Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 25 of 49
  1. #1
    Thailand Expat
    snakeeyes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    pattaya
    Posts
    9,524

    The Courtyard – Christmas Dinner Review by our one and only Danny Boy

    The Courtyard – Christmas Dinner



    Christmas Dinner at The Courtyard

    I hope everyone has recovered from their Christmas hangovers, because after today we only have 4 days to prepare ourselves for another onslaught celebrating the New Year.

    How about your Christmas dinner? With so much competition in Pattaya, restaurants really had to step up their game this year in relation to prices, quality of food, and of course, service. As always, I’ve heard mixed reports from various different venues around Pattaya.

    This year I ventured a little further out of the mainstream, all the way up to the top of Soi Nerplubwaan, and then left about half a kilometer.

    The Courtyard was the final destination, and it’s only the second time I have been in the many years of living here. The place was actually recommended by a friend who lives in the area, and is a regular there for Sunday Dinner.

    From the front you wouldn’t think too much of the place. It’s closed off, and is very easy to miss when driving by however, once inside, take a walk through to the back and you will soon realize where they got the name from.

    The place is set out really nicely with a variety of seating, and although outside, is almost noise free being set back from the main roadside.

    They had a set price Christmas buffet on offer, and some spread it was. All of the usual delights you would come to expect from any traditional Christmas dinner, as well as some Thai and even Laos options too.




    At 690 Thai Baht, it was cheap. This is taking into account the quality of the food that was available, the service, atmosphere, and the little extras surprises that came with it, including separate little gifts for men, women and children. I know friends that paid double what we did at some places, and left hungry and disappointed.

    So a big Thank You to the all the Staff at The Courtyard for a really enjoyable Christmas Day/Evening, we will be back.

    Christmas Dinner at The Courtyard in Pattaya Thailand

  2. #2
    Thailand Expat
    wasabi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Last Online
    28-10-2019 @ 03:54 AM
    Location
    England
    Posts
    10,940
    I'm still full of festive joy so thank you Danny for a happy cheerful post which pretty well sums up Teakdoor over the past few days.
    I don't like the word "Courtyard " brings back memories of being in an institution.

  3. #3
    R.I.P. Luigi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Abuja
    Posts
    26,213
    Sounds like someone got a handjob under the table for advertising.

  4. #4
    R.I.P.
    crackerjack101's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Last Online
    15-11-2020 @ 07:58 PM
    Posts
    5,574
    Terribly written.
    Pointless pics.
    Inane commentary.

    Oh, and the food looked very plain and boring.

    Next.

  5. #5
    Thailand Expat
    snakeeyes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    pattaya
    Posts
    9,524
    ^
    You've hurt Danny Boys feelings on this Festive occasion, shame on you ,

  6. #6
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Home
    Posts
    33,446
    As always, I’ve heard mixed reports from various different venues around Pattaya.
    I must say, you really do get the low down with danny.



    From the front you wouldn’t think too much of the place. It’s closed off, and is very easy to miss when driving by however, once inside, take a walk through to the back and you will soon realize where they got the name from.
    Good lord yes, why unless my eyes deceive me....


  7. #7
    Not a Mod. Begbie's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Lagrangian Point
    Posts
    11,367
    The picture of the food is disturbing. Is that chicken undercooked, it looks very red.

  8. #8
    Thailand Expat lom's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    on my way
    Posts
    11,453
    The menu was a bit difficult to read but I eventually managed.
    Jum jum.
    Now look what Danny selected to put on his plate, is he dumb or what?

  9. #9
    Thailand Expat
    snakeeyes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    pattaya
    Posts
    9,524
    Quote Originally Posted by Begbie View Post
    The picture of the food is disturbing. Is that chicken undercooked, it looks very red.
    It's christmas time there's no need to be afraid
    A young George Michael singing



  10. #10
    R.I.P.
    crackerjack101's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Last Online
    15-11-2020 @ 07:58 PM
    Posts
    5,574
    Quote Originally Posted by lom
    The menu was a bit difficult to read but I eventually managed.
    From that pic ?

    How?

  11. #11
    Thailand Expat lom's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    on my way
    Posts
    11,453
    Quote Originally Posted by crackerjack101 View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by lom
    The menu was a bit difficult to read but I eventually managed.
    From that pic ?

    How?
    Windows magnifying glass.

  12. #12
    R.I.P.
    crackerjack101's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Last Online
    15-11-2020 @ 07:58 PM
    Posts
    5,574
    Quote Originally Posted by lom
    Windows magnifying glass.
    Aha, yes that works but that menu surely has nothing to do with what's on that plate.

  13. #13
    R.I.P. Luigi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Abuja
    Posts
    26,213
    'Limited Scating - Book Only Please'.

    Jeff's been there then.

  14. #14
    Not a Mod. Begbie's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Lagrangian Point
    Posts
    11,367
    Dannyboy can't write to save his life, maybe he should just stick to posting photographs. On second thoughts....

    It''s a type of ransomware for restaurants.

