Started this BKK morning with a quick stroll down the road around 8am to Lemon Farm where we got ourselves a tray of organic eggs, bags of our favorite Lemongrass-Roselle tea, some powders for my friend, and a small loaf of 14-grain bread.
Back we came to the room after to make a quick breakfast of coffee and toast and eggs that for today we chose to make soft-boiled.
The coffee was good.
The toast, thin and crisp, was good.
And so were the eggs that for this morning we sprinkled last night's leftover truffle salt with a dash of olive oil.
I'd have loved to have the eggs fried, but we'd forgotten to bring the special egg pan.
Breakfast over, I took a quick two-hour nap, after which we headed out to OKONOMI at Central Embassy where this afternoon I had Salmon and Cheese Mazemen whilst my friend had Spicy Salmon Rice.
Some of you might be wondering just why it is that we come back to OKONOMI time after time after time when we're in BKK.
Like, why don't we try some place else, some other restaurant, some other cafe?
But I like this place.
I like how bright and sunny this place is yet quiet and conducive at the same time.
It's a great place for a digital nomad who can either have a drink or a quick meal here in the midst of continuing their emails and work.
What makes OKONOMI lovely is the food they serve.
The flavors are delicious.
The portions are right.
There's never a time when the mazemen noodles don't have the chew that I like.
There's also never a time when there's too little cheese in the bowl or the cute little salmon cubes aren't enough.
So often have I come here (thankfully) that I've figured out my favorite way of eating this dish.
Where once upon a time I might have stirred everything up in the bowl with my chopsticks, today I like to pinch off a bit of the cheese, mix it with a noodle, follow it with a cube of salmon, and then repeat the process all over again.
In this way I get to savor the sauce underneath the noodle (I can't remember what it is), I get to savor the cheese, and I get to nibble on the bit of salmon as well.
It's all very appetizing and very delightful.
Same goes for the Spicy Salmon rice, which, I've been told, has one of the tastiest combinations for sauce, and has rice grains that you can actually see. I've been told that they're steamed soft and fluffy and just right too.
My friend puts aside the shredded vegetables and the carrot, but he finishes up all the salmon and his style is to mix everything up with the rice so that every spoonful gets him a taste of the sauce, a chew of the salmon, and a mouth full of soft, warm rice.
This afternoon we ordered a little dish of ikura onsen egg as well.
There was, however, a difference between this time and the last back in December when we were here.
Pumpkin soup was on the menu no more.
Anyway, we lingered here a while, got some work done, then walked ourselves over to Big C where I sat outside the busy, touristy hyperstore looking after the trolley bag whilst my friend made a quick run in for little sacks of pumpkin seeds that he said were half the price of those sold back in Singapore.
He got those, then off we went to the KLOOK at Central World to get our Rabbit transport cards because very silly me had accidentally left the entire pouch at home.
From here we went to NAMA up on the 24th floor of Centara Grand for dinner.
I've written about this place a couple of times now, and you know what, I won't hesitate to write about this place again.
It has become one of my (now not so new) favorite go-tos when I want a satisfying, shiok Japanese meal in BKK.
The food here at NAMA is really good, so much so that I don't even need to study the menu to know what I want.
I eat (nearly) everything.
All my friend needs to do is to order.
One thing I like about this place is that you can order from the app, or go to the counter, look at the pictures, and point.
In this way nobody feels left out.
You won't be pushed aside simply because you've forgotten how to scan a QR code or because you get overwhelmed by all the buttons on the phone.
You can go to the salad counter, go to the sushi and sashimi counter, or go to any of the cooked food counters, look at the posters, and tell the staff what you want to have.
No one will laugh at you.
This evening I went to the salad counter for a bowl of fresh cherry tomatoes, and a slice of pineapple.
You might find it odd that I'd want pineapple to go with the fish and the rest of the meal, but for some reason that's how I felt this evening.
Maybe I needed the acidic spark.
The plate of fresh oysters arrived at our table very quickly this evening.
And huge were they.
We began first with two of these oysters, then the big plate came.
