It’s Sunday and I’ve just woken up from a dream.  Was it a dream, though?

See I was in Pimlico last night and I bumped into the Duke of Burgundy stashing treasures in a subterranean pocket of Miramont Gardens, and Stanley Holloway was there and Betty Warren and all I could ask each of them was whether there were bottles of Chambertin amid the jewellery, artwork and coins, you know, to make the milieu a little less abstract and more bespoke to me.  

But really, I was in Pimlico last night.  I tell you I was. And my passport there wasn’t set around the detonation of a post-war bomb, no, but the detonation of lavish spices in my hungry jowls, conveyed through creamy coconut milk and the snap of a prawn cracker… 

Sri Suwoon sits incongruously in a suburb of Pimlico next to an off licence and a 5-minute walk from Victoria station.  Its name literally means the colour gold, but more precisely and in a holistic and philosophical sense, the golden outlook of seeing the potential best in everyone and everything. 

Now, I wasn’t devoted to finding communion and love among my fellow diners or accessing their inner shanti, I was more into reading the authentic Thai menu and chowing down at the end of a busy Saturday, that hitherto had taken in a show and a couple of London boozers.

The dining room is nicely spaced and tableclothed.  I would call it spartan because spartan often means a restaurant there to serve dependable food and not worry about superfluous trinkets or hanging bullshit conceptual art to attract the perennially thin and people who wear scarves in summer without irony…. And… Oh darn! I see.  I’m not being generous with my sri suwoon, am I?

My party of five was sat at a round table having been given the option of rectangular.  This matters because I’ve recently become appreciative of round tables, mainly how they eliminate being stuck in a dark corner with a rube on the brink of divorce or someone describing the medical procedure required to remove their bunions.  Not to mention fat fu… Oh, Of course!  Sri suwoon.  Sri suwoon, Mark.  Be nice.  Behave.

In the mood for something hot, crisp and salty we ordered the appetizer selection; a large white plate of chicken satay, prawn satay, duck spring rolls, sesame prawn toast, paper wrap king prawns, spareribs in five spice and sweetcorn fritters.  We picked and dipped into sweet chilli and peanut satay sauce and washed each mouthful down with an Italian riesling that had all the great synthetic rubber hallmarks of the noble variety and grown in Piedmont: the charmed land of nebbiolo.   

Soon after came the curries.  Mine was a Gang Mussaman, a southern Thai dish of slow cooked beef in red curry sauce with sweet potatoes, onions and roasted cashew nuts.  It was deep, rich and thick, the mild spice dancing along a coconut baseline and soaking into steamed, erumpent jasmine rice.  Others around the table (literally around!) probed into velvety sauces submerging strips of chicken fillet and king prawns, flavoured with lemongrass, galangal and lime leaves.  The aromas were pungent, the colours vivid, the smiles broad.

We ate for a good while in peace.  The restaurant was filling up, but diners were preoccupied with the act of eating, not pointless and overbearing conversation about some sort of virus – can’t remember which – engulfing both hemispheres.  In the centre of the table (round, have I mentioned it?) sat a plate of Pud Thai as a communal bonus.  Fat tiger prawns entwined in rice noodles and crunchy bean sprouts, coated in tamarind.  It was one of the best examples I can remember and a meal in itself, if you are looking for something light…which we were not.

We sat, replete, and polished off another bottle of riesling.  It’s a really good, honest place, this.  Well-oiled and popular with locals and London visitors alike.   

If you cannot get a reservation, it is also a takeaway doing steady business.  However, I would recommend doing this only if you have a round table at home and plenty of sri suwoon in your life.

MWB