  15. #15
    Thailand Expat lom's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    on my way
    Posts
    11,453
    Quote Originally Posted by crackerjack101 View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by lom
    Windows magnifying glass.
    Aha, yes that works but that menu surely has nothing to do with what's on that plate.
    Danny pays for his meals by writing a review.
    Danny get some leftovers from the kitchen.

  16. #16
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Home
    Posts
    33,446
    Quote Originally Posted by lom
    Danny get some leftovers from the kitchen.
    Yes, there it was on the floor in a bowl with his name thoughtfully written on it...

  17. #17
    Thailand Expat
    snakeeyes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    pattaya
    Posts
    9,524
    Danny Boy Says ,




  18. #18
    R.I.P.
    crackerjack101's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Last Online
    15-11-2020 @ 07:58 PM
    Posts
    5,574
    But;

    SNAKEEYES - DANNY BOY


  19. #19
    R.I.P. Luigi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2014
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    Abuja
    Posts
    26,213
    Don't listen to them, James.

    I thought it was a great Protestant review to be proud of.


  20. #20
    I am in Jail
    stroller's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Last Online
    12-03-2019 @ 09:53 AM
    Location
    out of range
    Posts
    23,025
    Quote Originally Posted by snakeeyes
    we only have 4 days to prepare ourselves for another onslaught celebrating the New Year.
    Oh nooooo!
    Another DannyBoy review in the works...

  21. #21
    R.I.P.
    crackerjack101's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Last Online
    15-11-2020 @ 07:58 PM
    Posts
    5,574
    Quote Originally Posted by snakeeyes View Post
    ^
    You've hurt Danny Boys feelings on this Festive occasion, shame on you ,

    Danny Boy exists ?

    Say it ain't so.


  22. #22
    Thailand Expat
    snakeeyes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    pattaya
    Posts
    9,524
    Quote Originally Posted by stroller View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by snakeeyes
    we only have 4 days to prepare ourselves for another onslaught celebrating the New Year.
    Oh nooooo!
    Another DannyBoy review in the works...
    Danny Boy is like Herpes he'll will be back ,

  23. #23
    Thailand Expat
    snakeeyes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Last Online
    @
    Location
    pattaya
    Posts
    9,524
    Quote Originally Posted by crackerjack101 View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by snakeeyes View Post
    ^
    You've hurt Danny Boys feelings on this Festive occasion, shame on you ,

    Danny Boy exists ?

    Say it ain't so.

    Danny Boy

  24. #24
    R.I.P.
    crackerjack101's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Last Online
    15-11-2020 @ 07:58 PM
    Posts
    5,574
    OK, that's good. He exists.

    The mystique is gone and I never need look at his work again, thanks.

    I'd hoped, given how awful it is, that it was a clever windup, but no.

    What an absolute dick.

    May his followers, watchers, supporters and reposters reap their just rewards.

    chin chin

  25. #25
    Thailand Expat
    taxexile's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Last Online
    @
    Posts
    19,298
    danny boy you micro brained imbecile, below, is an example of a restaurant review worth reading.


    how on earth you managed to blag your way into writing food reviews, even for a spreadsheet marketed at the barely literate toerags of pattaya, is beyond me. you should quietly do your readers a big favour and fucck off back to your day job. plastering was it, or perhaps shelf stacking.

    In all my years as a restaurant critic I have learned that there is a certain type of florid, blowsy, patrician Brit who will sidle up and bellow, with a fruity bluster, that if I ever happen to find myself in Paris (as if Paris were a cul-de-sac on a shortcut to somewhere else) there is this little place he knows, proper French, none of your nouvelle nonsense, bloody fantastic foie gras, and roast chicken like Bridget Bardot’s tits, and that I should go. But, they add, don’t bloody write about it. We don’t want Monsieur Yank and his good lady wife turning up in droves. It’s called …

    I know what it’s called. L’Ami Louis. I ask the hotel concierge at Le Meurice to book a table for lunch. “L’Ami Louis,” he says, with a pitiful sadness. “It’s always L’Ami Louis for les Anglais.”

    What you actually find when you arrive at L’Ami Louis is singularly unprepossessing.

    It’s a long, dark corridor with luggage racks stretching the length of the room. It gives you the feeling of being in a second-class railway carriage in the Balkans. It’s painted a shiny, distressed dung brown. The cramped tables are set with labially pink cloths, which give it a colonic appeal and the awkward sense that you might be a suppository. In the middle of the room is a stubby stove that also looks vaguely proctological.

    At the end of the dining room is the tiny kitchen and an even tinier bar, where the waiters lurk like extras for a Gallic version of The Sopranos.

    The staff are an essential part of Louis’s mystique. Paunchy, combative, surly men, bulging out of their white jackets with the meaty malevolence of gouty buffalo. They may well be related by blood—theirs or other people’s.

    They exude a pantomime insolence, an existential Le Fug Youse. As you walk in, one approaches with an eyebrow raised and nose aloft to give you the benefit of full-frontal froggy nostril. If you get past the door, and many don’t, the first thing your waiter does is take your coat.
    .
    The next thing he does is fling it with effortful nonchalance into the luggage rack. Returning customers know to keep wallets, BlackBerrys, and spectacles out of their pockets. As it is, a tinkling dandruff of change scuttles behind the banquettes.

