Blue Elephant Bangkok: a 1903 mansion, and tom yum kung in a navy pot

Back from Ayutthaya, loosened up by the hotel spa, we went out in the early evening to Blue Elephant. A yellow three-storey colonial house facing the main Sathorn road. We arrived just before six, with the sky still bright.

A yellow three-storey house left standing on Sathorn

On South Sathorn Road, immediately out of BTS Surasak. Everything around it is modern glass, and in the gap between them this one mansion remains. A lawn in front, green shutters at the windows. Without the sign you would not take it for a restaurant.

The building goes back further than the restaurant. It is a Thai-Chinese colonial structure dating to 1903, which served first as a department store and later as the headquarters of the Thai Chinese Chamber of Commerce; it is listed by Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, and the restaurant’s founders restored it before opening.

Blue Elephant itself began in Belgium — the first one opened in Brussels in 1980, run by the Thai chef Nooror Somany Steppe and her Belgian husband. The Bangkok house came in 2002. Restaurant and cooking school occupy it together.

Past a wall of framed photographs, to the table

Through the entrance, a staircase runs up beyond an arched doorway. The ceiling is a green lattice. And the wall, top to bottom, is filled with framed photographs. Look at them one by one and you will never get to your table. Near the front, house-made pastes and seasonings are set out.

The dining room is dark wood, with wooden shutters down over the arched windows. Orange flowers on the white-clothed tables. The round table by the window had a blue cloth and a large yellow bouquet on it. Rattan armchairs.

Chic, and traditional. That was the impression the moment we sat down.

Tom yum kung, carried out in a navy pot

A deep navy ceramic pot, orange soup. Prawns sunk into it, one red chilli floating. Tom yum kung.

I had asked them to hold back the heat. It was still hot. If that is what held back means, one wonders what the unmodified version would have done.

By the time we left it was dark, and drizzling

We left at half past seven, so an hour and a half or so inside. Outside it was fully dark and the house was lit from below. The yellow walls I had seen in daylight read slightly white at night. A light rain was falling and we walked under an umbrella.

Notes from this visit

• Blue Elephant Bangkok, Blue Elephant Building, 233 South Sathorn Road, Sathorn
• Immediately from BTS Surasak
• The building dates to 1903 — a Thai-Chinese colonial structure, once a department store and later the Thai Chinese Chamber of Commerce headquarters, listed by the Fine Arts Department and restored before the restaurant opened
• The brand began in Brussels in 1980, founded by chef Nooror Somany Steppe and her Belgian husband. The Bangkok house opened in 2002
• A cooking school shares the building with the restaurant
• Asking for reduced heat still leaves the tom yum kung genuinely hot
• We went in just before 6pm and left at 7:30
• Menus, prices and hours change. Check the restaurant’s own information

Visited August 2025. Prices and opening details are as they were at the time of the visit.

Earlier the same day: the elephant camp at Ayutthaya.

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• Taking the Chao Phraya ferry
• Pad Thai at ICONSIAM
• A sharing menu at IGNIV Bangkok