Bangkok Jam

A few nights ago, I had a dined at a Bangkok Jam outlet for the first time. They have a couple of outlets around Singapore, and I regularly walk pass the one at United Square, often attracted to the desserts on the menu. The children, on the other hand, were more attracted to their kids area within the restaurant. They had iPads in there.

I first had to make sure there was something on the menu that the kids will eat. It’s Thai food, often exotic and spicy, they could be easily incompatible to the very simple things that my kids want. I was assured the Minced Chicken with Rice on the kids menu, which the two boys had agreed on, was not spicy at all. The dish ought to be named Basil Chicken with Rice, since there’s basil, though the basil flavouring was pretty mild.

The older brother declared the dish was absolutely yummy.

I like the Black Pepper Soft-Shell Crab with Glass Noodles at Thai Express quite a lot, and to be honest, I was thinking about this dish when I was browsing through Bangkok Jam’s menu. They had no such dish. The closed to it would have been this one, the Spaghetti with Yellow Curry & Soft-Shell Crab, which I ordered.

The soft-shell crab was nice. I wasn’t too fond about the yellow curry noodles. It’s basically a dry noodle dish, with some yellow curry poured over it. It’s hardly spicy, at least for people who like spicy food. In fact, it’s mild enough that the younger boy wanted to share the soft-shell crab, and despite complaining that the crab was spicy, continued to ask for more.

Before the mains arrived, and after they were done, I let the two boys have their fun in the kids play area. It was, after all, the main attraction for them.

They had toys, and they had a couple of iPads. With these generation of kids, I think just the iPads would be good enough for them, keeping them entertained, while the parents enjoyed their meals in peace, or have a gathering to chit-chat, etc.

I had about an hour or so to kill. So after the main meal was done, and the two boys were playing around, I ordered desserts for myself. I wasn’t terribly hungry, otherwise I would have wanted to order the Mango Sticky Rice dessert too. But in the end, I just got myself the Iced Thai Coffee and Red Ruby with Coconut Ice Cream.

The Red Ruby dessert was pretty good. The red ruby, or the water chestnuts within them, were nice and crunchy. The tapioca flour wasn’t too thick. The coconut ice cream was light. The younger brother enjoyed the ice cream.

The coffee was pretty average. In fact, I think it could be just ordinary coffee. Nothing particularly Thai-ish about it. It’s a good sized serving, though, so that’s a good thing.

Bangkok Jam’s outlet at United Square might be the only one with a kids area, because of the kind of crowd that visit this shopping mall. The play area is, honestly, small. But if you have kids, you’d understand that size doesn’t matter to them.

If you want to dine somewhere with kids so that the kids have their things to do, and the adults can do their things yet still keep an eye on the kids, this seems like one place to consider. I’d probably need another visit or two, to try more food and desserts, to give an informed rating of Bangkok Jam.