We Love Thai Food

Growing up in Hooksett, New Hampshire, I wasn’t exposed to many different types of cuisine until I was an adult.  When I was in college, I remember this one occasion when a few of us were trying to decide where to go to eat.  Someone asked, “are they any Thai places around?”.  I am so glad that I bit my tongue because my first reaction to that question was thinking “I am not putting on a tie to go out to eat”.  Ah, how things have changed for the better...

We have found the food in Thailand to generally be spicy, cheap and delicious.  Our favorites are the soups like tom yum and green curry.  The combination of ginger, lemongrass, coconut milk, and chilis are incredible.  I also love Pad Kee Mao (drunken noodles) and Jesslyn the Pad Thai, which were our go-to Thai dishes in the States.

There are a couple of ways to eat out.  The first is the typical restaurant; go inside, sit down, look at a menu, and place your order from a server.  We stuck to those types of places during our first few days in Thailand as we became more comfortable.  At the other end of the spectrum are the numerous street carts.  These are just push carts that find a little nook in which to set up shop.  Typically an individual cart serves just 1 or 2 things, but there are many different carts selling different types of food, from the grilled meats on a stick like you might expect, to fried rice, noodles, and curries.  They sometimes even have a small table and chairs next to it where you can sit and eat, and often serve your food on a real plate with real silverware.  The cities we’ve been to all have areas designated as night markets, in which a bunch of different carts set up in the same place with plenty of communal seating.  The food is just as good or better than at a restaurant and much less expensive.  We like eating at the night markets.  I can get stir fried pork from one cart, and Jesslyn can get noodle soup and shrimp from another and we can sit together.  It seems that the street carts and night markets are a staple for the locals.  You also get to watch your food being prepared (not always a good thing though).

There is some variety in the Thai food we’ve experienced.  There are different types of soups, noodles, and rice.  There is a lot of seafood, chicken, pork, and beef that are grilled or fried.  There are distinctly northern versus southern dishes.  We have also enjoyed a few breaks from Thai food.  Being in a large city like Bangkok on Thanksgiving allowed us to have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie (the chef was American).  A different night we ate pizza.  However, the price goes up dramatically for western food.  I was surprised to see there is a lot of Indian food here.  One place we ordered Indian food however, it ended up being more like Indian-Thai fusion, which isn’t bad!

Before coming to Thailand, we were warned not to have a drink with ice in it.  We asked around, and restaurants have ice delivered, they don’t make it from tap water.  Even the locals don’t drink the tap water, and therefore wouldn’t drink something with ice made from it either.  We have been enjoying ice in our drinks with no problem.  The other thing we were warned not to do was to eat fresh vegetables that are not peeled (like lettuce or peppers for example) because they are washed with tap water.  I am not sure how (or if) they are washed, but we’ve been eating them without a problem as well.  It took us a few days to get over our food fears.  We now regularly eat at little restaurants or food carts that may appeared a little too sketchy when we first arrived in Thailand.  (change to “Night markets are…”) These are the places where you find the good, cheap food.  We still have our prescription medication for food related problems, but so far, no need to use it.

The strangest food we’ve come across was at the night market in Ayutthaya.  You could get a whole snake head fish on a stick.  It isn’t all that unappealing to me, but after you get past the look of the fish, it is kind of impractical to eat.  There were a lot of chicken feet for sale.  I noticed an American woman eating and asked how they were.  She said there was a strong, funky aftertaste, and didn’t seem to be enjoying them much.  The strangest food item were the insects.  There were several different kinds.  One looked like crickets, but had wings like a fly.  Another was all white and appeared to be some sort of larva.  When ordered, they scoop some into a bowl, mix with some seasoning, then serve it to you in plastic baggy with a spoon.  We saw this early in our Thailand stay, so I wasn’t feeling too adventurous yet, plus I thought there would be more opportunities to try these things.  I have a feeling we will run across some funky stuff again in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

To Jesslyn’s delight, chopsticks are not as prevalent here as I had thought that they would be.  They are often used for eating noodles, but the most widely used utensil is the spoon.  We notice people holding the spoon in their right hand, and a fork in the left.  They would use the fork to stab things or to push food like rice onto the spoon.  Picture a Brit with a fork in the left hand and knife in the right, but replace the knife for a spoon.  Food is already cut into bite sized pieces, so there is no need for a knife.  Only food that is soft might need to be cut, which is done with the spoon.  And since there are many soups here, the spoon is even more valuable.

The condiments you will find on almost all tables in Thailand are: fish sauce (sometimes with chilies), crushed dried red pepper, vinegar (usually with chilies) and sugar.  There is no salt or pepper.  No ketchup.  I find that my food often doesn’t need anything added to it.  I might add the fish sauce and/or vinegar to white rice if I don’t have enough sauce left in my dish.  It is rare, but sometimes I add some red pepper to spice things up a little.  The sugar definitely seems strange, and I haven’t added any to my food yet.  However, we watched a street vendor make our Pad Thai and were shocked by the amount of sugar that was added during cooking.  No wonder it is so good.

And this post wouldn’t be complete with mentioning the beer.  There are three brands of beer found everywhere we’ve been in Thailand: Singha, Leo, and Chang.  They are all roughly the same price, with Singha being slightly more expensive and Chang often slightly cheaper.  They all seem more or less the same to me.  They are very light tasting beer and accompany spicy food well.  A 22 ounce bottle at a store is about $3, and slightly more at a restaurant.  So compared with the price of food, it isn’t all that cheap.  Just like in the States, your bill may be half food and half drinks.  The beer is actually much cheaper in Poland and the Czech Republic.

I know there will be great food in Laos and Vietnam, but we will miss the food in Thailand.  We left the country today, but already have plans to come back!

 - Jake