    We are sat at a table by the door. Our particular chubby, oyster-eyed fellow dumps off a pair of menus and a large book without a word or the offer of a drink. The menu is brief and bloody. The tome is the wine list. It turns out to be a massive eulogy to claret.

    Every grand château and vintage is represented with sycophantic prices. The wine cellar is behind the lavatory in a crypt that smells overpoweringly of fetid bladder damp. After a lot of smiley semaphore, I manage to beg a single glass of house red for my companion I order foie gras and snails to start. Foie gras is a L’Ami Louis specialty.

    After 30 minutes what come are a pair of intimidatingly gross flabs of chilly pâté, with a slight coating of pustular yellow fat. They are dense and stringy, with a web of veins. I doubt they were made on the premises. The liver crumbles under the knife like plumber’s putty and tastes faintly of gut-scented butter or pressed liposuction. The fat clings to the roof of my mouth with the oleagenous insistence of dentists wax.


    As I suck my teeth, I watch the waiters saunter up and down the aisle like Vichy ticket collectors. Another one appears. Not fat, not white, not a caricature. A lithe, handsome boy, who is probably North African. He is plainly a prop. His job is to be wrong, to soak up blame. The big men bully up, roll their eyes, wave their chubby knuckles at him as he delivers and clears and sweeps crumbs. A man pretends to cuff him round the ear and looks over at a table of Americans with a grin and a wink to include them in the jape.

    An Englishman in blinding tweed and racy cap pushes through the door and roars. A waiter steps forward, arms outstretched, and makes hee-haw, hee-haw noises like Bart Simpson pretending to speak French. It is the practiced and familiar ritual greeting of mutual incomprehension and ancient contempt.

    Our servant glides past and does a silent-movie double take. “Your snails!” he exclaims. “They have not come!” His cheeks bulge as he flaps his short arms. In all my years of professional eating, I have never seen this before. I have seen waiters do many, many things, including burst into tears and juggle knives, and I once glimpsed one having sex. But never, ever has a waiter commiserated with me about the lack of service.

    Twenty minutes later, possibly under their own steam, the snails arrive. Vesuvian, they bubble and smoke in a magma of astringent garlic butter and parsley. We grasp them with the spring-loaded specula and gingerly unwind the dark gastropods, curling like dinosaur boogers.

    They go on and on, expanding onto the plate as if they were alien. We have to cut them in half, which is just wrong. The rule with snails is: Don’t eat one you couldn’t get up your nose.

    Twenty minutes later, our plates are taken away. Twenty minutes after that, our main courses arrive. Or rather, my companion’s does. A veal chop, utterly plain, unaccompanied or sullied by decoration or inspiration. Just an awkwardly butchered skinny rib that has been grilled for too long on one side and too little on the other so that it is simultaneously stingingly dry and overdone and flabbily, slimily raw.

    She can’t decide which side to complain about.

    I have decided not to go for the famous roast chicken, mainly because I’ve suffered it before and I’d just been watching a Japanese couple wrestle with one like a manga poltergeist from some Tokyo horror movie, its scaly blue legs stabbing the air.

    So on to the broiled kidneys. Nothing I have eaten or heard of being eaten here prepared me for the arrival of the veal kidneys en brochette. Somehow the heat had welded them together into a gray, suppurating renal brick. It could be the result of an accident involving rat babies in a nuclear reactor. They don’t taste as nice as they sound.

    As an afterthought, or perhaps as an apology, the waiter brings a funeral pyre of French fries—they taste of seared and overused cooking oil—and then a green salad of frisée and mâche, two leaves that rarely share a bowl, due to their irreconcilable differences. They have been doused in vinegar that may have been recycled from the gherkin bottle. Dessert is four balls of gray ice cream and something that had once been chocolate.


    Now the good bit.

    The reckoning.

    The foie gras appetizer was 58 euros. That’s $79. A single glass of house wine was $19. And the final bill for lunch for two was $403.

    That isn’t the most expensive meal in Paris, but in terms of quality, service, atmosphere, and all-round edible value, it’s way out there at the far end of the naughty step.

    So why do the Americans and English come here? Men who, at home, are finickity and fussy about everything, who consider themselves epicurean and cultured. Men who choose their own ties and are trusted with scissors and corporations, who have “sophisticated” on their Facebook pages. Why do they continue to come here? They can’t all have brain tumors. The only rationally conceivable answer is: Paris.

    Paris has superpowers; Paris exerts a mercurial force field. This old city has such compelling cultural connotations and aesthetic pheromones, such a nostalgically beguiling cast list, that it defies judgment. It’s a confidence trick that can make oreille de cochon out of a sow’s ear—reputation and expectation are the MSG of fine dining.

    But still, it’s undeniable that L’Ami Louis really is special and apart. It has earned an epic accolade. It is, all things considered, entre nous, the worst restaurant in the world.

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •