Carmen Vecchione
D-Limousine belly salad with puntarelle and mustard by Gian Pietro e Giorgio Damini
Dall'Italia Prato Nevoso, montagna & cibo. Viaggio nella località del Cuneese che cresce anche grazie alla gastronomia
GAME OVER. What's your score on Pacman? This is the dish ending the 25-course tasting menu at Gaggan. The restaurant will open again in Bangkok in October, in a top-secret location
As we publish this article, Gaggan is getting ready to set the last dinner at his current location. This is a rather sad epilogue for the Asian restaurant that has created the most uproar in the last decade, and not only because it won the prize for the continent’s best restaurant for 4 years in a row (2015-2018) or it got the first two Michelin stars given to an eatery in Thailand. Yet this end encloses a new prologue. Gaggan Anand, from Calcutta, has revolutionised fine dining in Bangkok, a city always rooted to street food, a megalopolis that, until 2010, seemed it wanted to have nothing to do with fine dining (the only exception given by rather classic, mostly French-inspired hotel restaurants). Then came nine years of powerful sparks and dishes that turned into emblems, of blasting music and iconoclast excesses. On the last day, one can tell the sadness on the faces of the people walking on the other side of Soi Langsuan, the little under 100-metre long private road behind Lumphini Park which, we’ll recall, is not only the den of this beautiful colonial villa on two floors whose doors will close tonight. On the other side of the road there’s also Gaa, third Michelin star of the group, signed by Garima Arora, the heir apparent of Gaggan and brand new best female chef of Asia for the 50Best (and there are two more stars, those of Sühring, a few km away).
CHEF. Gaggan Anand, 41, from India
SOMMELIER. Vladimir Kojic, 36, from Serbia
Gaggan’s signature dish: you lick the plate from the top to the bottom. In the background, the song from Kiss that inspired the dish plays at full blast
From the latest menu: Mango milk-shake
The entrance to Wet. The bar opened in February and will close tonight already
Toilet paper at Wet
In the meantime, the most interesting news is that restaurant Gaggan will soon open elsewhere, always in Bangkok. This will be in October, in less than two months, because there’s already a new location, still top-secret, and works are well ahead. After all, there’s no time to waste with this new corporate structure, which will belong entirely to the Gaggan group. Besides, they need to keep on paying the 65 people who, from all around the world, currently work at Soi Langsuan, all employed. The new establishment, we can bet on it, will create lots of uproar: continuity will win, but there will also be some new coup de theatre, in pure Gaggan-style.
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso
born in Milan, 1973, freelance journalist, coordinator of Identità Golose World restaurant guidebook since 2007, he is a contributor for several magazines and teaches History of gastronomy and Culinary global trends into universities and institutes. twitter @gabrielezanatt instagram @gabrielezanatt
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