The Dining Room @137 Pillars House

What a gorgeous hotel! 137 Pillars House is an amazing property in Wat Gate area of Chiang Mai. There's an old wooden house there with 137 pillars, hence the name. This property originally belonged to East Borneo Company, and around, 1880 the house used to be the residence of the company's superintendents in Chiang Mai, Louis Leonowens, who also happened to be Anna Leonowens' son. The house was extensively renovated after the current owner bought the property in 2002 and the house became the centre piece of a new luxury hotel.

137 Pillars House's two restaurants are located in this historical setting. Palette Restaurant offers a formal dining option and seats up to 20 guests. I went with some friends to have lunch at The Dining Room, which is simply gorgeous and oozes romantic old world charm.

Perusing the lunch menu, I notice that the prices were actually quite affordable and comparable to other good restaurants and hotels. The Dining Room offers a variety of Western,Thai and various vegetarian dishes. For example, the Prawn and Avocado Salad (Prawns, parma ham, avocado, mango and mixed green salad on ginger-soy vinaigrette) - 360 baht. Other western dishes include burgers and pizzas. There is a bigger selection of Thai dishes and we opted for a few of Thai dishes to share.

Pla Thord Nam Ma Kam (crispy snapper fillet basted with tamarind sauce and pandan leaf). This was lovely, and I thought was quite good value at 230 baht. The fish fillet was nicely fried - crispy but not oily, and served with (surprisingly) toasted pitta bread and just the right amount of tamarind sauce (ie the fish was not smothered in the sauce), which accented the natural taste of the snapper rather than over powering it.

The Green Curry Chicken with Prawns - 230 baht, was also great. Yes, it's a pretty standard Thai dish, but The Dining Room makes a pretty mean rendition. It was smooth, creamy and rich, well balanced with all the right flavours but not particularly spicy. Perfect. Tip: Try the curry with the pita bread from the snapper in tamarind sauce.

Last but not least, the Pad Thai with Prawns. 480 baht - I know, quite expensive for a pad thai, but we were curious. The Dining Room's pad thai served wrapped in an omelette, some crab meat, and 3 river prawns. There was even some green mango, which was a little unusual but it did give a nice tangy accent to the dish.

Conclusion
I must say I enjoyed having lunch at The Dining Room very much. The atmosphere and set up is so lovely and peaceful that I felt like I was transported to another world. Although the food did take quite some time to come out, all the dishes were served at the same time. The food was lovely and I thought quite good value considering where we were. The staff was very friendly and attentive.

Beautiful grounds

The Dining Room
137 Pillars House
2 Soi 1 Nawatgate Road
Wat Gate, Muang, Chiang Mai
Tel: 053 247788
Opens: breakfast, lunch & dinner

Natwat Home Cafe

Being someone who's always busy and running around doing something or another, it was nice not to be in a hurry going somewhere and to come to Natwat Home Cafe with the girls after my Sunday morning Zumba class. Yes, we do need to reward ourselves once in a while after a good work out!

I really like Natwat Home Cafe. It's a cute and chic little cafe, and it's great that it's not SO busy around Sunday lunch time, so I felt like I could really relax and chill out here.

After perusing through the menu, I must say, it was actually quite difficult to decide what to eat. I wanted to try to many things!

The prices seem quite reasonable too, for example, a latte costs 60 baht. I decided to go for the sweet potato latte, (60baht)  just because it sounded interesting. What's that? It's steamed sweet potato, milk, maple syrup and served with mascapone cheese. I asked for "not sweet" and it turned out to be lovely. The latte was quite smooth, although there was still a slight grainy texture from the sweet potato. It was worth a try.

Sweet Potato Latte (in front) - 60baht

After some deliberation, I decided to try the Baked Eggs, which consisted of 2 eggs, home made meatballs, tomato sauce, tomatoes, black olives, coriander, jalapeno, pesto and parmesan cheese. 165 baht. Incidentally, our meals took quite a bit of time to come out, but when it did (so please be patient!), it tasted as great as it looked. The sourdough bread was delicious and dense, and perfect for soaking up the juices. The home made meat balls were really good, and the black olives gave the dish a nice rich contrast to the tomato flavours.

Baked Eggs. 165 baht.

One friend decided to try the Chorizo Sandwich and she said it was very nice too.

Natwat Home Cafe is a lovely cafe. A place I could go back time and time again. The staff is very friendly and welcoming. The menu has many interesting dishes including various deserts and pasta dishes that I'd like to try. There is some parking behind the cafe.

Natwat Home Cafe
330/2 Charoenrat Rd, Watgate
Muang, Chiang Mai
Tel: 081 716 1608
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Natwat-Home-Cafe/325606954147642
Opens: 7:30am - 4:30pm  Tuesdays-Sundays
Close: Mondays

Woo - Cafe, Art Gallery & Lifestyle Shop

Woo Cafe.. Here's a rather cool, trendy and very popular cafe on the riverside strip of shops, bars, cafes and restaurants. It's a great place to chill out and chat with friends over lunch or coffee (or dinner).

The cafe was already filled up by the time I arrived at 12pm, and my friends and I managed to get a communal table on the terrace.

The ambience, I would say, is comfortable & chic, somewhere you could spend the whole morning or afternoon just hanging out and chatting.

After lunch, we were able to move to the cool air-conditioned room.

I agonised over the menu a bit as I was hoping for something a bit unusual. There are the regular Thai food options, salads and various Western dishes (pasta and sandwiches).

On this occasion, may be I was going through a fussy mood, nothing really stood out (don't you hate that?)... but then, I saw Khao Yum on the menu.

Khao Yum (rice salad) is a southern Thailand dish which consists of rice (as you would imagine!), various finely chopped vegetables, herbs and spices and tamarind dressing.

When it came out, I must say it looked very pretty. Each ingredient came separately, delicately chopped in little bowls.There were two coloured rice (the blue butterfly pea rice, and pink rice), raw mango, puffed rice, kaffir lime, shredded dried shrimps, etc, etc.

Khao Yum - Before

So it was up to us to mix everything together, then add the dressing! And I must say, it was lovely and colourful! The rice salad was very light, full of flavour of the different herbs, and the sweetish and sourish tamarind based dressing. I really enjoyed every bite. Around 195-200 baht.

Khao Yum - After!

One friend ordered the Salmon Sandwich, which looked and tasted great, and comes with a bowl of nicely fried french fries. 

And another friend ordered the Tom Yum Fried Rice (which she said she had before, and it was very good). Unfortunately, Woo was out of it this time, and a pasta was ordered instead. It looked really good, and would have been good, but I think the chef forgot to add salt as there wasn't much taste to the pasta.

Overall, I really enjoyed Woo Cafe. I love the chic yet down to earth atmosphere. The cafe has a very welcoming ambience and you feel like you can just sit back and relax and have a meal or coffee and chat with friends without feeling rushed. The staff is very friendly and welcoming and the food is also pretty good. I'd love to come back to try other dishes, as well as their coffees and desserts.

Woo is on the pricey side (for a cafe), with most of the dishes being around the 180-200 baht mark.

There is some parking in front of the cafe.

The lifestyle shop part is also very nice, and has some beautiful home decorating and jewellery items for sale.

Woo - Cafe, Art Gallery & Lifestyle Shop
80 Charoenraj Rd,
T. Wat Ket, A. Muang, Chiang Mai 50000
Tel: 052003717
Opens: 10am-10pm