Travel is often romanticised as a journey that opens your eyes to the world and its colours, a way of discovering something new through moving from one place to another. But not all travel requires distance. Sometimes, it is emotional. Like the feeling of youth stirred by slipping into a jacket from your high school days, or the way a familiar scent carries you back to a version of yourself once tucked away. In that sense, travel isn’t always about place; it’s about what stirs within.
Louis Vuitton has long understood this. Since its founding in 1854, the maison has been guided by a spirit of travel that transcends geography — rooted instead in culture, memory, and emotion. From Japan to India, China to Korea, its journey has always explored how we connect with the world around us. Today, that exploration continues in new forms. After all, what better way to move someone than through taste?
The opening of Gaggan by Louis Vuitton in 2024 marks a bold step in this evolution. As part of the Louis Vuitton Culinary Community, which includes its pioneering café in Osaka and Le Café Louis Vuitton in New York, the Bangkok outpost extends the maison’s vision into the realm of fine dining. Located within Gaysorn Amarin, the restaurant merges fashion and flavour through the lens of chef Gaggan Anand, whose Indian heritage and decade in Thailand shape a menu that is both deeply personal and deliciously borderless.
Here, dining becomes its own journey. The menu, designed to change every three months, transforms with the season, ensuring no visit feels the same. This summer’s offering, available from June through August, invites guests to explore the world from a single seat, through a vibrant nine-course lunch and an elaborate thirteen-course dinner. Each dish, made with Thailand’s freshest local ingredients, unfolds as a chapter in a story that spans continents, memories, and moods.
The course begins with one of Gaggan’s iconic signatures: Lick It Up. Inspired by Chiang Rai’s Pulae pineapple, the dish playfully asks guests to abandon formality and quite literally lick the plate clean. What might feel unusual at first quickly gives way to the refreshing balance of spicy, sweet, and sour that awakens the palate.
From there, the experience unfolds like a passport filled with edible stamps. A lychee foie gras nods to Japan’s long admiration for precision even in its delicacy; a British Ritz cracker layered with gorgonzola adds a cheeky twist of nostalgia; and miang kham, Thailand’s iconic betel leaf snack, bursts with herbs, heat, and texture. These opening bites offer a light, witty prelude to the global tasting narrative that follows.
The journey then circles back to India, where Gaggan pays homage to his roots with reinvented classics like kachori and ghewar, filtered through memory and imagination. It dives next into the sea: Norwegian scallop, shiro ebi, ama ebi, and salmon arrive in a wave of richness and refinement. Then comes the crescendo—a perfectly barbecued A3 Miyazaki Wagyu tenderloin, its marbling rendered sublime with nothing more than time and patience.
And no journey is complete without a final note. Dessert begins with Saison, Gaggan’s reimagining of Thai sticky rice with longan — fragrant, and layered with warmth. It closes with a selection of pink-hued fruits, served as both palate cleanser and visual exhale.
Each course, in both structure and detail, maps a considered journey across geographies, techniques, and traditions. At Gaggan by Louis Vuitton, the French maison translates its legacy of travel into a culinary experience—offering a global perspective plated, and a passport of flavour stamped without ever leaving the table.
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