The great variety offered by Thai cuisine is not limited to the number of different dishes, but can also be seen in the broad range of restaurants and shops where Thai food is served. They differ not only in the kind of food listed on their menus, but also in their mood and atmosphere.
PERENNIAL FAVOURITE: ‘Pla nuea awn’, deep-fried with garlic.
For example, if you want to have a meal in Bangkok's Chinatown during the day, there are many places to eat along Yaowarat and Charoen Krung roads, including restaurants that serve kui tio luk chin pla (rice noodles with balls of pounded fish meat) and kui tio rad na (noodles topped with meat in gravy), both on Charoen Krung Road (the latter roughly across the street form the intersection with Soi Texas). Then there is the khao tom (rice soup) on Plaeng Nam Road, the grilled duck near the Yaowarat three-way intersection and the noodles with pork balls in clear broth sold at a stall in Itsaraphap Road off Yaowarat.
After dark, the place to go is Yaowarat, which has a much livelier dining scene than Charoen Krung Road. There, the best approach is to wander around and scan the stalls and pushcarts selling food on the pavement and along the sides of the road, then choose what looks good. You might decide on grilled seafood, pork satay, a dish with broth such as kui jap nam sai, or a sweet such as khanom pang rad sangkhaya (steamed bread squares topped with coconut custard sauce) or bua loy nam khing (sticky dumplings stuffed with sweetened black sesame served in ginger broth). As is true in other parts of town, the atmosphere and the selection of food changes with the time of day or night.
Holidays and days off are when people in Bangkok can spend time with their families, and a popular activity is to head out of town to find good things to eat. The destination can't be too far from the city, so that the family can get back home again before it gets too late.
The food and atmosphere vary greatly depending on the chosen direction. Seafood might be the first choice, because in Bangkok there is less selection than there is for other kinds of food. In this case the place to go might be Bang Khunthien to the south. This is the part of Bangkok that is closest to the sea. Thien Thalay Road branches off from Rama II Road in the direction of the sea, coming to an end at Khlong Sapphasamitr, a canal with brackish water. You can't actually see the sea from there, but there are mangrove thickets for atmosphere and more than 20 seafood restaurants along both sides of the canal. Recommendations for many of them can be found on websites, with mentions of dishes such as boiled cockles or the same shellfish prepared as a yam (sour-hot salad), which is especially good because the cockles are farmed right in the area, and pu thalay pad pong karee (crab fried with curry powder).
Grilled river prawns.
Other offerings include pla krapong nueng manao (sea bass steamed with lime juice and other seasonings), thawt rad nam pla (sea bass deep-fried and seasoned with nam pla) and sam rot (sea bass with a sweet-sour-spicy sauce); pu thalay nueng (steamed crab), hoy thawt pad cha (a local tube-shaped shellfish stir-fried with herbs and seasonings); and gung ob kluea (prawns baked with salt).
Some people may prefer to drive further, to Samut Sakhon or Samut Songkhram, where there are many seafood places along the shore. The seafood available in Samut Songkhram is mainly local dishes made by fishing families. These include kaeng phet pla duc thalay kap bai chakhram (a spicy coconut cream-based curry made with saltwater catfish and the leaves of a broom-like seaside plant), yam hoy khraeng (hot-sour cockle salad), pad cha pla duc thalay (saltwater catfish stir-fried with herbs and seasonings), pla krabane noke daet dio thawt (a small ray, semi-dried and deep-fried), pla tu sote tom madan (fresh mackerel cooked with a sour, green fruit called madan in Thai), and pla maw thalay daet dio thawt (a local fish, semi-dried and deep-fried).
The seafood of the Chon Buri area offers different choices. In Sam Muke and Si Racha districts, the emphasis is on fish dishes such as pla insee thawt nam pla (a fish with white, fine-textured meat, fried with nam pla), kaeng pa pla het khone (a spicy fish curry made without coconut cream), pla krapong sam rote (sea bass with sweet-sour-spicy sauce) and gung chae nam pla (prawns in salty sauce).
There are other fish recipes based on freshwater fish from the Chao Phraya River, and the restaurants that serve them are just as popular with Bangkok residents as the seaside places because of their eye-pleasing river views and breezy atmosphere. There are many riverside restaurants to choose from along the stretch of river that extends from Nonthaburi to Pathum Thani and Ayutthaya.
The most popular dish served at almost all of them is grilled gung kam kram or gung maenam (grilled river prawns). Other favourites include pla nuea awn (sheatfish) deep-fried with pepper and garlic; tom yam made with local fish such as pla ma, pla khang or pla khao; the pla chon, or snakehead fish, prepared in various ways; and frog deep-fried with garlic and pepper.
The food in these restaurants is likely to be more expensive than in other areas because river prawns are very pricey: those sized seven or eight per kilogramme are priced at at least 1,000 baht per kilogramme, even though they are raised commercially on farms in Suphan Buri. The pla nuea awn are expensive, too. The ones in Thai rivers are very small. Bigger ones are imported from Cambodia and sold to restaurants where they bring a high price. Pla khang are raised commercially in floating baskets in Ayutthaya, Phitsanulok and Uttaradit, so that in addition to being expensive, they also may not be the freshest.
Another popular cuisine is Sino-Thai, and noodle shops are one prominent example. Even though these Thai-Chinese restaurants are not big on atmosphere, the kitchen skills of the good ones are recognised and respected. Good ones can be found all over Bangkok as well as in Pathum Thani, Ayutthaya and Ang Thong. Among the dishes they serve are pla chon daed dio thawt (deep-fried, semi-dried snakehead fish), tom yam kha mu (a sour-spicy soup made with pork leg), haw moke (fish and herbs steamed in curried coconut custard), luk chin pla krai pad cha (balls of pounded fish stir-fried with herbs and spicy seasonings), kraphoh mu pad kiem chai (pork tripe stir-fried with pickled vegetables) and kaeng som pla chon (sour-sweet mildly spicy snakehead fish soup).
Among the noodle dishes, some of the best are the pork noodles served at a shop near Wat Makham in Pathum Thani, the pad thai at Wat Thong Khung in Ang Thong, and the kui tio kai cheek (noodles with hand-shredded chicken meat) at Wat Jao Jet in Ayutthaya.
One more kind of food well worth driving out of town for is Isan cuisine. At Pak Chong in Saraburi there are restaurants that serve mostly familiar dishes such as gai yang (grilled chicken), som tam (sour-spicy salad made from unripe papaya) and nam toke (sour-spicy salad made with grilled meat). But in the area leading into Khao Yai National Park only steak is available, as if, in a mountainous environment like that, no one would want to eat anything except steak.
So there is no lack of choice for a family who decide to drive out of Bangkok for the day to enjoy a meal that they could not have found cooked so well back in town. Every direction offers its own selection of local dishes, showing once again that in Thailand, wide as your dining experience may be, there are always new things to discover.
ROAD WORTHY: A meal at a riverside restaurant: ‘kaeng pa pla khang’, far left, and ‘kap thawt krathiem’, left.
