pagoda style roofed house in Naxal. Nestled right off of the iconic supermarket, Bungalow Bar & Kitchen is your perfect family Thai retreat that serves up a vibrant platter of enchanting exteriors and interiors and gobsmacking, luscious Thai cuisine zested up with a Nepali touch.
For any who would’ve passed by and observed the premises right next to the Bhatbhateni Supermarket in Naxal, one would generally think that the building that neighbored the mart was a run down, old house in severe need of maintenance. The credit for turning this very house into the stunning, aesthetically pleasant structure, lies completely in the vision of the Founder, Rubina Rana Gurung.
“My husband and I always had a special bond with Thailand, we often frequent the nation and simply love the food there, when in Thailand the local cuisine is all we eat! Since the Thai culture and palate was so close to us, we wanted to share that vey intimacy and joy through Thai food here in Kathmandu”, says Gurung, an evergreen smile sprawled across her face.
“For the food, yes I personally took professional cooking lessons and ensured the quality of the food with my chefs, what is also equally important to me is how the restaurant looks and feels. We’ve tried to maintain the casual aura around the place while also looking to induce the traditional Thai décor to fit in with the theme. From rebuilding the roofs and floor spaces to creating this restaurant, we wanted to create the best casual/fine-dining experience we can for our customers” adds Gurung.
Our culinary sojourn at Bungalow commenced with the traditional Tom-Yum Soup. Served up with bamboo shoots and oh-so creamy textured goodness the soup served up to be a microcosm of what our culinary journey was to be: utter delight! The soup manages to find the perfect balance in its spiciness and the creaminess in the soup, a line many try to walk yet very few actually tread as perfectly as this soup does.
This impeccable soup was followed by the star of every Thai eatery, the Pad Thai. Served up with traditional Thai noodles, bean sprouts, lemongrass and wonderful prawns, the melody the flavors induce upon you is, for want of a better word, splendid. While it maintains the traditional Pad Thai taste, the flavors are somewhat lighter and enhance one another. The sour lemongrass and the sprouts were perfectly counteracted by the noodles and the prawns: all in all, a wonderful dish.
The next two dishes brought to us played at more calmer tastes, looking to settle our palates and bring an added layer of taste to our culinary journey. The Pad kra Pow and the Som Tam swerve the perfect transition before our final dish of the afternoon. Made up of Shredded papayas, Palm Sugar, lemon zests, Lime and tiny Shrimps the Som Tam helped reset our palates with a balanced acidic-sweet taste.
The Pad Kra Pow on the other hand, took a familiar concept of rice and curry and added its Thai twist to it with a minced meat curry served up with basil, topped off with a sunny side up egg. The spiciness of the curry yet again balanced out by the rice and the egg serving up a delectable medley of Thai brilliance!
Our journey concluded with a dish much closer to home. The Aloo Nimki, a fusion dish incorporating the traditional Nepali chatpate turning it into a restaurant standard dish was for our very Nepali inclinations: spectacular. The Aloo Nimki, spicy as it may be, is everything Bungalow Bar & Kitchen looks to be, a Thai restaurant that looks to cater to the wider Nepali audience through a wonderful array of authentic Thai and innovative Nepali flavors.
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