Krua Apsorn, Bangkok, Thailand (Alissa and Don Eat Asia)

In researching places to eat in Bangkok, Krua Apsorn was a restaurant repeatedly recommended, including multiple shout outs by David Thompson himself. Something of a Bangkok institution frequented by foodies in the know, Krua Apsorn have a few branches in the city, however the original branch on Samsen Road near Samsen Soi 9 is considered the branch to visit. Although the restaurant does apparently take reservations, their website is in Thai and I wasn't sure if sending them an email in English would be understood, so we decided to chance it and get to the restaurant for their opening. Just as well we did - almost every table was already booked, and waiting outside in the hot weather would not have been very fun at all.

Cha Ca La Vong (Cha Ca Ca Cvong), Hanoi, Vietnam (Alissa and Don Eat Asia Day 24, Part 1)

You know what's a real dick move? To open a restaurant on the same street as a 100 year old restaurant that invented a famous dish, make the exact same dish, call your restaurant the same name and then put up gigantic signs so as to make it appear as if you're the famous restaurant, all the while actively call people to you as if you're helping them out. Sound unbelievable? Well, this actually has happened in Hanoi.

Cha Ca La Vong is immensely famous, being a 'must eat' in many a guidebook, on the list of 1001 Foods You Must Eat Before You Die and even the subject of an article in the New York Times. Its a seemingly simple dish of grilled fish that is then pan fried in a with some dill, then added to a small bowl of noodles, chilli, peanuts, onion, other herbs and a sauce. The result is a dish that is so delicious that its inspired chefs in the US to either directly reproduce it wholesale or adapt the dish's flavours into new creations.

Here's the tricky part - the restaurant and the dish are both called Cha Ca La Vong, and its located on a street called Cha Ca. And on that street are two shops with exactly the same name located almost opposite each other. Even someone like myself who mapped out all the streets in the Old Quarter and knew roughly where to look for Cha Ca La Vong was very confused. In the end we chose the one of the east side of the road given the much more welcoming staff and signage.

Little did we know that we actually had gone to the slightly more expensive 'imposter' store (the original is already considered expensive by Hanoi standards). They claim in their menu that they are the famous Cha Ca La Vong 'mentioned in many guidebooks', but had I had Google Maps or a Lonely Planet handy it would have told me to go to the dingy, unwelcoming place across the road. Had we read the sign a bit better we might have noticed it actually read 'Cha Ca Ca Cvong' but it was really only when I was writing this blog post that I even noticed this little detail!

So given that they were not the correct store, how did the food hold up? Pretty well actually. Based on other blog posts I've read the food here is said to be on par with the original and definitely did not disappoint.

First the herbs, onion, sauce, peanuts, chilli and noodles are placed on the table.

Then a pan sitting on a hotpad is warmed with the dill added in to be fried up.

The waitstaff prepared the first bowl for us to show us how to eat the dish.

And when the dill is sufficiently cooked the grilled fish is added.

The end result is a dish that is very utterly Vietnamese but very unique due to the dominance of the dill. I always think of dill as a good friend of salmon, and it again proves here that dill and seafood are wonderful together. Mixed together with the noodles, nuts, herbs, onion and chilli and the sauce, this was a flavour explosion - I can see why this dish is so highly praised and copied in the US. If you like seafood, you'll probably like this more than an average bowl of pho, but for our palate was probably behind bun cha in our esteem.

The Verdict: Very Good (Provisionally)
I've said some very nice things about the food at this imposter store and it was well earned - the food was delicious and lived up to its high expectations. But what is not earned is its name, and I really don't like the deception involved. While the food is said to be as good at the original store, the experience of how the dish is presented at the true Cha Ca La Vong looks to be much better and more exciting (based on blog posts I've seen) so for these imposters to charge more its totally unacceptable. No matter how good they were, I really recommend not giving them the business as this kind of dishonesty should not be rewarded. 

Rapsy Restaurant, Munnar, India (Alissa and Don Eat Asia Day 16, Part 1)

I could have sworn the main restaurants in Munnar town were easier to find. We walked around the main city loop twice and just could not find either of the two restaurants in town that I wanted to eat at. By this stage of the trip, we'd entered the more relaxed portion of our holiday and my book of notes had become less necessary than it had been in Hong Kong and Mumbai. However, we needed the book now to help locate the elusive restaurants and I'd foolishly left them at the hotel. I was not going back down that pothole-ridden road just for the book so we had to just keep an eye out and hope for the best.

Little did we know that Silver Spoon (one of the restaurants recommended by Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet) was closed for renovations so we had no hope of finding it even though it is right in the middle of the main loop of town. We decided to try walking towards where the Tea Museum is, and as we walked up the road we found the other recommended restaurant in town – Rapsy Restaurant. From the outside, there is little to recommended it as it looks like any other restaurant in Munnar. The décor inside was very spartan, however it did at least look to be clean. As we sat down at a table a waiter handed us a notepad to write down our order:

If you're in the south and in particular Kerala, you have to have some fish curry. The curry itself was very good – having that sourness I associate with southern fish curry, but not overpoweringly so. Being a whole fish, I found the bones cumbersome, though I know this is the usual fare for this style. At the end of the day I'm hard to please when it comes to fish curries of the south as I much prefer the richer, creamier chicken and lamb curries of the north but I ended up eating this dish the most. Very enjoyable.

