Southern Coffee at Seacon Square
So, as promised, I’ve tried the Southern Coffee, and here’s what I’ve come up with:
First of all, there aren’t many of these places yet, according to the website there are five locations in the southern peninsula and four scattered around the north and east. This location at Seacon Square, next to the Tesco, is not listed on the site as of yet. I don’t recommend you visit the site unless you have a good anti-virus, I was hit with a barrage of pop up windows and suspicious tab activity.
Next, it’s a lot like Black Canyon or Cafe Amazon – a carefully branded and essentially un-unique cafe franchise. They have an incredibly elaborate menu of snacks and sweets, with a comparatively small selection of coffee drinks.
I did try some of the custard cake with red bean ice cream, and it was not bad but nothing remarkable. I also had a bit of my friend’s banana good smell cake (banana cake will probably work). Transliterated the name is Cake Gluay Haum, or cake banana good smell. It’s basically a fried pancake kind of thing with sliced bananas, chocolate sauce, powdered sugar, ice cream and whipped cream. Pretty good and a good compliment to the coffee I thought.
And as for the coffee…..
The coffee didn’t have the same powerful fruity and floral undertones that are so characteristic of the stuff that’s grown in the northern mountains, but it wasn’t flavorless. It had a nutty, roasted caramel kind of quality, much heavier and (forgive me) more masculine than the usual northern bean. It was not particularly sweet, but it wasn’t at all bitter, and there was no real acidity to it. Very satisfying drink, all in all.
I wouldn’t say it’s a contender for the hall of favorites yet, but I’ve brought some of the beans home (250 baht for 250 grams of whole beans at the cafe) and will spend some time getting to know them. I was disappointed, however, that they only had the one sort of roast. I’m afraid if they don’t expand on this they aren’t likely to see too terribly much more of me, though that probably isn’t going to bother them at all.
