Nahm at Benares

As part of 'Chef Season' at Benares, Atul Kochhar teamed up with David Thompson, the renowned expert in Thai cuisine from Nahm restaurant in Bangkok, to create a shared menu of Thai dishes. I went this evening to check it out ...

We tried David's menu first. I had a 'miang' of lobster - miang is a Thai street dish in which the food is wrapped in a special leaf. Personally, I found this a little too spicy since there was a lot of chilli in it, which overpowered any taste of the sea from the lobster. However, the diverse texture was great with the crunchy leaf against the soft lobster.

My favourite of David's dishes was the 'yam pak', which is a mixed vegetable and fruit salad and was dressed with tamarind, palm sugar and sesame seeds. Again, there was a fantastic range of textures, and this was combined with a lovely sweet and spicy dressing. There were some interesting vegetables used including raw aubergine. The whole dish was lovely and refreshing.

I really liked Atul's paneer with apricot and tamarind chutney. The paneer is an Indian cheese, which was cooked on a tandoor giving it a smoky flavour. This went well with the sweet tamarind chutney.

Also cooked on the tandoor was some trout, which had a great smoky flavour as well. The crispy skin was encrusted with chilli and garlic, and the whole fish was full of complex spicy flavours.

To drink, I had a wonderfully refreshing lassi of blueberry and hibiscus, which was useful to cool off after the hotter dishes. I tried my mum's cocktail made with vodka, ginger and wasabi - it had a real kick!