There aren’t a whole lot of vegetarian restaurants in Bangkok, despite the amount of Buddhists. There’s even less certified organic produce, meat, and dairy. Why would you spend more money? And especially why would you spend it on vegetables? Macrobiotic was the last thing I expected to find at a definitively “healthy” food restaurant in the basement of the Mediplex, a high-rise full of medical businesses (plastic surgeries, wellness massage, and other treatments for the wealthy few) just outside Ekkamai BTS.
But that’s the location of Khun Churn vegetarian restaurant, which a friend who works in the area took me to for lunch. They’re very expensive (for Bangkok), but their set lunch deal is beautiful. Not filling, mind you. As my friend said, whenever she eats here she gets hungry back at the office in the afternoon, but in my opinion that’s better than an MSG coma.
With all this awareness of ingredients, you’d think it’d be easy for little old gluten-free me to eat. But no. A lot of dishes had soya sauce in them. So my lunch plate was adjusted accordingly. It was bland, but still very, very healthy.
In addition to the lunch special we ordered a pomelo salad appetizer that came with sesame seeds and toasted coconut. The toasted flavour was amazing, especially once we wrapped the salad up in the deliciously bitter and fresh betel leaves and dipped it in the sweet and salty sauce.
This is the regular lunch special with a cream of mushroom soup (Asian mushrooms and seaweed), a beautiful mixed salad of beets and cabbage, mint, lettuce, carrots and radish, brown rice with black beans, and a vegetable stir-fry with morning glory and cabbage.
The cashew tofu stir-fry had more colour, but also more soya sauce, so I couldn’t try it.
And instead of the cream of mushroom, I got a consommé. It was a very simple, watery broth and felt as though I was paying for water, which actually makes sense in Bangkok.
But over at Sustaina, a Japanese restaurant above and a healthy grocery below, there was plenty I could eat, and menu items and grocery items were all marked gluten-free if they were!!! I was in heaven. Bonus points for being conveniently right next to the Phrom Pong BTS in a little alley. I had a curry to go, which was a very oily, sweet brown sauce on brown rice with a couple vegetables. Disappointing.
But then I found homemade natto with miso! Finally, gut-friendly probiotics to ease my poor stomach. I ate some every morning with rice and felt so much better. And I bought three frozen rice cakes made with heritage brown rice and sustainable mackerel. They were perfect with the natto-miso. Best real food I ate in Bangkok, along with that one incredible sushi meal at Ka Ze Fresh.
If I’d had a bigger bag, I also would have bought some of the local honey with royal jelly and more of the frozen restaurant mains to-go. And a selection of desserts, though most of those weren’t also dairy-free. For anyone looking for quality food, this shop is a sight for sore eyes.
Sustaina
1/40 Sukhumvit Soi 39, 10270, Thailand
+66 2 258 9766
BTS Phrom Pong
Khun Churn
Mediplex
BTS Ekkamai
Sukhumvit 42
0-2713-6599
Leave a Reply