BANGKOK
Decades after his mysterious disappearance in 1967, the legacy of Jim Thompson lives on at the Americanborn Thai silk tycoon’s former residence in central Bangkok. Today known as, which takes over the ground floor of the compound’s revamped F&B wing, Valenciaborn chef Pepe Dasí Jiménez draws on his experience at some of Bangkok’s most progressive Thai kitchens — Nahm and 80/20 among them — for intricately plated riffs on Thai classics. “I wanted to celebrate local ingredients and Thai flavors through a foreign lens,” he says. “Just like what Thompson has done with Thai silk.” Jiménez’s appetizers fuse Iberico pork belly with a punchy shrimp relish from southern Thailand, while his take on Thailand’s humble (fried rice) resembles a crispy paella topped with lime aioli, pickled crab meat, and golden sea bass from Koh Lanta. Upstairs, the jazzy zeroes in on Thompson’s clandestine career as an operative for the Office of Strategic Services (a forerunner of the CIA) during World War II. Each drink on the leather-bound and whisky-heavy cocktail menu illustrates a chapter of his life: from the Ceylon (whisky, Ceylon tea, and longan) that nods to Thompson’s stint in Sri Lanka in 1945, to the fizzy Golden Banana (rum, plum cider, and pandan) inspired by a gunfight in a Thai nightclub of the same name. History lessons have never been more delicious ().
