The Vaunted Langbaan Journey: Gourmands nestled within a valley of thai food

My older sister, back in Oregon for just over a week, insisted we arrive at Langbaan by 8pm, well in advance of the 8:45 pm reservation. Even more challenging -- we had to drive from Seattle to Portland in time! Once home, we had just enough time to freshen up, make sure our outfits were up to par, and grab our younger sister. 

My older sister is the truest gourmand of us all, eager to investigate every offering this city has to offer. My younger sister and I not as much. But we were all equally excited to try out this 12-dish tasting menu! I've never actually had a tasting menu before now. 

While waiting for our food, I took a chance to look around and scope out the rest of the restaurant.

Being a taster menu, there was of course no choice available to us but to eat every dish as it came out. Given how intense this menu is, I could not possibly hope to explain each of these dishes. Describing the totality of the meal is difficult enough!

 

But I must say that the dishes were heavily biased towards seafood, including ones such as lobster that I rarely eat. My older sister can eat seafood much more proficiently than either of us younger siblings. I made a sincere effort to eat everything that came my way, but also helped out with the dishes my younger sister passed our way.

The following images of our meal but are largely out of order! Sorry but it hurts my brain to even consider how I ate all this food, let alone which foods I ate.

The below dish was essentially chicken liver mousse, which disgusts me in concept but works out to be only slightly foreign in taste. It's impressive that I could be this receptive to a concept this unnatural to me! I probably would not eat this again, but I'm glad I got the chance. A lot of this dinner can be described by this feeling.

 

While I am not normally a "shrimp" person, I enjoyed the below dish! That makes this dish especially remarkable. Langbaan in general relished in forcing me to expand my food comfort zone far more than before. All while still fully enjoying myself!

A black sesame donut filled with black sesame jelly does not seem immediately appealing at first either. It is very chewy, with the texture of many seeds, and that is not natural to me either. But pairing the donut with the yellow passionfruit curd opened up a new door for the donut; simultaneously unintrusive in flavor and powerfully sweet, this dish proved a surprising delight.

We also had venison that my sisters both described as frightfully spicy. Though chewy, since obviously venison is gamier, the meat still felt pleasant to eat, even for someone like me who dislikes overly chewy foods. As for the spiciness, my mouth was lightly set on fire, but far from the worst I have experienced at a Thai restaurant.

This is SUCH an American thing to say, but: the below dumplings tasted like chicken, even though they were very clearly seafood. The texture felt smoother, like chicken, and it was a true testament to the chef's skill in both presentation and creating great tastes. I am especially confident in this description. After all, my younger sister passed on this dish to me!

 

Below are the last three dishes we were presented. As you can see, one dish was just plain rice, as we do not eat pork, which naturally also excludes PORK BLOOD. (Honestly, the original dish idea comes across as rather unpleasant, so I would much rather accept this plain rice.) One dish was, I believe, the venison (shown in an earlier photo). So I must, therefore, draw attention, to the item on the left -- the mackerel. This dish was meant to be a leafy taco, and I did partake in the dish that way. But it was incredibly spicy, prompting the intense blast I had been anticipating this whole time. On top of its great heat -- an infernal heat -- I suddenly realized how very full my sisters and I were. At this point, we had to ask for food to be packed, or we would not be able to wrap up the night with dessert!

My sister nervously asked if we were allowed to pack the last two items. Being a tasting menu, something unfamiliar to all of us, we had no idea about the rules! The server made a lighthearted joke about no food leaving before explaining that it was entirely allowed. We were definitely relieved -- because that mackerel at the least deserved to be completed, no matter how many tears it prompted (from its spiciness).

Somewhere in this dinner I requested a club cardamom soda, which was a novel experience for me! However, I felt a mysterious stress placed on my body, which was the real reason I ordered this drink. For whatever reason, the second half of the dinner marked a period of great nerves for me. In spite of that, the soda infused me with a desperately needed sense of energy!

 

 This banana tart is admittedly not incredibly thai, especially with the coffee flavoring, but it was a fun way to bring the meal to a smooth close.

Langbaan is an exceptionally difficult restaurant to review because of the great variety of foods on display. It's impossible to call simply a dining experience and instead should be referred to as a "food journey". In general, the dishes were well ordered and flowed peacefully from one to the next, including a gentle escalation of spiciness. We started with simple dishes like the chicken liver mousse and shrimp that had a very mild aftertaste, lingering just a touch. Steadily, the tastes merged together, leading directly into the most intense dishes -- venison and mackerel-- towards the end. Then the strength of a hundred suns poured into us for a brief moment, overpowering our senses. Having been eating for two hours straight made this moment even more taxing.

But we felt a true sense of resolution returning to milder tastes with the dessert items. This juxtaposition -- the hottest food of the evening followed by black sesame donuts and banana tarts -- was responsible for bringing the true height of the dinner. For me, this marked the true role of the tasting menu.

While I must admit that some individual dishes were not well suited for me, I could eat some of every single food item. For me, that is extraordinarily difficult, especially when items such as shrimp and lobster are involved. As an eater, I am very picky with texture, which turns me away from many different dishes -- but here I found myself confronted with strange textures but ultimately still entranced. For me, this novelty of texture is what truly pushed me beyond my old sense of taste. One could talk of a post-Langbaan me, even!

My older sister laughs every time I call Langbaan an 'experience.' But it's incredibly true that Langabaan exists as a true opportunity to re-evaluate one's sense of food itself, not just Thai food. Just earlier today, I was asked to compare Langbaan to other Thai places. (I've actually eaten Thai food three times, including Langbaan, this past week!) But they were not comparable to me outside of isolated dishes. In addition to aiming to represent all of Thailand's cuisines, Langbaan aims to redefine these dishes to fit into a tasting menu, making it completely different from other Thai restaurants. However, I noticed that even isolated dishes at Langbaan do not match up clearly with other Thai restaurants. In fact, it seems like the Thai restaurants I am used to aim to provide a very narrow and specific view of Thailand! Langbaan feels more Thai in totality, even if the Thai restaurants give me a more directed experience. 

Overall, Langbaan is greatly challenging but completely rewarding -- but you probably have to be a gourmand of some kind and feature true patience.