The Rib Room is located on the 31st floor of the Landmark Hotel situated on Sukhumvit Road in the heart of Bangkok. They claim (along with the reviewer for the Bangkok Post) that they are a high end steak house that dedicates itself to making world class steaks. Me being a serious cook and foodie, I simply had to check them out.
The ambiance is a little out of place in that they had the typical leather highback chairs that you can never really feel comfortable eating in, along with bright lighting that killed any hopes of an intimate setting. The view, although high above the city, was not particularly spectacular, and if one were to look down, the grunge of Bangkok in all its glory was plainly visible, even in the dark.
I ordered a dry martini to start the evening, which tasted like an ordinary martini, until I had gotten to the olive, which still had the pit intact. I promptly pointed this out to my waitress, but instead of apologizing, I was told that the bar simply made martinis this way and that was that. So much for customer service.
Next up was a basket of sourdough bread for us to snack on while we waited for our food to arrive. This was quite simply, the best sourdough bread I have ever tasted in Bangkok. The crumb had just the right give, and the crust crackled satisfactorily when bit into, but it wasn’t tough or difficult to chew. The sourness of the bread was sublime and I could tell that a very serious baker had spent the time in creating this loaf. In fact, it was so good that it almost made me forget the affront of having a pit in my martini olive. Unfortunately, this wonderful bread proved to be the only good part of the meal.
One member of my table ordered a Caesar salad, which is a staple of steak houses all over the world. The waitress wheeled out a very impressive wooden bowl surrounded by a plethora of ingredients. She stopped at the head of the table, gave a smile, and asked what would we like in the Caesar salad. Excuse me? She literally had 15 ingredients laid out before her and she was asking the customer what would they like to put into the salad? Assuming that most people don’t even know what goes into a Caesar salad, how is a customer supposed to direct a person on what to put in or not. We weren’t even given an explanations on what the ingredients were! So we had a bowl, a bunch of unknown stuff around it, and we were being asked on how to construct such a thing. In the end, we asked the woman to put in whatever she thought would taste good, and when she plated it up and placed it on the table it looked like a disaster. It was literally 4 leaves of romaine lettuce entombed in a thick goop of orange dressing. Needless to say, I have tasted better Caesar salads with the dressing coming out of a bottle.
Next up were three dishes consisting of Chicken fricassee with garlic parsley sauce, frog legs with escargot, and a terrine of tuna and foie gras. The chicken dish, although the sauce was bold and flavorful, came off with a chalky mouthfeel that was disturbing to the palate. The frog legs with escargot arrived at the table stone cold and were dull in flavor. The terrine dish set the bar for worst tuna I have had in a restaurant; the tuna was mealy and disgusting and no amount of foie gras was going to mask such a terrible ingredient.
With a brief respite, the steaks arrived. The steak I ordered was the New York sirloin cut, with a side of mashed potatoes. The steak was at maybe half an inch thick at most. It had pathetic grill marks on it, and most of the steak was a dull drab grey. It had no seasoning to speak of, and instead the diner is left with a box of salt and a pepper grinder. To add insult to injury, the establishment didn’t bother to trim their steaks and a prominent line of gristle infringed along the borders of the meat like an unwanted neighbor. This was a steak that I would expect to find coming out of the kitchens of a late night greasy diner.
I cannot recommend the Rib Room to anyone. The food is priced at over $100 a head (without wine), and the quality that you get for that price is borderline criminal. If I were the owner of the hotel, I would fire the chef immediately, because instead of enhancing the appeal of the hotel, the restaurant actually worsens its reputation.
