Day 69

I’m not going to pretend that I know everything about Thai food because I don’t. What I do know is good food and, in this case, extremely good food. So what if I haven’t eaten more than ten Thai dinners in restaurants but I love my own Thai red curry which I’ve made loads of times! That said, I had to tell you about the amazing dinner I had at Chaophraya (pronounced ciao-pie-a) which is an amazing Thai restaurant in a Grade-A listed building just off Buchanan Street in Glasgow.

If I’m away, I refuse to eat rubbish just out of convenience so it’s so important to me to have a proper dinner. If you’ve ever read any books by Jason Vale (aka The Juice Master), you will know what I’m talking about when I say ‘airport days’. Everyone has them but airport days are ok, just as long as they don’t roll into the next day, the day after that and the day after that. Airport days are characterised by travelling, having limited healthy food choices but trying to pick the healthiest options you can. Therefore, on my way through Belfast International en route to the conference where I’m going to be for the next week, I picked the avocado, cucumber and lettuce wrap and a bottle of water. It was so much nicer than anything I’ve had at an airport before which has always been a limited choice. Normally, when I think airport food, I think stody sandwiches, chips and congealed dinners. If I could give you three nuggets of advice (pardon the pun!) when travelling, they would be (1) avoid fizzy drinks; (2) drink lots of water; and (3) make sure you eat a proper breakfast and dinner every day. Stick to that and you’ll find that you won’t become dehydrated, bloated, snack on junk or have that horrible-wish-you-hadn’t-eaten-it-feeling you get about 10 minutes after eating a McDonald’s or some other congealed rubbish from a takeaway.

Anyway, getting back to my dinner this evening, I decided to go for the Stir-fried aubergine and basil dish with a side of boiled rice. My friend who’s an 800m sprinter decided to go for the same thing except she got a side of coconut noodles. Some dishes just have the ‘wow-factor’ and this is one of two I’ve eaten recently which had exactly that. What the dish consisted of was aubergine which had the thinnest of batter stacked up like Stonehenge and then there were onions, peppers, chilli, carrots and other ingredients which I can’t exactly remember what they were but everything tasted gorgeous! I actually cleaned the plate and so did my friend. The portion sizes were perfect and, afterwards, I felt like I’d eaten a proper, nutritious meal without feeling over-fed.

For dessert (because I can’t pass it when I’m out for dinner!), I had the deep-fried coconut ice-cream. Okay, I know deep fried ice-cream isn’t the healthiest but this was something I really wanted to try as I love coconut ice-cream. A scoop of coconut ice-cream was covered in breadcrumbs, deep fried and then chocolate drizzled on it. Before I go home, I’m going back to the restaurant and I’m going to get photos of it all. The dessert was exceptionally delicious.

The restaurant, as I said, is in this amazing Grade-A listed building and is one of the nicest restaurants I’ve ever been in. If you’re ever in Glasgow, I highly recommend you go here. The staff were extremely friendly and I love places where the staff are like that because those are the restaurants who deserve customers!

I would give the whole dining experience a very impressive 9 marks out of 10 and I forgot to say that it was extremely reasonable price-wise. Two mains, one dessert, bottled water came to £32 before a tip. The price was amazing itself. It was worth double the price. I think they were doing two courses for £14.95 and we were in at about 6pm. The restaurant is in the shopping area in a really nice part of Glasgow too. We hadn't heard of the restaurant and just happened to pass it on the way home and we thought it looked nice so it was a real find for me. I am already looking forward to my return visit so Chaophraya had everything down to a tee - location, friendly staff, superb food, gorgeous restaurant and extremely good value for money. Now, there are five things that other restaurants seem to fall short on so many times but, on this occasion, not this one!