Wawee Coffee in Chiang Mai

Nine yeas ago, a small coffee place named “Vavee” was opened…

Gradually this small enterprise has transformed itself into the Wawee Coffee branches that we all know so well, stretching across Chiang Mai. And now Wawee is also appearing in parts of Bangkok and the South. This local café also acts as inspiration to Chiang Mai people, both those who love coffee and those interested in the coffee business, too. This is often down to the fact that each of the Wawee branches is unique in its own way, and here are some examples to try.

Soi 9, Nimmanhaeminda Rd, Branch: The first branch of Wawee coffee, now slightly relocated, featuring a lush and spacious garden.

Soi 4, Nimmanhaeminda Rd, Branch: Situated at the Nimman Promenade shopping center, this is a place to take some rest from bargain hunting and meet with friends, A bar and terrace are available at this branch.

JJ Market Branch: A perfect place to chill out within a cozy atmosphere while shopping for decorative plants and fine handicrafts.

JJ Market Branch: A perfect place to chill out within a cozy atmosphere while shopping for decorative plants and fine handicrafts.

Room#2 Branch: With its sophisticated design, this branch is suitable for business meetings as well as being a venue to hang out amongst college student.

Mae Rim’s Tita Branch: This is a coffee place within an artistic environment, where fine art pieces are decorated within a mountainous locale.

Rachadamnoen Branch: Located in the heart of the old city area, and surrounded by several ancient Buddhist temples, this branch sits on the renowned Sunday Walking Street.

Alternatively, a cup of Wawee Coffee can be found at Suriwongse Book Center, CMU International Center, Suandok Hospital, Him Ping, CentralPlaza Chiang Mai Airport, The Elephant Camp, Chotana Road, Punna Place, Mae Jo Road and Hua Rin Corner.

Go sip and see!

Wild & Surprising Habitats Hosting Events In Chiang Mai Night Safari

The success of a seminar, event, or other special gathering can depend considerably on the location. If the setting is unique and memorable, chances are, the outcome will be a favorable one.

Chiang Mai Night Safari, apart from giving pleasure and edification about nature and wildlife to its visitors. Is also a perfect to hold all types of events and activities. Meeting incentive convention and exhibition (MICE), seminars, celebrations, as well as product launchings, will benefit from the clean air, peaceful natural environment and impressive architectural structures.

With large swathes of land and various buildings types, Chiang Mai Night Safari is able to accommodate all sorts of events, big and small. These can be situated along the alluring 60 million baht swan lake, with its fascinating musical fountain, certainly adding to overall impact, or else can take place alongside all the other wondrous wildlife sightseeing activities available.

As for food and beverages, different types of catering such as buffets, Northern style cuisine, or even a traditional Northern food market, known as Kad Mhua, can be arranged to best suit your event’s specific needs. A food court is also on hand for regular luncheons and dining.




For special events or those who wish to have an overnight stay, both long and short-term, Chiang Mai Night Safari can provide family size accommodation or set up tents within the camping grounds to take full advantage of the real forest atmosphere.

All of these unforgettable lay just 12km away from Chiang Mai city.

For more information about Chiang Mai Night Safari, please contact 0-5399-9000 or visit http://www.chiangmainightsafari.com/

Gourmet Tours with the Royal Project in Chiang Mai

Visiting the Royal Project sites has been launched as a form of tour option, offering special one-day and overnight trips.

Among the services offered, a major highlight are the culinary tours known as La Tour d’Ang Khang, whereby all participants have an opportunity to taste a variety of dishes prepared by experienced Chef Herve Frerard, from Bangkok’s French restaurant Le Beaulieu. Le Beaulieu is situated on Sukkhumvit Soi 19, and uses the Royal Project’s homegrown ingredients.

This culinary showcase will be held during the Valentine season; 12th-14th February 2010. In addition, a high tea in a tea-plantation locale will also make for a sophisticated dining experience, set within flower gardens, as well as cookery and floristry classes being available, too.

Another fascinating event by the Royal Project is the Ang Khang Gourmet Tour which will take place from 12th 14th March 2010, exactly while the peach trees are in blossom, Those attending will have a unique dining experience provided by Norbert Kostner, Executive Chef from Bangkok’s Oriental Hotel, together with Yunan and hill tribe cultural performances. Also enjoy a strawberries picked at source from the plantation. Interesting background information regarding the Royal Project and HM the King will be provided by Mom Chao Bhisadej Rajani.

