Daily Report: The Balcony Restaurant Review

I think I made a mistake by trying to do a review on a restaurant like this. The fact of the matter is that when you decide to go to a middle-of-the-top-end restaurant (let's say the 1,200-2,000 baht per person range), unless you are a world class gourmand — which I am not — you only have two choices: Either everything tastes exactly the way the restaurant owner wanted it; everything is prepared exactly the way the restaurant owner wanted it; and everything looks, seems, and turns out exactly the way the restaurant owner wanted it... or it doesn't. I can't really talk about a "great deal" or "serving sizes" or "quality for your money", and therefore without the typical subjects of my restaurant review to discuss, I am left with very little to talk about.

Anyway... I'll give it a try.

Since both Mem and Pui were out of town (and Stan and I, while we love to take the girls out to dinner with us, cringe at spending 250 baht for tom yum kung), we decided to go to The Balcony for dinner tonight, which is located on Pattaya North Road about halfway between Second and Third Roads on the north side of the street. The entrance and restaurant is around the back, so you have to keep an eye out for the signs... but they are there.

I do have two complaints about the Balcony that I'll get out of the way quickly: One is that the restaurant is on the first floor. (Dining at this place I was expecting to dine on a balcony, and so was a little let down by that.) If there is a second floor here, I never saw it. The second is that the decor is rather muted and could use an upgrade.

That said, the food and service is — as expected — excellent. I will say that there must have been, at some point in the distant past, some kind of relationship between The Balcony and Casa Pascal (another top-shelf restaurant in Pattaya), because several of their recipes are identical, and they even use the same eau de parfume in their moistened hand towels. (I know that, because after dining at Casa Pascal, I went out and bought the same eau de parfume they use and now I can offer guests in my house the same scented cold towels.)

I started off with a shrimp cream soup for 190 baht (which as noted above is the same as Casa Pascal's lobster bisque), garlic-and-butter baked New Zealand mussels for 250 baht (which was exceptionally good), and shrimps stir-fried in lemon brandy sauce for 450 baht (which was served with vegetables and a very nice rice dish). The lemon brandy sauce was quite nice, but with only 7 shrimp on the plate... OK... sorry... I said I wasn't going to get into the serving size and value-for-money thing, so I'll stop there.

Stan had a seafood cocktail for 250 baht and a beef chateaubriand for 550 baht which Stan said was as good a piece of beef as a man can hope for.

Included with dinner was 2 rounds of vodka drinks, and 2 glasses of wine with our entrees. We skipped coffee and dessert. Total price for 2 with tip was 3,200 baht ($90 / £45 / €70) .

After that, it was off to Lennie's on Soi Diamond for drinks. I had drank all of the Newcastle Brown Ale in the bar on my previous visit, and therefore went to my backup favorite, the pear cider. Both are 150 baht a bottle, and since I enjoy both of these drinks 100% more than a bottle of Heineken at 75 baht, it's a good deal.