Teak Dinner Cruise: For The Chao Phraya River
Cummins Vessel Reference #803
Visitors to Thailand, like the Thai people themselves, invariably comment on the diversity and complexity of Thai food. It is the result of many centuries of refinement and a dedication to fresh ingredients. From the beach restaurants of Phuket to the riverside restaurants of Bangkok, the food is a great national theme.
One of the favored restaurants for traditional Thai food is Baan Khanitha, with four unique locations around Bangkok. The restaurants are named for the owner, a former Thai silk fashion designer, Khun Kanitha Akaranitikul. The name means literally, “the home of Khanitha”, and each is designed with that personal touch.
The joinery work, using recycled teak wood, is lovely. Much as Khun Khanitha enjoys her restaurant homes, she has longed to properly express her love of the Chao Phraya River that flows from the ancient capital of Ayudhaya and winds through the city. With the opening of Baan Khanitha Cruise she has decided that the time had come to give dinners an opportunity to take a leisurely cruise through the city while dinning on board.
The river already has a number of huge dinner boats that take bus loads of tour groups on the river for a quick meal and tour. Khun Khanitha, wanting to replicate the fine dinning experience of her restaurants, decided on something quite different. In days gone by the Chao Phraya River was filled with beautifully shaped teak-wood rice barges. Some of these have had engines installed and operate as tour boats.
Khun Khanitha found one of these and had it taken up the river to Ayudhaya, where some of the best wood workers reside. She wanted the Thai tradition of teak elegance but she also wanted a state-of-the-art kitchen for her chefs. To do this, it was necessary to raise the main deck to make room in the hull for the stainless steel kitchen. Teak has become a rare commodity, but the shipwrights scoured the area for old houses and other sources of timbers that they carefully re-sawed and shaped into the desired dimensions for fabricating every thing from doors to window frames.
In melding the tradition of fine Thai food and fine teak woodwork, Khun Khanitha is creating a spectacular experience for visiting and local dinners. But when it comes to the kitchen, she has departed from the old time tradition of charcoal cooking in favor of modern gas fired cookers. For maintaining the freshness of the food she has a bank of coolers, she has installed two dish washers, one for plates and the other for glasses and stem ware. To keep the wine for the stem ware at jus the right temperature the kitchen has a wine cooler. Intake and exhaust blowers along with air-conditioning will keep the below deck kitchen fresh for kitchen crew.
As a sightseeing boat, the teak barge required only a propulsion engine and a small generator. Now, with the extensively equipped modern kitchen there was a need for much more electrical power. To be assured of a reliable source for this Khun Khanitha approached Khun Sathit Suwanprasert of DKSH (Thailand), the Thai distributor of Cummins Marine Diesels. Khun Sathit set the boat up with a Cummins 4BTA 3.9-liter generator engine powering a 30 kW Stamford generator. This will provide ample power for the kitchen but also for the vessel’s lighting and entertainment systems. A factory supplied control panel, located at the engine, was provides key start, emergency shut down and a full set of relevant gauges.
Set aft of the main engine in the stern of the hull amidst massive teak timbers, the powerful generator represents a fusion of all that is best in fine food preparation in a maritime tradition. As a fully equipped floating restaurant set on a brightly finished teak hull, the Baan Khanitha Cruise will represent an exciting addition to water-borne traffic on the Chao Phraya River.
Photos courtesy of Haig-Brown/Cummins Marine Inc.
For further information:
Sathit Suwanprasert
Senior Engineer, Marketing Dept.
Cummins DKSH (Thailand) Limited
Phone: 66 23017500 | Extension: 7540
Mobile: 081 913 6599
Fax: 02 3330995
E-mail: sathit.s@dksh.com
Khun Thanyatorn
Marketing Manager
Baan Khanitha
One Plus International Co. Ltd.
36/1 Soi Sukhumvit 23, Sukhumvit Road
Kongtuey-Nua, Wattana, Bangkok
10110
E-mail: nanthanyatorn@gmail.com
Alan Haig-Brown
Over 30 years as an author for global commercial marine and fishing publications backed with hands-on experience on commercial fishing boats and coastal freighters makes Alan Haig-Brown uniquely qualified to provide vessel reference articles for Cummins Marine. You can find him in shipyards around the world, and on his own website, www.haig-brown.com.