The Royal Project’s Chefs

Chef Norbert Kosner

Apart from working as an executive chef for the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok, this talented 61 year old has also been a consultant for the Royal Project, selecting grains and ingredients used in their cooking for over 15 years now. Thus, he regularly has a chance to cook for the country’s royal guests and visiting foreign leaders.

Chef Herve Frerard

All the French cuisine aficionados will know Herve Frerard of Le Beaulieu, Sofitel Residence, located in Sukkhumwit Soi 19 (aka Soi Asoke) What makes this restaurant outstanding? It is definitely the high standard of food preparation, along with the applied creativity of the chef himself, who is forever developing his own original recipes.

Information…

Center for the Tourist Coordination of the Royal Project
65 Moo 1, Suthep Rd. Tel; 0-5381-0765-8 ext. 104 or 108

Haäagen-Dazs® in Chiang Mai ‘Pleasure in its purest form’

At Haäagen-Dazs, we are passionate about everything we do. Our worldwide search for ingredients takes us to Madagascar for vanilla, Hawaii for Macadamia nuts and of course, Belgium for chocolate. Equal effort and care goes into creating harmonious combinations of flavors and textures that make Haäagen-Dazs the ultimate in luxury ice-cream.

By including just a minimum of air, we produce an ice-cream that is richer in taste, creamier in body and only fresh cream, skimmed milk, egg yolk and sugar, combined with fine ingredients from around the world, There are no artificial colors in Haäagen-Dazs.

We were founded in the 1960’s and our passion for craftsmanship continues to this day, ensuring that every spoonful is an intensely rich experience.

Inspire your sense with the pure pleasure of Haäagen-Dazs, at the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar (near Royal Princess Hotel).

Recommended Creations:

Brownie Explosion

A crumbling, freshly baked Chocolate Brownie, served with a scoop of Cookies & Chocolate and a scoop of Cookies & Cream ice-cream, draped in hot chocolate fudge sauce.

Smoothies strawberry banana

Frosty Raspberry Sorbet and Vanilla Yogurt, Raspberries, Bananas, sparkling cranberry juice and crushed ice.

Information…

Haäagen-Dazs® in Chiang Mai located on Night Bazaar, opposite McDonald’s, A. Muang, Chiang Mai, Thailand Open daily noon-midnight. Tel: 0-5382-0666

Rimping The Wise Green Supermarket Chiang Mai

Small steps based on more joined up ‘green’ thinking on the part of Rimping led to the supermarket’s introduction of a re-useable cloth shopping bag campaign five years ago. Since then, new applied technology has created eco-friendly plastic shopping bags, using materials including corn and minerals, which biodegrade within eight months of production.

Another campaign, namely Local Talent, has also been practiced in order to develop local agricultural technologies, as well as the quality of agricultural products.

The Local Talent campaign is also based on the improvement of product marketability, with special sections for local products provided at all Rimping branches, together with sufficient publicity for local consumers, Furthermore, to ensure product quality, the Rimping Select logo has been awarded to certain local products which reach Rimping’s products and are divided into four different categories as fallows:

- Fruits and vegetables, such as organic bean sprouts
- Hydroponics, such as the product by Take Me Home
- Non-GMO and chemical free meat
- Products with the ‘Organilicious’ Label by Rimping Supermarket, and guaranteed by Organic Thailand and Organic Agriculture Certification Thailand.

Organilicious products include cereals, juices, condiments such as olive oil, as well as pastas and cheeses, for example.




Take Me Home One of Rimping Local Talents

For over three years, Rimping Supermarket has been cooperating with DATT Company, a hydroponics producer of tomatoes under the brand name Take Me Home, featuring three different types of foreign tomatoes.

“We provide local farmers with tomato seeds and fertilizer, the same farmers that used to grow bell peppers for us. This way of working together helps to provide incomes for local crop producers. However, they need to follow our instructions closely. We are really concerned with the whole process, from the selection of the seeds, to the growing, and specific pricing methods we use. We attempt to provide as much choice as possible to consumers” explained Panadda Inkaew, DATT’s Marketing Manager.

And so we hear the voice of a manufacturer of premium local product, working in cooperation with local farmers and Rimping Supermarket, a wise ‘green’ local business, with big ideas for the wellbeing of the community.



