I spent last weekend in Ayuthaya with a group of friends. As mentioned previously, the quiet town is a wonderful place to escape big city life, and features great restaurants, (relatively) cool weather and lots of stuff to do. After arriving, we asked the staff of our guest house to suggest a good place to eat, and they suggested a place called Bann Kun Pra.
The hotel/restaurant is located in a beautiful antique building directly on the river, and has creative menu. Unfortunately, as the stereotype goes, the places with the best locations/view often have mediocre food, and this was definitely the case with Bann Kun Pra. The first warning sign should have been the fact that the restaurant serves its rice in cute animal shapes:
After beheading our turtles, we dug into the dishes we ordered, which included asparagus stir-fried with prawns:
It was decent, although like most of the meal, bland and characterless.
A soup of cucumbers stuffed with ground-pork:
was, in my opinion, probably the nicest dish of the meal. The cucumber added a pleasantly sweet flavour to the broth, and the pork filling was peppery and tasty.
The sesame grilled chicken:
was, despite appearances, slightly spicy and not bad, although very dry.
Possibly the biggest disappointment was the grilled beef and mangosteen salad:
The dish sounded interesting on the menu, but the beef appeared to have been par-boiled, and other than a nearly tasteless coconut milk dressing, the dish had little flavour.
Carla ordered rice fried with curry powder:
and Ron can apparently not go an entire meal without ordering flash-fried morning glory:
Which is OK, as I'm the same way. Unfortunately Bann Kun Pra's take on the dish was bland and unnecessarily included ground pork.
Again, I imagine Bann Kun Pra is a lovely (although slightly overpriced) place to stay, but not a very good destination for authentic Thai food.
Bann Kunn Pra
48 Moo 3 U-Thong Road
Ayuthaya
035 241 978