Food and travel writing by Zora O&#8217;Neill

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Thailand, Digested: Top 5 Delights, Part 4

by zora on February 4, 2010

I’m usually a sweet breakfast person. (A wise friend once said: “For breakfast and dessert, you’re totally allowed to stick with your own culture.” This was after she’d had to endure too many nasty Japanese “desserts,” I think.)

But Thailand changed all that. When the food is this amazingly good, why pussy-foot around just because it’s before noon? Bring on the noodles! (It helps that you can get crazy-sweet iced coffee and tea first thing in the a.m., though.)

Which brings us to the next tasty item…

4) Goose. In a culture where there’s not much roasting going on, I was a little leery of going to a Chinese restaurant that served nothing but goose. I could only think of fat and flabby skin. But how can you argue with the man at the Atlanta Hotel who describes it in swooning tones? And who makes the front-desk girl call the restaurant, ask if they still have goose (at 11am–apparently they usually run out before noon), and write down the directions for a cab driver?

So we go. The cabbie gets frustrated by traffic and lets us out early. We show our piece of paper to various people on the sidewalk. They squint, then their eyes light up with delight. Yes! That goose place! They point enthusiastically down the street. One man even shadows us for a couple of blocks, pointing straight ahead every time we pause and look doubtful.

There are still two geese hanging from hooks when we get there. (Yes, we even have to show the piece of paper to the woman at the restaurant–Are you this? we gesture.) One is chopped up for us, served with its poaching liquid, all star anise-y, and a killer garlic relish. Rice on the side. Cold tea to wash it down. We are content. It is the best breakfast ever.

As a bonus, on the way back down the street, we pass everyone we’d asked for directions. Did you find it? they gesture. Yes! we gesture back. Two thumbs up! Thank you kindly! They smile.

**For more pics, see my Flickr set.***

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Thailand, Digested: Top 5 Delights, Part 3

by zora on February 3, 2010

What else did I eat in Thailand? Well…there was a larger category of:

3) Things that looked like other things. Early in our Bangkok visit, we found a little food court setup–a bunch of carts around a huge collection of plastic tables, all set in what looked like a converted parking lot. We foolishly thought, What luck! We’ve wound up near some exceptional street food!

That was before we understood that there was a food court like this, oh, every other block?

But one thing they had at this market that I didn’t see anywhere else in quite the same form was…

…tacos?

No–they were sweet. I had such cognitive dissonance while eating it that I couldn’t figure out what was in it. (This is what I imagine the entire meal at El Bulli is like?) But generous food expert and fellow Lonely Planet writer Austin Bush, who happens to live right around the corner from this particular food court and maintains the excellent Bangkok food map, was able to tell me they’re khanom beuang, “made from a bean-based batter and filled with sweetened egg yolks and dried fruit.” Ah-ha. (Also, he says there is a savory version, with shrimp in. They probably look like waffles or something… Which reminds me, the waffles in Thailand are delicious too!)

Another confusing thing we ate, though not nearly so mind-bending, were these poffertjes.

Oh, no–wait. Poffertjes are Dutch mini-pancakes. These were made in the exact same cast-iron trays, but distinctly non-European–the batter was made with coconut milk, and there were scallions sprinkled on top. (And of course no butter on top–I actually heard someone laugh at the idea of cooking with butter while I was in Thailand.)
Certainly the first time I’ve encountered scallions in a sweet context. These were in Chiang Mai, in a totally fabulous market we just happened to walk by–as we were getting very used to doing by that time, and it was only Day 3.

**For more pics, see my Flickr set.***

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Thailand, Digested: Top 5 Delights, Part 2

by zora on February 2, 2010

Continuing my swooning praise of Thai food culture…

2) “Orange” juice. How can I convey the insane pleasure that comes from slurping up a straw-ful of what you think will be just plain old orange juice…only to discover it is the sweetest, tangiest, most intense tangerine nectar you’ve ever drunk? It was tangerine season–the streets were filled with the things. I’m crying a little just thinking about it. I wish I had drunk more.

And I know it’s bad form to dwell on just how cheap things are when you travel, but…it was only 30 cents. Again, I’m crying.

And I’m sorry I don’t have a photo. It looked just like orange juice. Here’s me with some giant fake fish balls instead. They’re orange too.

**For more pics, see my Flickr set.***

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Thailand, Digested: Top 5 Delights, Part 1

by zora on February 1, 2010

OK, before we begin, I just want to make something very clear–something that other people failed to do for me before I visited Thailand. (To be fair, Cristina did come closest to warning me, in the way her eyes gleamed when she talked about the place.)

Sure, I read that the Thais have a very strong food culture. Yes, I knew they were into street food. Yes, I was sure Thai food in Thailand would be very different from what we get in restaurants here. But this did not even begin to scratch the surface of the truth:

The Thais are complete maniacs about food!

Really. Slavering maniacs. In the best possible way. I have never been anywhere where people are so food obsessed. I’ve been to France. I’ve been to Italy. I’ve been to Aleppo, where everything is delicious and people talk about food all the time.

But none of this was anything like Thailand. People are eating 24 hours a day. You cannot walk a block in Bangkok without passing some stall selling food. And not just, like, hot dogs. This is food that involves a dozen ingredients, and it’s made to order. Food that is deep-fried on the spot. Food that is simmered to perfection. Food that is savory. Food that is sweet. Food that is mind-blowingly both.

I left Thailand more than two weeks ago, and I still quite can’t believe all that I saw and ate, and we barely scratched the surface. So, to bring some arbitrary order to the buzzed incoherence, I put together a short list of the best things we ate. And because I got too enthusiastic while typing, I broke each item into a separate post. So:

1) Cockles and mussels. This was the night the true bizarreness of Thai food culture finally sank in. We walked all day through Chinatown, which, because it was Sunday, happened to be mostly closed. We had some dumplings and some noodles with spicy beef and also some meat on a stick, and some odd little deep-fried puffs. Like I said, most everything was closed.

Late in the afternoon, we finally got over to a dedicated market zone, but everyone was closing up shop. I got a charger for my phone for $2, so it wasn’t a complete loss. We figured we’d wander back to the nearest metro stop and skip out of this dead neighborhood. The area was also oddly dirty. (This is another thing no one told me about Thailand: the Thais are total clean freaks. Not a shred of lettuce on the ground in a market, for instance.)

And that was when we turned onto Thanon Yaowarat.

While we’d been walking around in the shuttered business-y part of Chinatown, half of Bangkok was setting up the dinner stalls along this street. And the other half of Bangkok had arrived to eat. Imagine the strip in Vegas, but with all the neon in Thai and Chinese characters, and instead of casinos, restaurants selling various parts of pigs. And then add a second layer of sidewalk restaurants.

We wound up on a side street called Soi Texas, where every sort of seafood was available. Which was where we sat by a street cart and ate the clammiest little cockles, with black-bean sauce, and meaty mussels, all shucked by a husband-wife-daughter team who were totally in the zone.

After this, as well as some satay from some other alley, we finally staggered out of Chinatown. We went to a crazy-deluxe movie theater (Barca-lounger seats, with pillows and blankets) at a mall, but not before getting briefly lost on the ground-floor food court. Which was, of course, mobbed (I thought everyone was in Chinatown!) and delicious-looking, even in its upscale-ness. After the movie, we staggered out of the mall and peered over the SkyTrain platform onto the street below. And of course the street was lined with street carts, all of which were thronged with customers. That’s when Peter and I just started laughing out loud.

To be continued….

**For more pics, see my Flickr set.***