The other dish we ordered was the Chilli Chicken. This was done in a similar Chinese-inspired style to the squid at Trishna and was very tasty. Alissa liked this dish in particular and as I was happy with the fish curry I left this mostly for her to eat.

Alissa ordered chappathi at first, but when she saw the parotta I had ordered was basically roti paratha we ordered additional parotta to eat with our meal. The parotta was nice and layered in a way that is perfectly suited to the runnier consistency of southern curry, although a little crispier would have been nice.

The Verdict: Very Good

In a town like Munnar you're not not likely to find a high end restaurant like Indigo or Dum Pukht, or something a bit more casual but mindblowing like a Trishna. However, if you're looking for authentic South Indian food Rapsy is a very strong recommendation. I should also say that at roughly $5AUD for the two of us Rapsy is easily the cheapest meal complete meal we had in India, and that was with pretty free-flowing parotta as well. Considering we paid three times the price for the terrible service and stingy portions at Copper Castle, we would have rather eaten at Rapsy for a second time. Excellent value.  

Trishna, Mumbai, India (Alissa and Don Eat Asia Days 7 & 19)

If you like seafood and copious quantities of garlic and butter, there is a place for you and it is called Trishna.

I hadn't intended that our first lunch in Mumbai would be at Trishna but I'm glad that it ended up that way, especially since it also served as our last meal in Mumbai. I will write about both meals together due to their similarities. Having eaten there for the first time 4 years ago, its a restaurant I've often thought of with fondness due to their signature butter pepper garlic dishes and the greatest chilli squid I've ever eaten in my life. Its been 2 years since I was last at Trishna, and having hyped it up to Alissa as my favourite seafood restaurant in Mumbai I was a bit worried that it couldn't possibly live up to the esteem I hold it in.

I didn't need to consult a map or need to stop and think about where we were going; I knew exactly how to get to Trishna from our hotel. As we passed the landmark of Fab India and turned left into the back alley, it was interesting to see hip stores and cafes had opened in what used to be a dingy, dirty alleyway in Mumbai just four years ago. Alissa commented one of the stores looked like a boutique out of Melbourne. Hip indeed. As we arrived at the entrance we were greeted by the familiar sight of the bespoke doorman, who ushered us in.

Trisha is divided into two nautically themed rooms – a left room that has an under the sea feel with fish tanks lining the walls, and a right room with a boating theme. As luck would have it, our first meal was in the right room and our last was in the left. 

On both occasions, we ordered a variation of the famous butter pepper garlic seafood on which Trishna has built its well-deserved reputation. For our first meal we had the butter pepper garlic prawns. The prawns were juicy and perfectly cooked, having none of the cottony quality of overcooked prawns. And the sauce – my god, the sauce. Its fairly simple but utterly decadent; copious quantities of butter given shape and form by insane quantities of garlic and spiced up with some black garlic. As someone who loves butter, Alissa was immediately sold. 

For our last meal in Mumbai, we thought we should splash out and order my favourite of the crustaceans – the lobster. 

The lobster arrived at the table having been removed from its carapace, but the shell was presented to us for our inspection. The lobster meat was nice and meaty, and of course lobster and butter have a long history of being good friends so this worked well. And all the better for the use of ghee as the butter instead of the non-clarified western variety.

The other dish we ordered on both occasions was the chilli squid. I'm a sucker for really good squid and though I've ordered a lot of squid dishes in my time, this dish trumps them all. Chinese food is quite popular in India, though in having been altered for an Indian palate they have become different dishes in their own right. Trishna's chilli squid is tomatoey, capsicum and chilli goodness on a plate, having a nice sweetness and heat to it as well as Trishna's trademark generosity in the garlic department. I've tried to order this dish in other restaurants in Mumbai as well as Bangalore and Goa but no one does this the way Trisha do.

Now we have to talk about the garlic naan. As with everything else at Trishna, 'subtle' is not how I would describe the 'garlic' part of their equation. Their version of garlic naan is encrusted in garlic, and where most places give you the option of garlic or butter naan, Trishna do theirs as garlic butter naan. This is probably our favourite naan of the whole trip, and paired with the butter pepper garlic sauce is both a heart attack waiting to happen and one of the most decadently delicious things you can imagine.

As an extra on our first visit, we ordered palak paneer, as this is one of Alissa's favourite dishes whenever we've ordered Indian in Perth. Though they are definitely seafood specialists at hear, this was excellent palak paneer – bright green and flavoursome, with a very soft creamy paneer. The ordering of three dishes was something we would learn was too much for two people as we were exceedingly full afterwards. Oh well, live and learn.

The Verdict: Exceptional

Trishna won me over when I had my first meal there, and I'm nothing if not a devotee. Prices here are reasonable if a little bit more expensive than somewhere like Persian Darbar or Delhi Darbar – but then we're talking about generous portions of seafood which always comes with a premium anyway. If you're sitting on the fence about making a trip to India, consider travelling to Mumbai and make sure Trishna is on your list of things to eat. This is 'must travel to eat' food.