Thailand Food & Drink
Bangkok and Chiang Mai are the country’s big culinary centers,
boasting the cream of gourmet Thai restaurants and the best international
cuisines. The rest of the country is by no means a gastronomic wasteland,
however, and you can eat well and cheaply in even the smallest provincial towns,
many of which offer the additional attraction of regional specialties. In fact
you could eat more than adequately without ever entering a restaurant, as
itinerant food vendors hawking hot and cold snacks materialize in even the most
remote spots, as well as on trains and buses – and night markets often serve
customers from dusk until dawn. Hygiene is a consideration when eating anywhere
in Thailand, but being too cautious means you’ll end up spending a lot of money
and missing out on some real local treats. Wean your stomach gently by avoiding
excessive amounts of chilies and too much fresh fruit in the first few days. You can be pretty sure that any noodle stall or curry shop that’s permanently packed with customers is a safe bet. Furthermore, because most Thai dishes can be cooked in under five minutes, you’ll rarely have to contend with stuff that’s been left to smoulder and stew. Foods that are generally considered high risk include salads, ice cream, shellfish and raw or undercooked meat, fish or eggs. If you’re really concerned about health standards you could stick to restaurants and food stalls displaying a “Clean Food Good Taste” sign, part of a food sanitation project set up by the Ministry of Public Health. TAT and the Ministry of the Interior. Most restaurants in Thailand are open every day for lunch and dinner; we’ve given full opening hours throughout the Guide. In a few of the country’s most expensive restaurants, mostly in Bangkok, a ten percent service charge and possibly even seven percent VAT may be added to your bill. For those interested in learning Thai cookery, short courses designed for visitors are held in Bangkok Chiang Mai and dozens of other tourist centers around the country.
Where to Eat
A lot of tourists eschew the huge range of Thai places to eat,
despite their obvious attractions and opt instead for the much “safer”
restaurants in guesthouses and hotels. Almost all tourist accommodation has a
kitchen and while some are excellent, the vast majority serve up bland
imitations of Western fare alongside equally pale versions of common Thai dishes.
Having said that, it can be a relief to get your teeth into a processed-cheese
sandwich after five days’ trekking in the jungle and guesthouses do serve
comfortingly familiar Western breakfasts. Throughout the country most
inexpensive Thai restaurants and cafes specialize in one general food type or
preparation method, charging around B40-50 a dish – a “noodle shop”, for example,
will do fried noodles and/or noodle soups, plus maybe a basic fried rice, but
they won’t have curries or meat or fish dishes. Similarly, a restaurant displaying
whole roast chickens and ducks in its window will offer these sliced, usually with
chilies and sauces and served over rice, but their menu probably won’t extend
to noodles or fish, while in “curry shops” your options are limited to the vats
of curry stewing away in the hot cabinet. To get a wider array of low-cost food, it’s sometimes best to head for the local night market (talaat yen), a term for the gatherings of open-air nighttime kitchens found in every town. Sometimes operating from 6pm to 6am, they are typically to be found on permanent patches close to the fruit and vegetable market or the bus station and as often as not they’re the best and most entertaining places to eat, not to mention the least expensive – after a lip-smacking feast of savory dishes, a fruit drink and a dessert you’ll come away no more than B150 poorer. A typical night market has maybe thirty-odd “specialist” pushcart kitchens (rot khen) jumbled together, each fronted by several sets of tables and stools. Noodle and fried-rice vendors always feature prominently, as do sweet stalls, heaped high with sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves or thick with bags of tiny sweetcorn pancakes hot from the griddle – and no night market is complete without its fruit-drink stall, offering banana shakes and freshly squeezed orange, lemon and tomato juices. In the best setups you’ll find a lot more besides: Curries, barbecued sweetcorn, satay sticks of pork and chicken, deep-fried insects, fresh pineapple, watermelon and mango and – if the town’s by a river or near the sea – heaps of fresh fish. Having decide what you want, you order from the cook (or the cook’s dogsbody) and sit down at the nearest table; there is no territorialism about night markets, so it’s normal to eat several dishes from separate stalls and rely on the nearest cook to sort out the bill.
