Wherever you are in Thailand, fine dining has a tendency to show off. Big statements, rigid rituals and concept-heavy menus can sometimes leave diners more puzzled than pleased. And while I’m always open to having my horizons expanded, Cuisine de Garden’s latest seasonal revamp does something far more interesting: it lowers its voice and introduces a touch of sweetness instead. And while a few moments may make you second-guess your choices, a few mouthfuls in, you’ll be glad you didn’t.
Chiang Mai’s OG fine diner
Cuisine de Garden has built its reputation quietly over the years, emerging as one of Chiang Mai’s pioneering fine dining spots – appearing way before the local audience was ready.
From its outset, the restaurant set out to explore a ‘Lanna Nordic’ identity – pairing local Thai ingredients and culinary memory with Nordic techniques, playing into fermentation and a respect for seasonality.
Chef Leelawat ‘Nan’ Mankongtiphan leads the operation from the semi-open kitchen. With no formal training, they’re completely self-taught – an impressive feat in the face of big kitchen names that most fine diners pass through.
This gives way to some exciting quirks that I personally think only make the place better. Cuisine de Garden turns its back on strict plating and planning, instead allowing its menus to evolve in response to what’s available, with tasting menus that ebb and flow with the seasons, or whatever is found in the market that day.
Winter is officially mad and mellow
I was recently lucky enough to sample the restaurant’s new cold-season tasting menu, titled Mad Mellow, and sampled its peculiar yet somehow ‘it works’ tasting menu built around the idea of sweetness. Not the cloying, dessert-only kind, but sweetness as a feeling: warmth, softness and familiarity. While on the face of it, it may seem radical and high concept, but after just one bite, I felt right at home. Flavours familiar, ingredients not.
‘We’re not serving sweet food,’ says Nathika ‘Bee’ Thaisuchat, wife of the chef and co-owner of the restaurant. ‘But in every dish, there’s something related to sweetness – sometimes by name, other times by ingredient.’
As a sweet tooth myself, that distinction matters. Sweetness here might arrive as a background note of banana in a savoury course, the natural sugars drawn from grilled vegetables or the gentle roundness of fermented ingredients that soften edges rather than sharpen them.
Take Vanilla, the first snack course that on paper reads savoury – buffalo tartare, fermented soy bean cone, cream cheese – yet a hint of vanilla in the carefully piped topping adds an aromatic thread to what’s to follow.
‘The word ‘Mad’ comes from the Danish word for food, not the English meaning,’ Bee adds. ‘We paired that with the word ‘mellow’ to describe the softness and subtle sweetness that balances the ‘madness’ of it.’
Unexpected ingredients, familiar taste
Chef Nan’s philosophy is all about simplicity, locality and sustainability. ‘Around 95-96 percent of what we use comes from Thailand,’ Bee adds. ‘With the exception of flour and a few other hard-to-find ingredients, we keep our focus local.’
As I munched my way through, every bite felt familiar but the presentation and approach was often unexpected. Think notes of pandan paired with raw spotted prawn, leaning into the leaf’s naturally sweet perfume without falling into dessert territory. Cocoa, meanwhile, pushes further into contrast, combining a Thai cocoa æbleskiver – a type of soft nordic pancake – with a resolutely savoury crispy squid confit.
And then comes the weird, but quite wonderful dishes. I can’t deny that when first seeing grilled sweet bananas with blue cheese and smoked fish on the menu, my mouth went dry and I had a little nervous shiver. But when I was faced with it, wrapped up in a banana leaf and served alongside a petrified fish tail for show – I was blown away. Intellectual and brain spinning, yet weirdly familiar, tasting just like a freshly grilled khaomok from my favourite roadside vendor.
By the main event, things got a little more fun. Rock lobster was served with noticeable Burmese notes thanks to a thick and flavourful chickpea veloute poured from height at the table. Then a large iron pot of billowing smoke revealed crispy-grilled wagyu beef on a stick of sugar cane. The sugarcane sauce, served on the side, was playfully applied using a ‘brush’ of fresh herbs that you could also eat.
A sweet mellow end
And then came the dessert. You’d expect Chef Nan to go heavy on the sweetness, after all it’s part of the concept. But pleasantly, the sweet courses remain subtle, leaning into floral and refreshingly clean flavours that do a good job of not weighing down the meal with sugar.
Rose arrives as rose tea granita with jicama and rose syrup, quickly followed by a soya brownie with wild almond ice cream and fermented soya bean caramel – you can even see the ferments happening on the far wall of the dining room.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the chef is consciously stepping away from the idea that fine dining must be intimidating to be serious. This is still a tasting menu – still refined, still precise – but it feels warmer, more human and more open to interpretation and enjoyment than other restaurants.
And for a city like Chiang Mai, where food culture thrives on generosity and approachability, that shift feels well judged. After years of intermittent dining at Cuisine de Garden, Mad Mellow is a welcome step in the right direction. It doesn’t try to impress you with how clever it is. Instead, it invites you to pay attention to flavour and rediscover sweetness in places you least expect. That quiet shift might be their boldest move yet, and definitely worth the jaunt out Hang Dong way to experience it.