Shandy Pockets just arrived in Bangkok and rolled up to stay at their perennial base of operations, Aloft Hotel, which is on colourful Soi 11 in Sukhumvit. As well as being a solid Bangkok hotel, it always had the added bonus of looking over the weird space egg that was one of our favourite eating spots, Bed Supper Club. If Apple made restaurants, they would look like this, a none-more-white pod that somehow plopped down in the middle of Bangkok and started serving food and drink in between its avant-garde performance art shows.
Sadly, there's a giant iPod-shaped hole where BSC used to be, it having been demolished in our absence. This makes us sad as we were very much looking forward to eating squid-ink pasta and drinking bellinis while children in shark costumes danced their interpretation of Romeo and Juliet or whatever their next intra-meal show was going to be.
We've been here a number of times, and it's never been the same. For starters, it's all white exterior pervades the inside, too. Two white floors of dining space surround the central 'stage'. The dining spaces are large beds, and you recline to receive your food, so it kind of feels like brunch on the space shuttle. I can't remember there ever being a menu. Things just kind of arrived, delivered by models in utilitarian overalls like they've been forced to work in a space quarry for being too good looking.
As you reclined and ate and spilled almost everything that came along, situationist art happenings began to take place. Artists zip-lined from the ceiling, or silent dancers moved to an unheard beat or costumes were handed out to illustrate various ages of peace. On one occasion, my friend Ariel and I were handed lab coats and headphones as we entered, and we had to sit in absolute silence for about an hour, only being allowed to communicate via pen and paper or making patterns in the dry rice they'd put out. I know, I know, it sounds hipster-level pretentious, but it always felt like there was a self-regarding humour to it and it was never annoying. If anything, it was worth watching the actual models who would turn up and be baffled by everything happening around them.
It was one of the first places I wrote about as a travel journalist, and never seemed to lose its creativity in the decade I went there. RIP, Bed Supper Club. I'm going to tell myself you just fired up your engines and took off.
Sadly, there's a giant iPod-shaped hole where BSC used to be, it having been demolished in our absence. This makes us sad as we were very much looking forward to eating squid-ink pasta and drinking bellinis while children in shark costumes danced their interpretation of Romeo and Juliet or whatever their next intra-meal show was going to be.
We've been here a number of times, and it's never been the same. For starters, it's all white exterior pervades the inside, too. Two white floors of dining space surround the central 'stage'. The dining spaces are large beds, and you recline to receive your food, so it kind of feels like brunch on the space shuttle. I can't remember there ever being a menu. Things just kind of arrived, delivered by models in utilitarian overalls like they've been forced to work in a space quarry for being too good looking.
As you reclined and ate and spilled almost everything that came along, situationist art happenings began to take place. Artists zip-lined from the ceiling, or silent dancers moved to an unheard beat or costumes were handed out to illustrate various ages of peace. On one occasion, my friend Ariel and I were handed lab coats and headphones as we entered, and we had to sit in absolute silence for about an hour, only being allowed to communicate via pen and paper or making patterns in the dry rice they'd put out. I know, I know, it sounds hipster-level pretentious, but it always felt like there was a self-regarding humour to it and it was never annoying. If anything, it was worth watching the actual models who would turn up and be baffled by everything happening around them.
It was one of the first places I wrote about as a travel journalist, and never seemed to lose its creativity in the decade I went there. RIP, Bed Supper Club. I'm going to tell myself you just fired up your engines and took off.
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