Some large markets, particularly in Bangkok, have separate food court areas where you buy coupons first and select food and drink to their value at the stalls of your choice. This is also usually the modus operandi in the food courts found in department stores and shopping centers across the country. For a more relaxing ambience, Bangkok and the larger towns have a range of upmarket restaurants, some specializing in “royal” Thai cuisine, which is differentiated mainly by the quality of the ingredients, the complexity of preparation and the way the food is presented. Great care is taken over how individual dishes look: They are served in small portions and decorated with carved fruit and vegetables in a way that used to be the prerogative of royal cooks, but has now filtered down to the common folk The cost of such delights is not prohibitive, either – a meal in one of these places is unlikely to cost more than B500 per person.
How to Eat
Thai food is eaten with a fork (left hand) and a spoon (right hand);
there is no need for a knife as food is served in bite-sized chunks, which are
forked onto the spoon and fed into the mouth. Cutlery is often delivered to the
table wrapped in a perplexingly tiny pink napkin: Thais use this, not for their
lap, but to give their fork, spoon and plate an extra wipe-down before they
eat. Steamed rice (khao) is served
with most meals and indeed the most commonly heard phrase for “to eat” is kin khao (literally, “eat rice”).
Chopsticks are provided only for noodle dishes and Northeastern sticky rice are
always eaten with the fingers of your right hand. Never eat with the fingers of
your left hand, which is used for washing after going to the toilet.
So that complementary taste combinations can be enjoyed, the
dishes in a Thai meal are served all at once, even the soup and shared communally.
The more people, the more taste and texture sensations: If there are only two
of you, it’s normal to order three dishes, plus your own individual plates of
steamed rice, while three diners would order four dishes, and so on. Only put a
serving of one dish on your rice plate each time and the only one or two spoonfuls.
Bland food is anathema to Thais and restaurant tables everywhere come decked
out with condiment sets featuring the four basic flavors (salty, sour, sweet
and spicy): Usually fish sauce with chopped chilies; vinegar with chopped
chilies; sugar and dried chilies – and often extra bowls of ground peanuts and
a bottle of chili ketchup as well. Similarly, many individual Thai dishes are
served with their own specific, usually spicy, condiment dip (nam Jim). If you do bite into a chili, the
way to combat the searing heat is to take a mouthful of plain rice and/or beer:
Swigging water just exacerbates the sensation.
What to Eat
Five fundamental tastes are identified in Thai cuisine – spiciness,
sourness, bitterness, saltiness and sweetness – and diners aim to share a
variety of dishes that impart a balance of these flavors, along with complementary
textures. Lemon Grass, basil, coriander, galangal, chili, garlic, lime juice,
coconut milk and fermented fish sauce are just some of the distinctive
components that bring these tastes to life, A detailed food and drink glossary
cane be found at the end of “Contexts”.
Curries & Soups
Thai curries (kaeng)
have a variety of curry pastes as their foundation: Elaborate blends of herbs,
spices, garlic, shallots and chili peppers ground together with pestle and
mortar. The use of some of these spices, as well as coconut cream, was imported
from India long ago; curries that don’t use coconut cream are naturally less
sweet and thinner, with the consistency of soups. While some curries, such as kaeng karii (mild and yellow) and kaeng matsaman (“Muslim curry”, with
potatoes, peanuts and usually beef), still show their roots, others have been
adapted into quintessentially Thai dishes, notably kaeng khiaw wan (sweet and green), kaeng phet (red and hot) and kaeng
phanaeng (thick and savory, with peanuts). Kaeng sam generally contains fish and takes its distinctive
sourness from the addition of tamarind or, in the northeast, okra leaves.
Traditionally eaten during the cool season,
kaeng liang uses up bland vegetables, but is made aromatic with hot peppercorns.
Eaten simultaneously with other dishes, not as a starter, Thai
soup often have the tang of Lemon Grass, Kaffir Lime leaves and Galangal and
are sometimes made extremely spicy with chilies. Two favorites are tom kha kai, a creamy chicken soup; and tom yam kung, a hot and sour prawn soup
without coconut milk. Khao tom, a starchy
rice soup that’s generally eaten for breakfast, meets the approval of few
Westerners, except as a traditional hangover cure.
Salads
One of the lesser-known delights of Thai cuisine is the yam or salad, which imparts most of the
fundamental flavors in an unusual and refreshing harmony. Yam come in many permutations – with noodles, meat, seafood or
vegetables – but at the heart of every variety is a liberal squirt of lime
juice and a fiery sprinkling of chilies. Salads to look out for include yam som oh (pomelo), yam hua plee (banana flowers) and yam plaa duk foo (fluffy deep-fried
catfish).
