The Allium Bangkok: Thailand’s Leading Restaurant in Excellence 2026   

On the third floor of The Athenee Hotel, a French chef cooks the Mediterranean from memory and invites the city to share it. The Allium Bangkok has been nominated for Thailand’s Leading Restaurant in Excellence 2026.

From a Farm in Cahors
The story begins far from Bangkok, on a grandparents’ farm in Cahors, southwest France, where Chef Clément Hernandez first learned what fresh, local produce could mean. Training in Toulouse followed, then Michelin-starred kitchens across France and the United Kingdom, under figures such as Michel Roux and Jean Coussau. He arrived in Thailand in 2015. In the decade since, he has become as much a teacher as a cook: President of Les Disciples d’Escoffier Thailand and a former instructor at Le Cordon Bleu Dusit, he has helped shape a generation of young chefs in the city.

Recipes That Remember
At The Allium, that biography is written into the menu. Dishes carry their origins in their names. Grandmother’s Croquetas arrive rich with roasted chicken and béchamel. A Memory of Tortilla de Patatas returns to the simplest of Spanish comforts, confit potato folded into omelette, with bread and tomato alongside. The Childhood Paella, layered with chorizo, pork belly, squid and prawns, is made for the centre of the table. The Mediterranean Octopus Leg, paired with nduja, smoked potatoes and charred lemon, shows the other side of the kitchen, where French technique meets the flavours of Spain, Southern France, Italy and Greece. There is wit, too: the menu presents its creamy chorizo rigatoni as the chef’s untraditional carbonara, with a playful aside, “don’t tell the Italians”.

The Mediterranean, Sourced Close to Home
The spirit is Mediterranean, yet much of the larder is local. Chocolate from Chiang Mai becomes a mousse finished with olive oil and salt flakes. Local goat cheese and local chorizo share the bar board with Jamón Ibérico, and a vanilla panna cotta comes with local berries. Pasta is made fresh and served either as a single plate or as a sharing portion. At the bar, botanical cocktails, organic and biodynamic wines and considered non-alcoholic creations carry the same seasonal thinking into the glass, part of what the restaurant frames as a commitment to mindful, sustainable hospitality.

A Table Meant for Company
The room is casual yet refined, moving from lively communal tables to quieter corners made for lingering, with a mezzanine above. For more private occasions, an eight-seat private bar and an upstairs dining room carry the same warmth behind closed doors, where music, food and conversation set the rhythm of the evening. Dinner here is less a sequence of courses than a gathering.

Among Thailand’s Finest Tables
Excellence in a restaurant rarely rests on a single plate. At The Allium, it lies in coherence: a chef formed in Michelin-starred kitchens, a menu that turns personal history into dishes built for sharing, and a sourcing approach that grounds Mediterranean cooking in Thai produce. Add a mentor’s sustained investment in Bangkok’s next generation of cooks, and The Allium earns its place among the strongest restaurants in the country. Its nomination for Thailand’s Leading Restaurant in Excellence 2025 recognises a kitchen where precision and generosity are treated as one discipline.

At The Allium, the Mediterranean is less a place on the map than a memory, and every table is asked to share it.