1. One of the newest, fashionable little haunts in the downtown area is a small café-like place called Minbar Royale on Sukhumvit Soi 23. Favored by the artsy, creative set, the French-inspired décor here mixes with mostly American-style food, along with sparkling wine-based drinks to present a mixed message to its guests. Perhaps it’s the refreshing lack of any real focus to this place that is part of its charm. There certainly is no coherent vision or marketing reason for its existence. The fashion and jewelry business owners apparently picked and chose things they liked from a variety of places they had visited before, mostly in New York it seems, and decided to throw them together to create a place that they felt comfortable hanging out in. It looks like enough of their friends like the place too. Whether that’s a good recipe for long term success is not clear because the artsy, creative set have a way of getting bored easily and looking for new territories to conquer. For now, though, things are rosy at Minibar Royale and you might want to check it out yourself. There are some interesting cocktails here that are based on sparkling wines and use a lot of different fruit juices and other ingredients and there are also the mandatory “martinis” that contain all sorts of bizarre ingredients that all cool places must have to demonstrate their creativity and disregard for tradition. The food is an interesting mix of sandwiches, some pastas and even some steak and seafood. You can also get a good corn beef hash covered with poached eggs and a smoked salmon sandwich. Joining the corn beef hash on the brunch menu (starting at 6:30 AM) are Eggs Benedict and basic waffles. The breakfast idea is quite a good one, by the way, since there are very few places, outside of five-star hotels with their exorbitant prices, that serve a good breakfast in the whole mid-Sukhumvit area. Other dishes like the Gorgonzola Ed & Ted, a rich pasta Alfredo with a big hunk of grilled chicken breast, and the steamed Australian mussels demonstrate the variety here and the lack of any real theme to the menu other than the items on it should taste good. The prices are basically reasonable – the tenderloin is 850 baht so it must be imported – and the service is hit or miss but that’s part of the charm too. Twenty five years ago back in the States there was a place that reminds me a lot of Minibar Royale. The coolest creative types were always there, The food was sort of deli but sort of not and the waitresses were the spaciest chicks in town (not that we’re casting aspersions on the lovely girls at this place – they could never compete in the spaciness category with the waitresses I’m referring to). It was an extremely successful place for many years and we spent a fair amount of time there way back when. Minibar Royale may have an equally long trajectory or it may fall to earth soon. Only time will tell but it’s at the very least an interesting experiment for the time being.