Sitting at Number 16 on Timeout’s 2008 London’s Top 50 Restaurants and being the ONLY michelin-starred Thai restaurant in Europe I was expecting something special from Nahm – the Thai restaurant located in The Halkin (hotel) in Belgravia. Apparently it features the best Thai chef in the world (and coincidentaly he comes from my part of the universe – Australia!) and though he lives mostly in Bangkok Timeout reckons he does visit London enough to keep the standards high at Nahm.

Being a Monday I wouldn’t have expected the restaurant to be extremely busy however when I walked in at just after 7.30pm I was surprised to see that Pat and Claire and I were the only diners! I think we were joined not too long after that by one other table but even by the time we left there were only two or three other tables filled so from that perspective I’d have to say that the atmosphere was a little lacking. On the flip side, maybe because of the lack of other diners, the service we received was impeccable from the time the door was opened for me to enter the restaurant to the explanation of the menu to the service we received thereafter during the meal. They explained to us several times that the whole concept behind Nahm was the experience of sharing the food and therefore the menu was split into several regions and, if you were of the mind, you could select dishes from all regions to share.

We ended up sharing four dishes an orange chilli and lemongrass squid dish, a roast duck salad, a sea bass green thai curry, and a sort of chilli pork with cashews. In terms of food and presentation I would actually rank the dishes in that order of preference. I liked the squid (though there was nothing extra-ordinary about it) and the duck salad was delicious but I was extremely disappointed with the sea bass green thai curry and the chilli pork. Both dishes were overly salted and I don’t know what was happening with the green thai curry but what was presented to us was just like a big puddle of soupy like curry sauce covering who knows what. Now I know when you get a thai curry it normally does swim in sauce but I did expect here at Nahm that the sea bass would be highlighted as feature in the dish and not hidden at the bottom beneath random ingredients that required us to dig around until we’d found the sea bass. In fact I’m fairly sure when both Claire and Pat first dug into the dish they didn’t come up with any sea bass at all! As for the chilli pork – it was surprisingly dry and tough.

Now where Nahm separates itself from its counterparts is in the selection of dishes on the menu. It is unlike any Thai restaurant you’ve been to so expect to experience something a bit different here. In particular the desserts are something out there. We all three went for different things on the menu – Claire went for glutinous rice and peanut balls in a warmed coconut soup with a side of shredded coconut, banana and corn, Pat went for pomegranites in some sort of coconut soup/syrup with a side of water chestnut, young coconuts and peanut sweet and I had jackfruit in a super sweet jasmine syrup with a side of shredded coconut, peanut and smoked or blackened coconut thingy (that’s right – quite technical – the pitcure speaks better than I can!)

Overall I’m not sure I would come back here. Granted its a michelin-starred restaurant and I think perhaps we didn’t get the full effect of the food as we didn’t really venture into all regions of the food and if we had perhaps the contrast effect of moving between soups, salads, curries, stir-fries and relishes would have given us a more rounded Thai meal. Further I think the prices are ridiculously high for Thai food (however high quality it purports to be) so from a value for money perspective I don’t think I could recommend it. There are a plus or two however – mainly in the very different selection of Thai dishes you’ll find here and also in the unique ingredients used in the dishes themselves.