Hans Restaurant Review

Hans is located on Third Road south
of Excite, and North of Buffalo Bar.

A light bite of turkey wrapped around
a gherkin with melon balls.

Seafood appetizer on avocado.

Lobster bisque.

Salmon under hollandaise, on avocado.

Carrot salad with raisins and peppers.

Roast duck with Grand Marnier sauce.

Beef goulash.

Coq au vin.

Grouper with almonds.

Sirloin steak.

Creme bruleé.Tonight, Stan and his "maid" (he's all but dropped the pretense now... she is his new girlfriend) Lee, Jeff and his lady friend Lee, and me and Epril went to fairly new restaurant on Third Road, called Hans. It's about 200 feet north of the Buffalo Bar... almost in the same parking lot, but not quite. It is upscale dining with a combination of safe-choice recipes, and a few bits of nouveau cuisine here and there.

It's a very pretty restaurant really, and that is saying a lot, considering that the place is decorated in what should naturally be a garish bright red and white, with grey accents. But somehow, instead of looking like a highschool cheerleader exploded all over the walls, it is a very fetching dining room.

We had a round of cocktails for starters, with vodka mixers coming in at 170 baht, and Jeff ordered 2 bottles of an Australian Chiraz at about 1,100 baht each. Maid Lee had a margarita for 210 baht. Wine by the glass is 190 baht... but Hans' wine list is extensive, and you can go all the way from a low of 800 baht per bottle up to 5,000 baht per bottle, depending on your palate and budget.

We started off with an amuse bouche of turkey breast wrapped around a gherkin sitting on top of a bit of mayonnaise, and 2 melon balls. The dish could have done with something other than mayonnaise. There was also freshly-baked bread with a wonderful spread made from butter with garlic and paprika mixed in.

For appetizers, Stan had an avocado and seafood dish for 295 baht, which he enjoyed; Jeff had a lobster bisque for 195 baht, which he said was fine; and I had a Norwegian salmon over avocado covered with a hollandaise sauce for 175 baht, which I didn't like. The dish sounded interesting, but the mushy avocado with the mushy salmon and the mushy hollandaise sauce was a bad texture, and the fish flavor didn't mix with the hollandaise as well as I thought it would.

Next, we had salads. Jeff had a Ceasar salad, and I had a neat little carrot salad with raisins soaked in a vinaigrette for 90 baht, which really was quite nice.

For entreés: Maid Lee had the duck breast in a Grand Marnier sauce for 375 baht, which she enjoyed; I tried a bite of is and found it to be excellent. Stan had the 200 gram sirloin steak for 545 baht, which he said was perfectly acceptable. Jeff's Lee had pork medallions for 295 baht, which were fine. Jeff had the grouper (315 baht), also good. Epril had the coq au vin for 365 baht, which she said was good. I tried one of the chef's specialties , a beef goulash for 395 baht, which I thought was quite nice, although it seemed a hearty dish more suited to an Aspen ski lodge than a fine dining atmosphere.

For dessert, there was strawberry ice cream, a very nice creme bruleé, and chocolate mousse, all of which were fine, but not the best examples you could find of each in Pattaya.

We had a couple of complaints about this restaurant. First, the service was very slow. That's not my complaint, but is Jeff's: We arrived at 7:15 and left at 10:30. I suppose that 3 hours and 15 minutes for cocktails, appetizers, salads, entreés and desserts was a little long. While I'm a patient diner, others are not... and the girls were definitely fidgety.

My personal critique is that the prices were a little bit high. I'm not too price sensitive when it comes to dining, and while I have no idea what the cost of the imported ingredients that went into food we ate may have been, my nearly-400 baht plate of goulash seemed high, and Epril's 365-baht chicken dish seemed a little expensive as well. Dinner for the 6 of us with 2 bottles of wine came out to about 8000 baht. (The three couples received separate checks this evening, and I only saw 2 of the 3 checks, so I'm estimating the cost to within about 500 baht.)

Hans is a good restaurant, but I feel that the nouveau cuisine dishes I tried (such as the salmon appetizer) weren't that tasty. But: Dishes like that are indeed experimental, with chefs trying for months and years to find incredibly tasty but strange combinations of ingredients to amaze the palate. Sometimes (in some people's opinions) they fail, and that's not a terribly bad thing, as indeed effort does count in dishes like that. However, going to the top shelf restaurants in Pattaya, like Casa Pascal, you find their nouveau cuisine is a lot more exotic and tasty.

Hans' service is not as good as other restaurants in its class. Symphony Brassiere has great staff, and the speed with which the dishes came out of the kitchen there (when that restaurant had more diners in it) was quicker. It could be that Hans was pacing itself and keeping a dignified and leisurely pace to our dining experience... but it was slow. Also, having to do a "stage whisper" across the dining room to get a waiter's attention is something that doesn't happen in the better restaurants: In those places, the moment a patron has "wandering eyes", a waiter immediately comes running.

Hans' prices are higher than some similar restaurants. Flamboyant in Jomtien is still the best fine dining value... probably in all of Thailand. Yes, I'm sure Flamboyant is cutting corners, or skimping on ingredients, or something to keep prices down... but the important part is that you can't tell. In Casa Pascal, you may pay through the nose for your food, but you're eating truffles in champagne sauce.

Hans is a fine dining restaurant in this very small city that is filled with a dozen-or-so other fine dining restaurants of an equivalent level, plus 5 or 6 more 6-star world-class restaurants, and 2 or 3 dozen not-as-good-but-still-great classy little joints (Café New Orleans springs immediately to mind) that can at times stand toe-to-toe with their fancier superiors.

It is simply becoming a difficult market to stand out in. I can recommend Hans restaurant to the dining adventurers such as myself. For people who like to try lots of different restaurants: Put Hans on your list. However, for those of you who don't dine out very often, or are faithful to a single venue, or aren't in Pattaya for a long period of time, Hans probably shouldn't be your first choice.