It's charming that their oysters aren't the skinny kind but plump and ice cold and fresh and you don't have to worry even if you're not used to the briny, briny taste. They've got bits of ikura on top, those tiny little balls of cod roe, a heap of radish (which I don't usually eat) and chili/tabasco sauce- in case you need that bit of zhng.
I can't recall just how many oysters I ate.
Probably just one or two.
But I know I helped myself to the scallops on this plate.
As well as the other plate of salmon belly sashimi that arrived at the same time.
I like scallops.
Scallops are probably one of my favorites when it comes to such seafood, and I don't mind whether I have it grilled, fried, boiled, or marination raw. There's a cleanliness to the taste that I appreciate, and I like the medium chew which doesn't make it hard, nor too soft.
Here the scallops, the prawns and the salmon sashimi came in some form of vinegarish marination- I don't know exactly what- but because the other plate of salmon belly came at the same time, I ate up the scallops, had two prawns, and brought my chopsticks across to the salmon belly.
No way was I going to miss out on one of my favorite styles of sashimi.
Most of the salmon belly slices I ate by themselves, but one or two I dipped into the soy sauce with a huge dollop of strong, powerful wasabi.
They've got plenty of soy sauce, and of course, a huge dollop of very powerful wasabi.
Somewhere around this time our cooked food orders came.
There was a little dish of ikura that my friend had specially chosen because he wanted to have it with everything.
There was a plate of grilled beef slices with some sort of a teriyaki sauce that blanketed little pieces of sushi rice underneath.
And there was a piece of beef sushi (I think it was wagyu) that came semi wrapped in a gigantic piece of seaweed.
I had a plate of salmon belly that had been deep fried- we wanted the crispy skin- and it was hot and soft and warm.
Then there was a plate of cooked scallops in Mentaiko sauce, which we ordered, because the last time we'd had, we'd become intrigued by the generous ladle of sauce and wanted to know if it went well with anything else.
Along the way we had the crab soup, thick and rich like a broth, that we warmed up over the portable charcoal stove and then ate, slowly, with our spoons.
Then came the plate holding three pieces of tuna sushi, all of which I especially liked, because it's not often that I get to have tuna sushi and these had been thickly sliced.
My favorite out of these three was the fatty tuna.
Except that I don't know where in the row it is...
So delicious and soft was the fatty tuna that I made sure to eat up the ones inside my special box as well.
I haven't made mention of it this time, but this special box is one of the reasons why I like coming here to NAMA, and why I always try to keep enough tummy space for the ice-cold, brightly-colored, beautifully arranged sashimi inside.
There're some who will call this a sample box, but the variety that they have is fascinating.
Not only do you get two types of salmon sashimi- including salmon belly, you also get two types of tuna- including the fatty tuna, then there are the scallops, the squid, the abalone, the sea urchin and some other white colored sashimi that even after all these times I still don't know what they are.
It's always upsetting when I don't get to finish this special box.
And sad to say, I wasn't able to finish everything this time.
What I managed to finish was the fatty salmon, the salmon belly, a bit of the sea urchin, several pieces of squid, and, of course, the scallops.
Dessert this evening I helped myself to a strawberry daifuku- it was so fun eating it cold- a slice of matcha cheesecake, and (besides the iced genmaicha that I already was having) a glass of iced, super sweet, super thick Thai milk tea.
Honestly, I felt a little sad leaving NAMA.
This trip there would be no time for us to come back here again.
I would have to wait till the next time.
Thankfully there're always opportunities, and I hope places like these will stay for a long, long time.
We headed to Big C after having finished an errand.
There I bought my current favorite mist from Soap & Glory, plus a hair serum from the same brand, and because they were having some sort of a promotion, gave me a stack of baby body wipes, plus a green tea body scrub for free.
The day ended with a massage at Panda at the alley right next to the Big C shopping center.
But here's the funny thing.
What with it being so long now, I can't remember what we did.
It might have been a body massage.
But it might well have also been a foot massage.
I, after all, tend to fall asleep when having one.