One of my favourite locations for dinner is the strip of restaurants on Lopez Drive, on the perimeter of Power Plant Mall opposite Rockwell Club, with its outdoor dining and a great selection of Italian, Spanish, Filipino and Japanese food. Last year Celadon arrived in the neighbourhood, and to date, it is the only exclusively Thai restaurant at Rockwell, apart from the cheap and cheerful Asian mix at Banana Leaf. Celadon isn’t large, but the décor gives a sense of palatial splendour with its golden chairs and white linen table cloths.
The name Celadon comes from a type of glaze used on porcelain or stoneware that originated in China, and its production eventually spread to Thailand. Although it can come in a variety of colours, the name has become almost synonymous with the most popular pale jade green of Celadon crockery.
My husband and I had tried out this restaurant when it first arrived in Rockwell last year, but found it disappointing. In retrospect it was simply the lack of variety. As any Asian gourmand should remember, it is so much better to eat any Asian cuisine with all your friends, so you can taste as many dishes as possible. As a farewell dinner for our daughter and my parents, we did just that.
Celadon provides a modern take on traditional dishes, and the family leapt upon the 
menu with alacrity. My mother was keen to try the mangosteen curry, once we had defined a mangosteen as a cross between a lychee and a passionfruit, but unfortunately it was not available. There is a good variety of other options, however, including some delicious salads to choose from. The pomelo salad rated right up there with a similar dish (my favourite) at People’s Palace. Zesty and refreshing, this one comes with caramelized calamari, instead of prawns, and is a great appetizer to get the taste buds leaping into action.
Of course the teenagers loved the hands-on, irresistible satays and buffalo wings, which all disappeared in a heartbeat, and the not-so-traditionally-Thai Beef Rendang from Malaysia was a hit with my father.
The key to Thai food is balance, and Celadon manages to balance its dishes beautifully. Despite the presence of red chillis on the menu, denoting spicier dishes, none is painfully hot, and certainly there is no sign of the Filipino preference for sugar. Ingredients are fresh and the flavours are authentically Thai.
Sadly there was no Singha Beer to be had that evening, a great liquid accompaniment to Thai dining, but our beer drinkers happily made do with San Miguel Light.
The menu contains many popular dishes such as the classic green chicken curry, tongue tingling tom yum and the epitome of comfort food, tom ka gai, while the phad Thai wrapped in its hairnet of egg, was packed with flavour and vegetables. My own favourite, apart from the pomelo salad, was the spicy beef and basil, which I was selfishly disinterested in sharing, but which nonetheless made its way all around the table to great enthusiasm.
Others recommend the desserts, too, but we were full to the brim and preferred to complete the meal with a short walk down the road for a bottle of rosé at Barcinos.