Last night, Praew and I finally had the chance to try out Avanti for dinner. It is an Italian restaurant recommended by a friend of Praew’s that is within walking distance of Haba Kitchen, which I reviewed previously. Occasionally we go grocery shopping at the Villa Supermarket nearby there, and we take this street on our way back.

Unfortunately, Avanti is not open for lunch, and we rarely go shopping at night, so it has always been closed when we wanted to try eating there. But we finally did go grocery shopping around 6PM last night, giving us the chance to try it out for dinner.

First, here is the exact location:

It is located on Sathupradit soi 19 in the “Le Raffles” strip mall. It is easy to get there when coming from our side of the river by taking the expressway over the Rama 9 bridge and getting off at Sathupradit and making a left and then a right at Sathupradit soi 19.

As for the review, I have only positive things to say. The decor was nice. The service was great. The owner was on-hand and helpful in explaining the dishes.

But what I really liked was the menu. There were quite a few dishes on the menu that set it apart from most of the other Italian restaurants that we’ve been to. Sure they have the standard pizzas (margherita, diavola, etc.) and pastas (bolognese, lasagna, etc.) but on almost every page there was something that looked delicious that jumped out at us in the I’ve-never-seen-that-on-a-menu-before way.

We skipped the pizzas today and just focused on these stand-out dishes.

First, we started with quite an interesting appetizer of thinly sliced leg of lamb roasted with mild spices on a bed of fresh lettuce, onion, cheese with balsamic vinegar on top:

You can imagine it as a sort of roast beef salad except with lamb instead of roast beef. But the ingredients added layer upon layer of flavors. On my first bite, I was surprised by a mild flavor of what I believe was cinnamon and nutmeg. But it was appropriately faint, and it added a wonderful dimension to the flavor of the dish.

For the main course, we ordered a pasta romantica (a pink sauce with sundried tomatoes and bacon)

and a black truffle linguine that was as rich and delicious as it sounds like it should be

While I don’t normally like cream sauce pastas, this one had a very rich and full flavor without being overly creamy.

We also ordered a side of sliced potatoes, which the menu said was fried in duck fat and topped with bacon.

All-in-all, the meal was heavenly.

And to top it off, we split a tartufo dessert:

I had never encountered tartufo dessert before. While “tartufo” means truffle in Italian, I didn’t realize it was also a kind of ice-cream dessert. We ordered the tartufo nero which I believe was a ball of chocolate ice cream on the outside with a really dark chocolate ice cream inside of it and chocolate sauce and possibly some cocoa powder. (And a slight sprinkling of sesame seeds added a little something unexpected.) For all you chocolate lovers out there, this is worth trying.

As you can imagine from the above, this probably isn’t the restaurant for those of you on a low-calorie diet or otherwise trying to lose weight. Everything was rich and creamy (but not overly creamy) and delicious.

On the other hand, as a date restaurant, I would highly recommend it. The lighting was a bit on the romantic side, the decor was tasteful, and the service was efficient and friendly but not intrusive.

Prices seemed to average about 250-350THB for most dishes.

Would I go back? Absolutely!

Maybe I have to convince Praew that going shopping in the evening has certain advantages. 🙂