Siam

Siam – Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt – Red Sea

The Siam Thai Restaurant in the Maritim Royal Peninsula Hotel is a short taxi ride out of Naama Bay next to the Sharm el Sheikh International Conference Centre on the way to Sharm el Sheikh airport.

It is well worth the short journey as the food is exceptional and authentic. The soups are full of great, well-sourced ingredients, prawn and chicken with that fantastic aroma that only fresh lemon grass, chilli and galangal can bring.

We had a real feast of it with four courses – unnecessary, but it’s the kind of place where you know that pretty much anything on the menu will be great. Again the salads were clever mixtures of sharply contrasting tastes that are associated with Thai cooking; hot, sour, sweet, bitter and salty.

The menu is both simple and written in good clear English. Thai names are followed by sensible descriptions of the menu items. For the main course I had a Panaeng Gai (chicken in thick red curry sauce with peanuts) and like everything else it was superbly cooked.

The only drawback to the restaurant is one often associated with hotel restaurants in Sharm; the very polite security guards at the entrance to the hotel were totally unaware of the restaurant’s existence and seemed surprised by out-of-hotel clientele. But once you’re in, the Siam Restaurant is great.