Thai Dinner @ Gamlan Dee, Chuo Ward, Fukuoka

 

It has been a while since I had something spicy. And it is even longer since I had my last Thai meal, which is probably before I moved to Japan. So that is over a year! It was a matter of time that Thai food will make centrestage again. I really missed Thai food. The combination of sweet, zesty and spicy is just something not possible in other cuisines. So I considered very lucky when a few friends decided to have Thai food for one of our dinner meet ups. 

Such great feels. 

Gamlan Dee is a Thai restaurant located in Daimyo, which is the center of Fukuoka city's nightlife and dining ecosystem. When I entered the premises, I was pleasantly surprised on what I experienced. The smell of grilled meat and spices was familiar and the staff were speaking Thai to each other. So yes, it felt very authentic and nostalgic. The final icing on the cake was the condiments set with chillies, sugar, vinegar and fish sauce. It was then I know I will have a really good time tonight!With any Thai meal, having green curry chicken was an obvious choice. In addition to that, we had a side of papaya salad, grilled chicken and pad thai, along with some rice. 

The original classic

Lets get straight to the point. The food here is really good. It was classic Thai style flavours on full display. Firstly the curry was truly on point, it was spicy, creamy and totally fragrant. Luckily it was not too spicy for my Japanese companions to take on. There was a sense of balance with all the flavours involved. A strong coconut aroma was present, as that is a common ingredient in most Thai curries. However, coconut is hard to get in Japan, so having it after so long made it taste even better.

Crunch!

The papaya salad was zesty and crunchy. With crushed fresh chillies and dried shrimp, there was a lot of flavour to this great dish.  It was not too spicy and I had to add some dried chillies to up the ante. I added a bit more fish sauce for more savouriness. This is fairly understandable as such flavours are not common in the Japanese palate. Still, this does not mean it was not tasty. It really was. Again, papaya, especially unripe papayas are incredibly rare in Japan. This rarity made this feel more special to me. An absolute joy. 

Cluck cluck

The grilled chicken was relatively simple in terms of flavour. It is hard to mess up grilled chicken, but then again, when standard fare is done perfectly, it becomes something special. The sweet and salty soy marinade is definitely not teriyaki sauce. And the grilling was on point. It was not a mind blowing as the other dishes, but I still enjoyed it nonetheless. 

The bestseller

The pad thai was quite good too. It is the shops bestseller and is popular among the Japanese locals. It was decent to me, but after having such intense flavours at the beginning of the meal, this felt like a back burner special. This is not to knock on it. It was still decent but I eventually added some dried chillies and fish sauce into the mix. 

Double trouble. 

For desserts, we had the classic mango sticky rice and coconut pudding. Both were incredible and gave great balance to the overall meal. The stick rice was served warm, which was something I did not expect. I had warm sticky rice before, but serving it cold is more common. Still, a good dessert. the coconut pudding was also amazing. It was silky smooth and the floral aroma of the coconut was present and in full display. A topping of sago gave it some textural variety which was very welcome. 

Fantastic Four

This was an incredible dinner and our gang of three enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. The food is a bit pricey, with a total damage of 4400 yen. Then again, this is to be expected. A lot of the ingredients used here are not common in Japan so importing would be one way of sorting ingredients out. However, the price seems fair as its still about 1000 yen-ish per person. So if you are somewhere in Fukuoka city proper and you need to turn up the heat, why not give Gamlan Dee a visit? The address is as follows: 

〒810-0041 Fukuoka, Chuo Ward, Daimyo, 1 Chome−1−20 地下１階 南風ビル

Front of the house.