Bird's Nest Cafe

Healthy and delicious Thai and Mediterranean food are the order of the day for this homey little cafe in Chiang Mai Old City. 

Set in an old Thai teak house, Bird's Nest Cafe has a nice an relaxing ambience with a nice little corner on the 1st floor, and a place to lounge around on the 2nd floor.  

As we enter, we were greeted by a friendly lady on the counter / bar. We do need to place the order here and pay first before taking our seats. 

The menu is not huge, but there is a good range of breakfast; western food, including various types of sandwiches with options of homemade breads - pita, croissant, foccacia, ciabatta and whole wheat; various breakfast sets, tortilla wraps and salads. There are also some Thai dishes available. 

We decided to order one Western dish and one Thai dish, as well as the special Bird's Nest Coffee Latte (mixed coffee with cardamon, cinnamon, clove and star anise).

The coffee was ordered "mai wan" i.e. "not sweet". The spiced coffee was slightly bitter, had an interesting flavour, as you would have guessed from the ingredients! After tasting the coffee, I would have liked a bit more sugar! 65 baht. 

Interestingly, the straw used was of the non-disposable variety, and this fits well with Bird's Nest Cafe's philosophy of looking after our planet - they try to use less plastic and encourage customers to bring their own containers for take away food and drink. 

Organic ingredients and local produce are used as much as possible. A lot of products used, incidentally, are from Pun Pun. 

Grilled Mozzarella Sandwich with Tomato and Onion - We can choose from the various types of bread available (as listed above), and also from two "sauces" - cashew nut pesto or the sour cream garlic oregano.  We went for the foccacia with cashew nut pesto, and we weren't disappointed! The focaccia was very nice, especially with the very generous dollop of the cashew nut pesto (actually, more like half a jar rather than a dollop!) that gives a creamy and nutty accent to the "sandwich". Actually, I probably could have just eaten a jar the pesto by itself!  95 baht

Now onto the Thai dish - Tom Kha Mushrooms (Mushroom coconut soup) with brown rice. Tom Kha is one of my favourite Thai soups, so I was quite eager to taste Bird's Nest Cafe's tom kha. In case you don't know, this soup is a bit like Tom Yum soup with coconut milk added. The coconut milk tones down the strong spiciness in Tom Yum and gives a more mellow and rich flavour.

So how is Bird's Nest Cafe's Tom Kha? It's actually quite nice, but the flavours have been toned town, I guess to suit the mainly Western and Japanese clientele (from my observation from the one time I've been to the cafe!). Although it wasn't spicy at all (at least to me!), I still enjoyed it a lot.  85 baht (includes a plate of brown rice.. well..red in this case!).

Bird's Nest Cafe is a lovely and comfortable place to relax and have some good healthy food. The rest of the menu seems quite tempting too, and would love to go back to try it if I get the chance. I particularly like their philosophy of looking after the planet, and serving as much organic ingredients as much as possible. 

Bird's Nest Cafe

Singaharat Rd Soi 3

0894292467

Opens daily 9am-8pm

Music and Film events on Friday nights.

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