Information…

Rimping Supermarket
129 Chiang Mai-Lamphun Rd., T. Watket, Chiang Mai City, Thailand
t+66 (0) 53 246 333-4

Street Eats In Chiang Mai

My friend paid me a visit recently, expecting to have the experience of all Chiang Mai’s culinary delights. So, as he wished, I provided the perfect program as follows… Firstly, a dish of Hai-Lum steamed rice with chicken near to Chiang Mai Railway Station Although not a local food type, the traditional style of cooking used here provides an excellent flavor making it a place well worth a visit.

Moving down the road we had some Chinese buns at Salabao Vikul on nearby Charoenmuang Road, before sampling a bowl of sweet sesame-stuffed dumplings in ginger syrup at a place opposite the Warm Up Café on Nimmanhaeminda Road.



Afterwards came one of our most popular Lanna dishes; Khao Soi egg noodle curry soup. And there are certainly plenty of restaurant where this dish is served, so I would recommend Khao Soi Mae Manee, situated on the Mae Rim-Fang Road in a small alley next to the Department of Labor, open daily from 8 am.

In the afternoon, after some shopping at Kad Luang Market, my Bangkokian friend appeared to try something from each of the surrounding food vendors! Whenever I go to Kad Luang, I usually have a cup of fresh coffee or young coconut ice-cream. Café de Laujou was our next destination, located inside Laujou Alley opposite the Chinese temple. Aromatic coffee is served daily in this lovely little place. The coconut ice-cream can be found opposite 7-Eleven. This is also made fresh daily, and from 9 am – 5 pm everyday. Two thumbs up from my friend for the day’s dessert, too.

Of courses, it was impossible for him to try all the good restaurants in Chiang Mai in just a couple of days, for there truly are a massive number of them. From those in the city locale to those spread along the banks of the River Ping. However, as my friend requested local cuisine once again, I look him to the Duang Sompong restaurant in Mae Rim District. This eatery is one of the local people’s favorites. What are the recommended items? Well, every dish served here is worth recommending, so I suggest you get along there and find out why. As we finished dinner at 9 pm, the night was still young, so we went to chill out of The North Gate, the perfect place for fine live Jazz with competitively priced drinks.

The clock turned midnight. I jokingly asked my friend if he was ready for another meal. The answer was yes! So we moved to the renowned Kai Thieng Kuen (Midnight Fried Chicken) at Kampaengdin Road, the Thai rice noodle bar at San Pakhoi Market, and finally Chok Sompet where we enjoyed a warm bowl of traditional rice porridge.

This signified the end of the night, but as my friend pointed out, Chiang Mai is a never ending food experience, that just keeps deliciously rolling on…

GLORIOUS FOOD Chiang Mai

Thinking back to when I was a child, I remember the early morning mist and the smoke from food my grandmother cooked for my school lunch box, It was as if the smoke and mist would making it impossible to separate them.

I would help my grandmother collect eggs from the nearby duck house, break them open, and stir their yellowy contents into some fish sauce and shallots. We would pour the mixture into a folded banana leaf, shaped like a boat, and grill it over charcoal in the traditional way until it was firm and smelling delicious. To accompany it, my sister would pick small cucumbers off the vine covering the bamboo fence of our house. Kai Pum is the old local item we use for eggs cooked this way in banana leaves. It’s a tasty and easy way to make breakfast.

And I might have been the only student who brought sticky rice and grilled fish to school at that time, instead of the more fashionable American fried rice or macaroni, as others students from the Catholic school loved to bring, But these days I feel as though I owe my grandmother a lot. She raised me as a Northern Thai woman, and now I have become a person who is proud of my roots, and the traditional ways of culture, especially our food.

In The Good Old Days

My grand mother used to say “When the time comes that we have to buy vegetables, rice, and water. Then it must be time for the end of the World!” For her generation there was rarely any need to buy food. Even as children, whenever we wanted to eat or cook something, we just fetched the ingredients from the garden or from the farm.

At the time of the Thai New Year (Song Kran) we would prepare fresh sugar cane to make Thai dessert; Kanom Tein (steamed rice flour stuffed with coconut), and Khao Tann or Khao Nang Led (rice crackers). You could hear the tok tok tok sound of things being cut upmon chopping boards resonating all around, that was the way of cooking Laab (Northern Thai Style minced pork), and we believed that eating Laab at the beginning of the year, brought luck, or money, it’s what some of us still believe. On Thai New Year’s Eve we would also have the chance to sample Gaeng Kanoon, a special jackfruit soup. It was thought that by eating this soup we would be supported, as the name of the jackfruit in Thai also relates to support, the kind that we give to each other as people.

