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Hussar About Town. 2.

© I.S.M

Thai Flavours come to Town
My Lady introduced me to the delicate gastronomic delights of Thai cuisine on two memorable evenings at the Royal Thai restaurant, (467 Fifth Ave, reservatrions 619 230 8424), in downtown San Diego's Edwardian Gaslamp Quarter' the lovingly restored area of the city's historic past.

Since then I have enjoyed reasonable but not outstanding Thai food in London; at the popularly cheap and cheerful neighborhood noshery Peppar Tree, (19 Clapham Common Southside), where communal dining at long wooden tables sets you back about £30 for two with a bottle of house wine. A chum who lives out in the posher sticks of Richmond assures me that his local 'watering hole', the Old Ship Inn, is an unlikely venue for good Thai food in the pub's upstairs restaurant for the same price. In the West End, Soho's Busaba Eathai, (106-110, Wardour Street), owned by Amin Ali of renowned The Red Fort continues to clock up awards for its extensive menu allegedly based on dishes from the Thai royal kitchens. I cannot vouch for this however or for or the quality of the nosh as I have not dined there, or at any Soho restaurant, in recent months. So to date memories of the sublime meals at the Thai Royal in San Diego remain unsurpassed.

This state of affairs could now change. The Park Restaurant at London's Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge is featuring a Thai cuisine festival this week. They are showcasing the cooking of the Oriental Bangkok's talented chef Sumet Sumpachanyanont, (try saying that with mouth full of panaeng moo). This is an opportunity too good to miss and I look forward to sampling something more than a Thai prawn curry in the hotel's elegant restaurant overlooking leafy Hyde Park.

The Mandarin Oriental recently emerged as one of London's 5 star hotels after a £45 million facelift that transformed it from fin de siècle Edwardiana to fin de siècle Windsor; a 20th century refurbishment that has left the magnificent 1889 red brick frontage with its turreted roof intact, while luxuriously modernizing and redecorating the interior. Dear Aunt Dorothy and the Colonel bemoan the disappearance of the hotel's old Art deco Buttery Bar which used to be their 6 o'clock cocktail rendezvous in days of yore half a century ago, but the world and the Buttery have moved on.

The hotel boasts a spa that sounds the perfect de-stresser for visitors after a day's shop-slogging in Knightsbridge and Bond Street and the hazards of Oxford Street. The description of the spa's treatment sounds appealing: "a sauna that offers a softer experience; the crystal steam room which blends heat and water through a delicately lit amethyst; the vitality pool where you lie in hot mineral water on a suspended cushion of air whilst being gently massaged by hydrotherapy body jets...Sip refreshing tea whilst