The Lake House

Soon after opening, Lake House expanded its tapas menu to include more substantial dishes because the owners quickly realized their wine-drinking patrons didn’t want to leave the beautiful, tropical garden house-on-a-klong when they got hungry. While we won’t say that this means the food here is an afterthought, the options are quite basic: a few meat mains, cold cuts, pastas, pizzas and a few Thai dishes. You are largely paying for the atmosphere, which is truly lovely, as long as you spray on the thoughtfully-provided mosquito repellant before reclining on the floor seating. While the less-than-pulse-quickening concept behind most of the dishes does not necessarily warrant the price tag, the execution is solid. The house salad, a version of Greek salad, may be B320, but the tomatoes are firm and juicy, the olives pungent and sharp, the feta fresh and salty and the cumin dressing amped up for extremely delightful effect. The stir-fried scallops are creamy and cooked with due restraint (though the broccoli, asparagus and snowpeas, while crunchy and refreshing, are not what we consider the ideal complement). The grain-fed Australian beef steak is reasonably-priced and competently-handled (a medium means a medium) and the cut, while not a melt-in-your-mouth rib-eye or sirloin, is tender with some marbling. We really like the extra effort on the desserts. The panna cotta platter has three shot glasses, each with a delicious fruit variation, one of them a bittersweet chocolate mousse. So, the food is good, the setting gorgeous and the service courteous and attentive. Our biggest gripe with the Lake House, though, is the wine list. While it avoids the truly sky-high prices, there are very few options under B1,000, with most bottles falling in the B2,000-3,000 range. What’s more, whereas other new restaurants are offering several wines by the glass, the Lake House, quite bafflingly, does only a single house red and white. So while the experience of dining at the Lake House is quite unique, we wish they would adjust their prices and diversify their wine list so we could come here more often.