Whenever we went to the rice field, we’d always gather Pak Waen (Northern Thai clover fern) and Plaa Kradi (a kind of fish). This was enough to make an unbelievably delicious dinner. One of the other most fun food for foraging activities for kids was trying to catch crabs for making Nam Poo (crab sauce) We’d crush lemon grass together with the field crabs to get rid of their strong smell, and be left with a rich dark sauce. This goes very well with boiled bamboo shoots, as a side dish.

Cooking spicy Northern Thai food is very easy on the whole, as long as you have some basic ingredients to make the paste used in most soups; chill, salt, garlic, red shallot onions, and Ka Pi (shrimp paste). My grandmother also told me, as a guideline, that when you create a Thai soup, if you are using beef then you’d better and more galangal to it, and if it’s a fish soup you better use a lot of lemon grass. For chicken, color the soup with turmeric. And if you would like to get an umami (broth like) taste, then add some crushed red onions. The rest depends on the chef, but you should be able to make your own delicious dishes following these simple rules, without resorting to monosodium glutamate! In fact, traditional natural methods of cooking food are becoming very popular again since a reaction to so many unnecessary chemical ingredients and excessive uses of high technology. Many people want a more personal connection to what they eat, the way it was grown, and how it is then packaged and produced.

When we talk about food in the North, we also need to talk about “rice” Sticky rice is a staple dish for Northern Thai families. Traditionally we eat sat on the floor, gathered around a circular table. A spicy soup is then normally rested on the table upon a round platform called the Kantok. There are different ways to then handle and mold the rice, including: Ong Ka Long Kwai Non, Huk Na Wok, Mur, Bai.

Fusing the Past with Present

And even while everyone was still growing and picking their own vegetables straight out of the garden, there were often different groups of foreigners setting and working in and around Chiang Mai. Well over a hundred years old. There was already a whole international riversidecommunity, driven by a burgeoning fumber trade. There was a Chinese, European, and Indian community. They mainly lived near the Wat Kate temple area known as Bann Ta Huan Pae, located opposite what is now the Lam Yai fresh produce market (opposite Warorot Market). They all equally brought their own ideas, and cultures of food to bear on the eating habits of everyone in the city, and that has continued right through to the present day. Chiang Mai’s international eating scene stands as a clear testament to the fact.

But while getting a real ‘taste of Chiang Mai’ is all about the mixing of different cultures, with new dishes being created daily, the charming old ways of how to cook and savor Northern Thai food has never failed to have an influence either.

One thing I can guarantee; once you step into this town you will never leave hungry, as there is so much good food for you to sample and enjoy, both authentic and contemporary.

Le Crystal Restaurant Chiang Mai

Le Crystal voted Thailand’s Best Restaurant 2007-2009 by Thailand Tatler. Experience the Finest French Cuisine in a superb Lanna style venue on the Ping River. Select from their exceptional wine cellar and dine on delicate French cuisine in a magical garden setting. Warm atmosphere, soft music, attentive service and fine French dining create a romantic evening for two or the most pleasant place for a special occasion.

Properly prepared chocolate is good for an individual’s nervous system and mental health. Really! And several food aficionados in Chiang Mai agree that the ‘Warm Chocolate Cake’ at Crystal’s Cake Shop is a truly remarkable item.

Ingredients:

Unsalted butter 95 g
Dark chocolate 160 g
Eggs 3
Sugar 80 g
Flour 95 g

Method: Butter some remekins and sprinkle with flour, discarding the excess. Put in the chocolate and butter in a bowl set on a pan 0f simmering water and warm together. Keep stirring until blended and smooth. Whip the eggs and sugar till mixed, Slowly add the chocolate and butter mixture into the remekins and place in the fridge. Bake in the oven at 180c for 10mins before serving with ice-cream.

Open daily from 18.00 to 22.30 hours. Reservations are recommended. Complimentary transportation from the city.

Information…

Le Crystal Restaurant
74/2 Paton Rd., Chiang Mai City t+66 (0) 53 872 890-1
Complimentary transportation from the city info@lecrystalrestaurant.com, reservation@lecrystalrestaurant.com
http://www.lecrystalrestaurant.com/