Indus Restaurant Bangkok | Bangkok Post: Food

Even the outside of the place is striking.

The decor is the first thing to hit you when you visit Indus. The place is alive more like a Maharaja\'s palace. When designing the restaurant they chose a design theme inspired by the Indus Valley Civilization (2600-1900 BC). Walls are lined with sandstone bricks, doorways framed with antique wooden tapestries, and artistic sculptures are placed tastefully throughout the place.

You can choose to dine inside in the main dining room, or outdoors in the lush tropical garden. The spacious dining room seatsaround 60 guests but the feeling is intimate rather than grand.You can get another 50 or so in the lush garden outside which regularly hosts events, parties, and social gatherings. As if that wasn\'t enough, there\'s also a full-scale bar complete with dance floor in the back (thankfully for diners it\'s behind soundproof windows.

For the restaurant to succeed it would need a good chef and that is why initial consultation came in from a master in the field of Indian cuisine. The focus is on Northern Indian cuisine and the originating chef, Sonya Sapru, author of the internationally known cookbook Zaika, did an excellent job of giving Bangkok something new to taste when it comes to elegant Indian food.

But they\'ve never been one to rest on past successes at Indus, and new chefs have come in to update, change, and work to keep the restaurant amongst Bangkok\'s finest. There\'s now a high-end style tasting menu, a very successful weekend brunch menu, and more. Thankfully, throughout the changes the standards have remained high.

The service at Indus is rare for Thailand. Most of the wait staff have been with the restaurant since its earliest days so menu knowledge is excellent as is the service standard.

At the end of the day though a restaurant will live and die by its food not by its setting and service however nice they might be. Indus\' famous "no ghee" cuisine is lighter and fresher than you thought Indian cuisine could be. Try favorites like Kebab-e-Malai, boneless tender chicken marinated in yogurt, cheese, coriander, and lime or a Chicken Tikka Kati Roll, spiced chicken wrap with onion, capsicum, greens and spices in a tortilla.

What is an Indian meal without mutton? Kashmir Ki Khasiyat, a classic rich mutton curry from the northern Indian region of Kasmir can fill your need here. Also popular is the PaneerTiranga, cottage cheese marinated in three different spices.

Indus has topped more awards list than we can list out here. When you eat a large meal here you know why. Indus isn\'t what most people would think about when they think of going out for Indian foodbut that\'s a good thing. It\'s elegant without being stuffy, tasty without being too rich and heavy, and it\'s a lot more reasonable than some of the other fine dining restaurants in Bangkok.

Indus Bar hosts events on a regular basis and features live DJs, live bands, belly dancers, classical guitarists, clowns and magicians for kids, and other entertainment fare appropriate for many different types of events.

INDUS
71 Sukhumvit Soi 26. Tel. 02 258 4900.