1. Biscotti, the Italian restaurant in the Four Seasons hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, has been in existence for
about 10 years now and in that time it has consistently drawn good crowds through good times and bad
for the hospitality industry in Thailand. The reason: a strong local clientele that is sophisticated and
knows good Italian food when it tastes it.
On a recent visit (January, 2009) I was impressed by the number of people in the restaurant on a
Wednesday night. And it had the feel, to me, of a New York-style type of place with its large open
kitchen that dominates the entrance area and the loud buzz of conversation hanging over the dining
room. It even has a bar-type space off to one side of the kitchen that features a long narrow table where
guests can eat or drink or do both.
It shouldn’t be surprising, really, that Biscotti’s does such a good business since the entire food and
beverage operation at the Four Seasons is really top-notch. The steakhouse, Madison, the Japanese
restaurant, Shintaro, and the Thai restaurant, the Spice Market are all quality places and produce great
food in well-designed atmospheres. And the hotel displays its commitment to fine dining every year by
staging the week-long World Gourmet Festival in September which is the classiest dining event in
Bangkok and one of the best in all of Asia. The hotel flies in top chefs from around the world and
presents lunches, dinners and wine events during a seven-day bacchanalia.
The occasion for the dinner I attended at Biscotti’s was the restaurant’s homage to baccala, which is
Italian for salted cod, a food that was originally created as a way of preserving fish over the winter. Chef
Danilo Aissa put together a special menu that utilized baccala in some highly inventive dishes that was
to be featured in the restaurant for a week. One of the more creative aspects of the meal was the fact
that it contained nine different bacalla dishes and all were themed to a specific region of Italy:
Piedmont, Aldo Adige, Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Veneto, Campagnia, Tucscany, Marche and Sicily.
The dishes were all enjoyable but I think my favorite had nothing to do with the baccala but was a
simple foccacia with mascarpone cheese and truffle oil. The incredible richness of the truffle oil was a
perfect accompaniment to the cheese and light, crisp foccacia bread. But I also can’t forget the bacalla
tortelli (Emilia Romagna) with pan-seared langoustines, crustacean ragout and more mascarpone or the
Marche dish, which contained baked bacalla with black truffle polenta (again a delicious use of truffles),
pecorino cheese and baby octopus. We were also served a rocket salad and a great deep-fried soft shell
crab creation that had a wonderful calamari sort of taste to it.
I think it would be hard to ever be dissatisfied with anything that you ordered in this restaurant and so I
always recommend it to people who ask me for a good Italian place to dine in Bangkok. After 10 years of
creating great food here the Biscotti staff seem determined to do it for at least another 10.