A Restaurant Called Window on Silom at Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza
by Harold Stephens

An uncle, a cousin, a grandmother, or maybe a friend, or a friend of a friend, or it might also be an important business person, and perhaps they are coming with their kids-whomever it might be, one thing is certain, lunch or dinner is involved. What to do, especially if time is a concern.

It's not an easy thing to do when it comes to choosing a place to dine in Bangkok. You have to consider distance, and if you are not picking them up at the airport yourself, how will they get there on their own? What about the traffic? It's a pity.You have to think about location, and at the same time consider the food. What food do they like? Then there's service, and what about a nice environment. And if the kids are coming, what about them? Read on!

Your worries are over.You must have heard of the Window on Silom at the Holiday Inn. If you haven't, let me tellyou about the place.

Window on Silom. just mention the name and you might wonder what it takes to get a table by the window. To start with, it's called "Window on Silom" because it has not one window but many windows, offering a 360 degree view of the Silom area from all directions. It is a restaurant of windows where everyone gets a window view.

Second, getting there is no problem. All taxi drivers know it, and it's accessible from all parts of Bangkok via the freeway. In fact, the end of the freeway is only a block away. You realise what that means. You are as close to Don Muang Airport as a 30 minute drive. To prove the point, the hotel management offered a rebate of one US dollar for every minute over 28 minutes that it might take for hotel guests arriving from the airport using a hotel limousine to reach the hotel. Seldom did the hotel ever have to pay a guest for over time.

The right choice of food is always a consideration for arriving guests. What are their tastes? Again, at the Window on Silom the problem is solved. The restaurant is famous for its "Round the world in 80 minutes buffet.."And that is just what it means, cuisine from around the world. The restaurant offers excellent wide variety of Western European, and multi-Asian cuisine. It is a genuine feast and endless supply of every mouth watering dish you could ever imagine.

Everyday is different, meaning an exciting buffet menu that varies from day to day. The specialties of international delicacies are prepared and served at a small "pagoda" located in the center of the restaurant.

And what a buffet. It varies from a Tokyo Sushi Bar to Hungarian Goulash, from Italian Pastas to Mongolian BBQ, from Australian Steaks to Tasmanian Salmon, from China Town comer to Thai Seafood Galore, from the famous French Onion Soup to Indian Curries, from Arabic Pita Pockets to Mexican Chili Beef Con Came, and from basic potatoes and beans to exotic Vegetarian dishes like Punjabi Spinach Samosas and Roast Aubergines.

This is just to name a few. But all these in the midst of a salad bar that bears a motto "Fresh is best" and could keep you from exploring the rest of the buffet if you don't know how to budget your food intake.

And if you don't like making all the choices at the buffet, you have the a-la-car-te menu.

Every month or two, depending upon the occasion, there's a food festival, and it may be Mexican or ItalianVietnamese or an Cktober Fest. And on Sunday you can dine all day at the Sunday brunch.

And I haven't even mentioned the endless tables of dessert waiting to be explored at the far end of the buffet tables.

I have dined several times at the Window on Silom with friends and I have discovered a good criteria for judging the quality of food is by the cognoscenti who dine there. Example, I watched a party of a dozen or more Italians come into the restaurant, waving their arms and excited as only Italians can be when they see food, and they clustered around the Italian food section, returning again and again to fill their pates. That has to be good testimony. It was much the same with Thais and Chinese that I saw, and the Japanese gathered around Sushi bar. When you see people from various countries enjoying their own native dishes at the Window on Silom, then you know it must be good.

And it takes you no time to get there. Getting away is the problem.

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