Best Italian Restaurant In Pattaya?

[Guest fountainhall]

what makes a great resturant ...

Interesting question!

 

Clearly it can't be termed "great" if the food isn't more than just good. It has to be very good and the quality consistent. And it can't be termed "great" if, despite excellent cuisine, the service is lousy and you see the odd cockroach scurrying across the floor. So service and ambience have to be at a certain level of acceptability. I'd add to that no musak of any kind (but that's only my preference, as when I am with friends the conversation is all I wish to hear).

 

So I'd put food quality at the top if my list, followed by very good service and a reasonable ambience. Being 'posh' does absolutely nothing for me. I want to be able to wear my jeans and a sports shirt, not a suit and tie. So being expensive rarely equates with "great" for me. And if the food there happened to be less than excellent, I'd be far more pissed off about it than I would in a lesser restaurant.

 

I've lauded Eat Me in Bangkok in a previous thread. It is basically a smallish L-shaped room with dark walls and low level lighting. The ambience is therefore simple and stylish. But the service is always excellent and the food consistently good. So it comes near top of my list. Sure, it's vastly more expensive than eating at a roadside stall or in a food court. But then it's a fraction of the price of eating at Le Normandie in the Mandarin-Oriental.

[Rogie]

I'm often intrigued as to why some people flock to certain restaurants. You know the type, they are the established names, with a few up and coming or flavour of the month places jostling for a place at the top table.

Is it the desire to be seen in such places by others, or to impress your friends or business colleagues? Or are they really there for the food or the well-stocked cellar, where the wine waiter really knows his stuff?

 

Here is an amusing account of how things can go badly wrong by those desperate to rub shoulders with other equally desperate people; who outside of such narcissistic individuals or paparazzi desperate to make the pages of Hello! cares if you're A-list or Z-list or even black-listed?

 

Russell Norman, owner of Polpo and its siblings, gleefully recounts a tale of bluffing gone awry from his days at Zuma in Knightsbridge. "There was a woman who would book using a certain A-list celebrity's name. She would book for five, making a big deal about them needing a table, then turn up with three friends, make excuses about 'Mr Big' being delayed or a cancelled flight and so on – and thus the fifth chair would remain annoyingly empty.

 

"One evening, though, we were able to call her bluff since her famous 'friend' was actually dining with a group in the restaurant. We took her directly to the table when she arrived for 'his' reservation. Clearly he had no idea who she was. Watching the blood drain from her face was priceless. I don't think we ever saw her again."

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jul/15/how-to-get-table-restaurant

[Guest fountainhall]

Re flocking to certain restaurant, isn't it just the fad of the moment - or what certain people think is the fashionable thing to do? Just as The Kinks sang in their "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" song all the way back in 1966.

 

"They seek him here, they seek him there,
His clothes are loud, but never square.
It will make or break him so he's got to buy the best,
Cause he's a dedicated follower of fashion."

 

As for bluffers, they are surely everywhere - people whose sole aim in life seems to be to impress others. I'm not sure if you have ever seen the extensive series of little pocket books titled "The Bluffers Guide to . . . " They used to be in most of the major UK bookstores 10 years or so ago, and may still be available. They gave you a few vital, short facts on various topics to burn into your memory so you could flash them out whenever you had a chance to engage in a spot of one-upmanship. They also gave tips on how to deal with people who actually did know something about the subject to help you avoid a potentially embarrassing situation. Clearly that lady at Zuma had not read her "Bluffers Guide to Fine Dining" or she would have been able to say something to defuse that awkward 'you're found out' moment.

[Guest timmberty]

its funny how food can make people lose control of themselves ...

most people who think they are a bit special will book the most expensive etc etc ..

and a lot of wanna bes will go to extremes as rogie says above ..

yet find a dive bar with a decent blues band in it and you have people queuing up to get in for a beer and a listen ..

what is it that makes people so snobish about food ?

rogie that link is funny .. talk about going to extremes for your job !!

the line under the picture ...

................Colin Case at Ivy Restaurant shot for the Observer Food Monthly magazine. Photograph: Pal Hansen...............

i hope he survived.

[Guest fountainhall]

its funny how food can make people lose control of themselves ...

 

There are the people like those in the Guardian article, the food fashionistas, but then there are hundreds of millions around the world who genuinely enjoy food and its preparation - the people who buy the endless cookery cooks and watch the now seemingly endless series of TV programmes about cooking. For them it's surely not a fad, it's just a certain passion they have. The fashionistas may also enjoy their food, but they have an additional agenda that is surely more to do with social climbing and one-upmanship.