Bourbon Street Restaurant & Oyster Bar, Boutique Hotel
Ekkamai Rd, Khlong Tan Nuea, Khlong Toei, Bangkok 10110
Bourbon Street is the kind of place that only exists because one person was stubborn enough to make it work. Doug Harrison left New Orleans in 1982, landed in Bangkok four years later, and has spent nearly four decades cooking the food of his hometown for the city. The result is the sole address in Bangkok for boiled live crawfish, blackened redfish, proper gumbo and the rest of the Louisiana canon, in a three-floor building with an 18-room hotel attached.
Bourbon Street Restaurant and Oyster Bar was founded in September 1986 by Doug Harrison, who was born and raised in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Harrison left New Orleans in 1982 to work in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia as an offshore marine pipeline welder for an oil-field construction engineering firm. He arrived in Bangkok and bought a bar at the back of Washington Square off Sukhumvit Soi 22, then expanded it quickly into a full restaurant. After 25 years at that original location, Harrison relocated to a renovated 27-year-old building on Soi Ekamai, transforming it into a 160-seat restaurant across three floors with an attached 18-room boutique hotel.
The kitchen is the only address in Bangkok for authentic Cajun and Creole cuisine. Lead with the boiled live crawfish when in season, a dish that translates directly from the communal boils of Louisiana's Gulf Coast. The blackened redfish and blackened crab cakes are central to the menu's identity, executed with the high-heat iron-skillet technique that defines Cajun cooking. Gumbo and jambalaya round out the New Orleans classics. Fresh live imported oysters are available at the oyster bar, and the menu extends to USDA prime steaks and hickory smoked ribs for guests who want the broader American comfort-food range.
Breakfast is a serious affair: the menu includes New Orleans-style eggs benedict served with either crab cake or salmon, alongside steak and eggs, omelettes and French toast. The combination of breakfast, full lunch and dinner service, a functioning oyster bar and a boutique hotel under one roof gives Bourbon Street a depth of operation that few independent Bangkok restaurants match.
The Ekkamai address, just a few minutes on foot from Ekkamai BTS, places it in a neighbourhood with a loyal expat and long-term resident community. Worth the visit for any occasion requiring serious comfort food, a full American brunch or an oyster-and-cold-drink session in surroundings that have their own distinct backstory.