Casa Pascal Restaurant Review

Pattaya's Best Gourmet Restaurant.



Casa Pascal is located on Second Road
across from Shenanigans.Tonight, with no girls to limit our budget, Stan and I headed out to one of my favorite restaurants, Casa Pascal. (We don't mind spending money on the ladies, but Thai girls don't have an appreciation for high-end gourmet dishes, so it's not money well-spent. It's kind of like buying your little girl a $500 antique doll... when she would appreciate a $5 Barbie just as much.)

Located across Second Road from Shenanigans in the same back-from-the-street area as Ruen Thai restaurant, Casa Pascal is quite simply the best restaurant in Pattaya (price notwithstanding) in my opinion. The decor is handsome, the wait staff is perfect, and every dish is a learning experience. Not a single opportunity for service is missed: You can even call 038-723-660 for Pascal's personal limosiune service to come pick you up from whever you are, and drop you off after your meal.

For dinner tonight, Stan and I chose to have the 2,900 baht ($87) "Gourmet Set Menu", which was a 7-plate meal, with unlimited beverages. (If you find the price a bit much, you can have the same meal for 1,450 baht ($44) without the all-you-can-drink option.) Stan remarked that in London or New York, a meal like this would run into the hundreds-of-dollars range... and he was absolutely right.









For starters, we drank a bottle of Italian spumante brut sparkling wine while enjoying some delicious egg spread on bread, and an amuse bouche of tuna and tomato. (Well, I drank most of the bottle of the spumante by myself, before joining Stan for a bottle of French chardonnay.)

After the first dish came chermoulah-spiced prawns with coriander and guacamole sitting on slices of apple... simply stunning.

The next dish up was a creamy champagne "soup à la nage", with mussel, a beautiful scallop, shrimp, asparagus, and cherry tomatoes. The presentation was simply beautiful, and the flavor of the soup was perfect.

Next was another soup: A coconut soup with (real) truffles, buckwheat noodles, and roasted artichoke. I'm not a big fan of artichoke, but the coconut broth, noodles and the fact that there were actual truffles in the soup made the dish quite special.

After that was a blackberry sherbert with a bit of liquer added in. A little strong, but still very nice. I did think that the "stand-up dishes" that looked like candle sconces were a bit silly... but I give Pascal points for creativity at least.

We moved on to the entreés at this point. Having finished the bottle of chardonnay, we opened a bottle of French cabernet sauvignon. Stan chose the roasted rabbit with a mustard, rosemary and garlic brushing, which was delightful and perfectly cooked, while I had the snapper with bouillabaisse sauce on a bed of mixed grains, which I personally didn't care for, as the fish taste was a bit too strong. Both dishes were simply stunning to look at, decorated artfully with a balsamic reduction.

After the entreés, we sat about and finished the bottle of red wine before starting dessert. For dessert, I drank grappa and ate pineapple with "kulfi" ice cream (which is an Indian saffron ice cream), while Stan had the cheese platter, with several French cheeses. Stan had his heart set on drinking Port, and at this point deviated from the set menu by ordering a rare vintage at 500 baht per glass.

Anyway, for 2,900 baht ($87) plus tip, this set menu is quite simply the best gourmet meal you can have in Pattaya.