TALKING one night with our Malaysian friend Shavana on the topic of European versus Asian women he surmised our differences in opinions quite well. “I guess if you eat potatoes every day, sometimes you want rice!”. Arriving into Thailand from Malaysia was a bit like this. Although I love Malaysian food and every time I leave there I just want to go back, after three weeks of intensive eating the idea of being able to get stuck into some sexy Thai salads or sweet aromatic curries was pretty exciting.
The food in Bangkok can essentially be categorised in one of four ways; street food, Royal Thai Cuisine, Chinese and international. Being here to taste Asia we gave the international cuisine a miss - except for an uncontrollable craving for a cheeseburger one day. And as the food in Malaysia was so often Chinese we chose this style as little as possible. Being in a non-Muslim country though meant that Chinese-style pork was now more prevalent and in fact it had replaced the dominant chicken down in the south. No matter how much we wanted to minimise our Chinese consumption, to have walked past the stalls selling the stickiest, glossy, sweet-braised, Chinese-style pork hock would have been a sin. A sin we did not commit four times.
The Street Food was our first hunt as it seemed to be what the locals were getting into most. Also, like Malaysia, the street food here is not just an art form but rather a martial art. The preparation techniques and uniformity of the vendors is so refined and varies so little that the same product is delivered to you with a sense of pride and history. Be it the knife skills of the vendor serving fresh fruit, the way the pomelos are peeled, or the tai chi-like technique of flaring a roti, it all appears to have been passed down through generations over time. I imagine any hawker daring enough to attempt something different would go broke pretty quickly. These traditions or “rules” are wonderful and it is what I believe gives the people of Asia the sophisticated knowledge and passion they have for food and cooking.
On the small plastic tables surrounding the street vendors you will always find a quartet of flavours that are not only provided for as a condiment but are the basis behind all Thai dishes; Hot, Sour, Salty and Sweet. Like the ‘dead horse’ that sits gracefully on the bistro counter back home, chilli flakes, vinegar with fresh chopped chilli, fish sauce or a salty chilli sauce, and sugar are found at every street vendor. Although most Thai people appeared to have their own formula, the idea here is to add an equal balance of each flavour to enhance dishes such as pad Thai or tom yam.
Pad Thai is probably the best known of Thailand’s noodle dishes and is quite similar to its southern cousin char kway teow. The best one we ate was down Kao San Road in Banglamphu. This street - previously the temple for stinky hair-farming backpackers to worship each other - is much more sophisticated than on my last visit 10 years ago. An abundant availability of cheap street food is still here though and it is some of the best in Bangkok. Kao San Road is also great because the cheap Thai restaurants here translate their menus into English.
It must be said though that it was one of these restaurants that seeded the inevitable - no matter how tough your guts are, eating pork that has never visited a refrigerator or river shrimps from water villages with holes in the floor as toilets or fish from restaurants with cats sitting on the chopping boards served on plates washed in the gutter, we never had any doubt there would be a time when things got a bit loose. The next day was a day in.
Another famous dish prepared by the street vendors with martial art-like technique is som tam (green papaya salad). First a sauce is made simply by crushing chilli, garlic, lime juice and tomatoes in a mortar and pestle then seasoned with fish sauce, chilli, dried shrimp and peanuts. This sauce is then mixed with shredded green papaya and green beans; it is fantastic. A som tam was part of our six-buck lunch one day of Thai sausages, fried chicken, roti, braised pork, chickenwings, rice and pad Thai – six bucks!
Of all the street food we ate, and the list is about as big as my waist line is now, the one that rocked this pork addict's boat was sai krok. These little sausages filled with pork, ginger, garlic, seasonings and rice are grilled on a coal fire. At first the rice reminded me a little of a scene from The Lost Boys but these rich little ball sausages are so beautifully sweet and sour that this illusion was soon forgotten. After I had eaten sai krok about 10 times I had to stop myself simply to allow room to try other things like fried chicken wings, fried chicken thighs, meatballs and rotis.
We stumbled upon another treat that rode in on the pig's back when we were walking down Silom Road – moo yong (pork floss). Although I believe it is Chinese and they call it rousing, pork floss is exactly as it sounds - it's fairy floss made with shredded pork. Prepared by slowly cooking pork with sugar while constantly stirring, it has a woollen texture, then the sweet salty meat melts in your mouth. I love it.
Royal Thai Cuisine is the style that we Aussies believe to be archetypical Thai food and a romantic cuisine with a rich history. I think Royal Thai food is comparable with the best in the world. The recipes of these dishes dates back about 1000 years to the old capital of Siam and include beautifully rich and complex aromatic curries, zingy herbal salads with fresh crisp herbs or tasty Thai style tapas. The focus with Royal Thai is more on richness and aromatics than spiciness, although chilli is often used. Other ingredients common in this style include garlic, ginger, lemongrass, shrimp paste, fish sauce, coconut milk and palm sugar.
On the chilli topic: “Dear Thailand, I imagine there are plenty of “farangs” (as you like to call us) that act tough and say “Make it HOT!!” when they don't know what you mean by hot, so I understand your cautious respect, but even after we convinced the waiter we like it hot by chewing on a few raw chilli’s you still at best only raised a tickle. We wanted to sweat! The food in Malaysia is hotter. Love always, Christopher and Rachel.”
Two Royal Thai restaurants we visited were Thanying and The Secret Garden, both of which are in the Silom/Sathorn area and we highly recommend. Thanying is quite special as all the recipes come from a princess who was once the head cook at the Sukhothai palace while her half-sister was the Queen. It was here we tried a complex green curry of fish balls stuffed with salted egg, a pomelo and shrimp salad, crab shells steamed with crab and pork meat, chicken pieces deep fried in pandang leaves and a very intense jam-like dip made with green mango and dried shrimp – not something for a conservative palate but an amazing flavour explosion. A tip though - dress up for both but especially for The Secret Garden as it appears the place to be for Bangkok’s beautiful and well-to-do.
Like all major cities the presence of the Chinese appears quite dominant. Thailand has a long history with China and Chinatown in Bangkok is one of the biggest food hubs here, especially if it’s seafood you are after or it’s late into the night. We chose only to sample a few of Thailand’s absolutely brilliant “Singha” beers rather than eat down here. A must-visit in Bangkok and bordering one edge of Chinatown is the Flower Market. After having been to the worst smelling market ever in KL, this place was aromatically refreshing.
Strolling the streets of Bangkok feels like you are browsing around a monstrous and sometimes seedy department store. One street that is lined with hundreds of vendors selling only watches turns onto the next offering only batteries. Standing at a junction you can be faced with ‘do I turn left towards the dried meat section or right for hubcaps?'. Absolutely anything you can think of is for sale here right next to 10 other shops selling exactly the samething. Scattered all across the eclectic hyper-market is a bounty of some of the finest food you could ever ask for. We didn’t kid ourselves that the best food in Thailand must lie in Bangkok and over the 10 days we spend exploring, we found some treasure.
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