Pattaya continues to amaze with quality restaurants springing up, despite the cries of doom and gloom. This week’s restaurant is on Chaiyapornwithi on the left side about one km from the railway roads, housed in a block of businesses.
It is run by Gwang, an effervescent lady, who used to be in the Marriott Resort before masterminding the Café Delight, on the ground floor of Delight Residences.
The restaurant (it’s much more than a “café”) is quite large and covers the ground floor and a second floor for large parties. Friendly staff in uniform look after the diners and the ambience is modern.
The restaurant had only been open for 12 days when the Dining Out Team arrived to review, and at this stage there is no wine list, but Gwang assured that you can bring your own bottle, no problem. There are some interesting German and Belgian beers, and I ordered a Hoegaarden while perusing the menu. One of the junior tasters was allowed to have a Delster beer, which is zero percent alcohol, something the adults have to think about too.
Going through the beverages, you can begin to see the natural and herbal beginnings with items such as rose lemon tea and mango passion fruit tea.
Since Café Delight also services the 48 room apartments, menu begins with breakfasts (from 7 a.m.) with mainly different egg items (B. 70-120) and then into lunchtime offerings (B. 100-160) including pizzas at B. 150. This is not an expensive restaurant!
Dinner is next, and the most expensive dish is a beef steak at B. 230, while most of the other items are B. 85-100, including spaghetti carbonara (B. 95) and fish and chips (B. 100).
The restaurant also caters for those who want vegetarian items (B. 80-100) with a mushroom cream sauce pasta at the top end and a fried mushroom with basil at the lower end.
We allowed Gwang to order for us and her choices included a spinach soup (B. 80), a “House pizza” with mushroom, ham, three types of paprika, and Italian sweet basil at B. 150, green curry chicken with young coconut palm combined with home-made roti (B. 120), vegetarian tofu with tamarind sauce (B.100), and fruit som tum with fried fish (B. 250), with desserts of brownie mocha (B. 60), an apple turnover (B. 30) and an amazing “Santol float” (B. 45).
The luminescent green spinach soup was a very pleasant way to lead in to some very different dishes. I am not a fan of tofu, and have been a card carrying carnivore for many years, but this tofu came after deep frying with a crispy edge and great taste from the tamarind sauce.
The fried fish came having been cooked and then the flesh cubed and returned to the fish, and eaten with a som tum of mixed fruits, nuts and chilli. This was a little hot for me, but if you like chillis, this is a dish for you!
The green curry chicken with young coconut palm was also hot, but one of the junior tasters loved it, dipping roti into the curry.
My “Santol float” was an icy dessert of the Santol fruit with the recipe coming from Gwang’s grandmother.
It was only as we began to sample the food that we began to understand the concept behind Café Delight. It is a ‘family’ restaurant with roots in traditional natural farming. As well as sourcing the vegetables from their own farm, some of the recipes are traditional, handed down through successive generations of the family. The food itself being a very welcome change from the usual fare, and inexpensive.
Café Delight is the type of restaurant where they can handle a group as well as family diners. The prices are extremely reasonable and we are happy to rate Café Delight very highly and give it our recommendation. Do try.
Café Delight (Delight Residence), 75/1 Moo 1, Nongprue, Chaiyapornwithi Road (1 km from railway roads heading towards Nongprue), telephone 083 012 0099, www.delightpattaya.com, parking at the front of the restaurant, open seven days, hours 7 a.m. until 9 p.m.
