Bangkok Eats: Why Grills and Fire Are Back at Alati

Alati at Siam Kempinski leans into flame and charcoal with a menu that feels in step with how the city wants to eat now.

Bangkok has had a long love affair with tasting menus. For years, dinners have unfolded like theatre: choreographed courses, story-driven plates, the quiet pressure to pay attention to every last garnish. Beautiful, yes. But somewhere between the amuse-bouche and course eight, a small, insistent craving has been building in the background. A craving for something simpler, more primal and far more social.

Fire. Grill. Smoke. A proper piece of fish hissing on the coals. A steak that lands in the middle of the table and demands sharing, not silence.

Alati at Siam Kempinski Hotel Bangkok has been listening. Mediterranean until recently, the restaurant has just turned its compass towards exactly that desire with a new culinary identity, ‘Grill, Fire, Smoke’, and it feels very much in tune with where diners are heading now: away from hushed, hyper-curated menus and back to the pleasure of eating together, plate by plate.

This is not a throwback to macho grill houses of old. Executive Chef Phillip Taylor may be leaning into flame and charcoal, but he is doing it with the eye of a chef who has cooked in London, Shanghai and Bangkok, and the plating of a restaurant that still understands that we eat with our eyes first. The result is a menu that looks like it belongs in 2025, but smells deliciously of childhood barbecues, seaside lunches and Sunday roasts.

His menu features over forty dishes touched by fire and smoke. There is a smoked chicken liver parfait that makes you pause mid-conversation, its richness lifted by careful seasoning rather than tricks; the tamarind gel forming a fine layer on top neatly ties it neatly to Bangkok. House cold-smoked salmon and smoked Angus beef tartare are familiar ideas written in a new hand. The smoked salmon is topped with grain mustard ice cream and served with seaweed-rice crackers, the beef tartare with its pickled shallots, cornichons and capers is delightfully smoked too. Three delightful openers. Next comes Amaebi prawn tartare in a smoked, chilled ponzu broth with buckwheat noodles. The prawn’s natural sweetness plays against the citrus-led ponzu, the buckwheat grounding the dish. The layering is simple, purposeful.

A glance at the menu brings up smoked guanciale carbonara, the sort of idea that makes you question why it hasn’t been done before. If any pasta deserves a brush of smoke, it is carbonara. I get where Chef Phillip is headed - carbonara is built on fat, salt and umami, a touch of smoke would amplify all three. As I taste the Carbonara in my head the mains arrive: Thai slipper lobster tail and Wagyu 8+ T-Bpne steak.

The charcoal-grilled lobster tail is excellent: smoky-sweet flesh, Café de Paris butter melting into it with angel hair in a bisque-leaning crustacean sauce. The herb-laden butter does exactly what it should: lifting the lobster without crowding it. The T-bone lands perfectly medium-rare, served with mustards, beef jus and slow-roasted garlic. If you are here for the meat, mission accomplished. Also on offer is Australian lamb rack, roasted baby chicken, five-spiced pork belly.

Throughout, the team plays with different techniques: modern cooking where it works, the honest charm of the charcoal grill where it matters. Smoke is used as an accent, not a mask.

Portions invite sharing, but the plates are still photogenic. Sauces are poured with care, vegetables are not an afterthought and desserts have clearly not been forgotten. Think chocolate and banana, pineapple and vanilla, comfort flavours given enough polish to feel occasion-worthy.

“Charcoal grilling is my favourite way to cook. Done well, it brings out the best in each ingredient,” Taylor says, true to his Australian roots, and you get the sense he means it. His approach is distinctly Australian, shaped by a relaxed, instinctive openness to multicultural flavours that defines the country’s modern cooking. It is a mindset that slips easily into his plates, with smoke used in restraint, influences woven together without fanfare and flavour leading the way.

The social thread continues with Alati’s refreshed Sunday offering. On the first and last Sunday of every month, the restaurant shifts into full social mode with a ‘Grill, Fire, Smoke’ brunch inspired by the Sunday roast.

What makes ‘Grill, Fire, Smoke’ feel interesting is not simply that Alati is now doing more things over charcoal. It is that the restaurant is catching a wider shift in how we want to spend our evenings. The city’s diners are not done with creativity or beautiful plating. They are simply asking for experiences that are less about being impressed and more about being together.

So yes, the plates are still pretty. The garnishes still tell a story. But at the heart of it all is something older and more instinctive: good ingredients meeting good fire, shared with people you actually want to talk to.

In other words, grills are back. Not as a trend, but as a reminder that some of the best conversations start over a steak in the middle of the table that insists everyone reach in at once.

At Alati, ‘Grill, Fire, Smoke’ is that reminder, written in the language of modern Bangkok. For reservations click HERE.