Speedboat Bar

I’ve fallen into the trap many times before, most memorably at a rather pukka fine-dining place on Koh Samui. I’d put aside thoughts of the (very nice) Vasse Felix white on offer, partly due to a misplaced sprit of adventurousness and partly due to the extraordinary price of the imported Aussie wine. Foolishly also spurning the very pleasant local beers, I opted for a Thai white from north of Bangkok. Hair raising.

As Speedboat Bar is about as authentic a neon-lit Thai speakeasy and nosh hall as you can get this side of the Yaowarat Road, I swore to restrict myself to Singha, Leo (Singha’s down-at-heel cousin) et al. And then, there it was – one of Sybille Kuntz’s Mosel Qualitätsweine passing by in a fantastically iconoclastic, pop-art-inspired wine sleeve. Resistance was futile. Dry, crisp but with a ghost of Riesling ‘Extract Süße’, it went so well with the lovely spiced-up grub.

We started with snacks conjured from cauldrons of boiling oil: sweetcorn fritters (crusty and properly cobby), shattery chicken skins dusted with Zaep seasoning (an in-house term for a spice mix heavy on the chilli and citrus) and crispy pork with Prik Nam Som (the ubiquitous vinegary, pickled-chilli stuff that the Thais adore). More substantials came in the shape of an umami rubble of beef with holy basil and a particularly good black-pepper curry proving how delicious and versatile pepper can be as a spice.

The array of delicious SE Asian sausages is just beginning to reach the European consciousness (and seemed omnipresent on a recent trip to Thailand): smoky, sweet, pork, chicken, liver … innumerable variations. Here, Naem (a Thai/Laotian fermented-pork version) were added profitably to fried rice. Noodles and whole fish to be had, too, in the downstairs, melamine affair or up top in the pool-bar area (that's pool as in the bar-billiards type affair, no budgie smugglers needed).

Buzzing, informal outpost of Bangkok's Chinatown on Rupert St (N.B. the ‘other bit’, south of Shaftesbury Av).