Creative, entertaining and well-executed, The House on Sathorn’s Dining Room  manages to get away with what initially seem like some unforgivable pretensions. The menu begins with a note from the restaurant’s head chef (sorry, “culinary director”), Fatih Tutak, in which he instructs you to “experience the message of each dish with all your senses.” Right.

You then get a list of dish names with a fondness for the first person—“Back to my Origins” (Turkish manti/eggplant/tomato/kaymak), “On My Way Home to Silom” (banana/toffee/snow). It’s a bit clumsy but the frenetic burst of culinary ideas plucked from all around the world—a taste of Tokyo’s Michelin-star kitchens here, a nod to Istanbul street food there—are not just spectacle.

As with all such experimental kitchens, some dishes do go a bit too far. “If You Try to Make Risotto All About the Sea,” for example, is but an oyster atop sea grape stems cut up to look like rice. Equally over-hyped, the “onion ash” on the duck breast dish labeled “Hunting” just tastes like dust. Nor does it do much for the underseasoned duck it’s served with.

In nearly all else, though, dinner here knocks it out of the park. You’d hope so too, given the prices: eight courses for B3,600, six courses for B2,600, or a vegetarian five-course set for B2,300. On our last visit, we opted for the six-course set, which kicks off with two delicious amuse bouches: a creamy hit of mackerel pate disguised as a mini ice-cream cone and a dollop of sea urchin on dashi-style, salty egg custard. More Japanese influences show themselves in the course of raw tuna. Two gloriously fatty chunks of maguro tuna sit on a creamy avocado puree flavored with a hint of green tea, capped off with a spoonful of intense, truffle-infused caviar.

The two courses which draw from Tutak’s Turkish origins are also highly satisfying. One is nothing more than a blanched whole tomato, topped with a sharp layer of beetroot jelly and accompanied by creamy ezine sheep’s milk cheese and a parsley granita. The flavors mesh beautifully, as is the case with his take on a manti dumpling—rich, slightly smoky from the eggplant filling and perfectly paired with a dense, Middle Eastern cream called kaymak.

All this comes served in a 19th century dining room that’s one of the most beautiful spaces in town—all rich bordeaux leathers and parquet floors. House on Sathorn is inventive, unique, casual yet still special—or, to channel our inner Tutak, a true “sensory culinary experience.”

Note: The menu at The Dining Room changes monthly. 

This review took place in November 2016 and is based on a visit to the restaurant without the restaurant's knowledge. For more on BK's review policy, click here.