Author Archives: Bangkok Glutton

It was shocking to me, but in a pleasant way. Standing outside my hotel in Paris, waiting for someone to decide on where to get a coffee, a woman in an orange dress passed me on the street. In her wake trailed an aroma, something fruity yet floral (maybe Dolce & Gabbana’s “The One”?), almost as tangible as a long scarf floating in the breeze. Coming from Asia where it’s far too hot to mess around with one’s own “aroma”, I was surprised but remembered … oh yes, that’s what French people do with their perfume. They spritz it all over themselves, willy-nilly, and allow themselves to be smelled, even after they’ve passed you by.

After that, I registered every perfume I smelled. A lot of floral-fruity, which was surprising, I thought, for a sophisticated city like Paris. Lots of Eau d’hadrien by Annick Goutal. Some figgy-green Philosykos by Diptyque. A Pamplelune from Guerlain that I recognized, because I’d worn it myself throughout my 20s, as well as a Samsara or two, but only on the right bank. The temptation grew so great to add to the cacophony of perfume-y smells that I succumbed, finally taking a taxi on a rare moment off to the Palais Royal (nowadays pockmarked with empty retail spaces, echoing the complete erasure of the famous fresh market on Rue de Buci).

This is where the Serge Lutens store lurked, unremarkable, in a shaded corner. In front of a clerk who made all of the world’s stereotypes of a snooty Parisian come true, I made the wrong choices (leathery Daim Blond instead of floral De Profundis) and my daughter did the same (Femininite du Bois, but at least, as the first girly wood perfume, it is an historically important scent). It ultimately didn’t matter, since afterwards we, too, were free to add to the symphony of smells that made up Paris.

Not to say that I would ever trail a “perfume scarf” behind me on the streets of Bangkok. After spending decades in Asia, I have become unaccustomed to strong perfumes. I keep my scents (mostly green, fresh, chosen for hot weather) close to my chest, literally. I cannot bear to fight with the other smells that assail the average person on a walk down the road: frying garlic, dust, cooking garbage, water evaporating on hot pavement, an undercurrent of sewage.

I found it strange that in France, a land where people are free to smell so flamboyantly, the smells of their food — garlic, onions — would be found to be so offensive by polite company. Yes, there is that sizzling platter of frog legs or escargot, redolent of garlic and butter, just begging to be despoiled by a torn hunk of baguette in front of you, but if you go home to your significant other, mouth aflame with the aftertaste of maitre’d butter, they are likely to not be overjoyed (although Walmart does sell a garlic-scented spray).

In Thailand, and I suspect in a lot of other parts of Asia, the opposite is true. You may not smell, but your food certainly does. Anyone who has walked past a stir-fry cook making pad kaprow knows this very well. Indeed, Thais think of the smells of food (yes, even shrimp paste) as necessary additions that enhance, rather than detract from, the dish as a whole — much like a French woman with her perfume. Torn lime leaves and bashed lemongrass bulb smells are good for you, ideal for if you have a cold. Floating galangal in a thin coconut broth are refreshing. Chopped coriander leaves and roots mean that love and care have been taken in the preparation of your food. Shrimp paste and fish sauce? Well, that’s just around to make you hungry. Smell is so important that Thais even make candles that are supposed to be lit while making dessert, infusing the final product with a smoky aroma (think Comme des Garcons’ Incense series).

For all of the technique and care taken in the preparation of French food, I feel that the issue of smell has only recently been addressed, with molecular gastronomy-influenced touches like smoking, dry ice vapors, and burning. It’s one of the reasons why I (somewhat biased, yes) think Thai cuisine is often overlooked as something sophisticated. Instead, it is almost always presented as rustic and in need of “Western cooking techniques” in order to advance. I’m not saying there is no need for advancement in cooking techniques; Thai food must evolve just like everything else. I’m just saying that Thais can look to themselves for the inspiration that they need, let their freak flag fly, and trail that aromatic scarf of kapi and nam pla behind them like no one is smelling.

So, I’m going bald. This seems like it should be private information, except that it’s 1. obvious, and 2. if you can’t tell a whole bunch of people you haven’t met in real life, then who can you tell, right? This hair loss, which accelerated after my bout with Covid 19, is obviously a curse from CP Corporation or an irate Thai tourism official, and I have to either find a witch doctor to fight this curse with a bunch of raw eggs, or complain about it on this blog. I have clearly chosen the latter.

Anyway, the “I’m losing my hair oh no” alarm in my brain has ratcheted up from an anxious hum to a full on roar, so if you are here for some info on Thai food, today might not be the day to stop by. I’ve got more important things to discuss. Like, what do you think I should do?

1. Shave my head? Men do it, why can’t women? I can pretend I am bucking gender conformity. However, I recently hit my head very hard while watching my daughter pack for college and now have an enormous bump on my skull. That will go away though, right? Right?
2. Develop a fondness for head scarves and turbans. This means I have to change the entire way I dress currently (ie like a color blind hobo). I might even have to coordinate the scarf to the clothing. That seems difficult.
3. Wear a wig. I really don’t want to do this, because Thailand is hot.
4. Wear a hat. I also don’t really like to do this either, for the same reason as number 3. Also my mom once told me Asians look bad in hats.
5. Leave it alone. I don’t think I can bring myself to do this either.

In any case, I am wary of going out nowadays, because of the fact of said hair loss, and the fear of it being seen by anyone who is over the height of 4’9 (this is almost everyone). So when I do go out, I need it to really count. And what is more of a slam dunk, food wise, than the section of Bantadthong Road near Sam Yan market? (That said, we really need to find a new name for this neighborhood, like how people tried to rename Hell’s Kitchen in New York City as “Clinton”. Thaiton?)

On my second foray into this food paradise, I had grand visions of trying everything I had missed out on before: fish porridge, the aharn tham sung (made to order) shophouse selling great-looking stir-fries, the Chinese-style ice cream parfaits, even the black sesame dumplings in hot ginger broth at Ginger Soup. What we ended up doing: eating at Elvis Suki again. Still good!

But there was a reason why we went back. I mean, besides the seabass and the scallops. And it was because the line at Jeh Oh was a few people shorter than it normally was. In case you forgot, this is what the line normally looks like:

But this time, the line only extended to the red hanging lantern. That gave us hope. So we marched to the front of the line (or, rather, crept along obsequiously with our heads down so that no one would think we were trying to cut in front of them in line), searched for someone who looked like they knew what was happening (a man in a red sports shirt) and asked them how to get into the restaurant, after which he promptly asked us how many were in our party and then pressed a piece of paper with a number scrawled onto it in pen into my palm.

I asked how long it would likely take before our number would be called. “One hour,” he said.

So that is how we got to Elvis Suki. Because it is just around the corner from Jeh Oh, and we were likely to finish our little pre-dinner snack (if a whole seabass and platter of scallops can be considered a snack) before our hour was up. And it was! We got back exactly 50 minutes later, I scrambled up to the sports shirt guy to see what number we were up to, and it was a mere 8 numbers away. Even better, an ice cream cart had smartly pulled up right in front, so we had the option of enjoying Thai-style scoops while waiting outside. In the end, we waited maybe 10 minutes, tops. And when the man with the microphone attached to his face called out our number, it was exhilarating.

Now, I have been to Jeh Oh before, back in the time when Suan Luang Market still existed, and before the idea of serving a vat of tom yum mama was even a twinkle in Jeh Oh’s eye. This was back when Jeh Oh was most known for her duck porridge, which we ordered with a whole deep-fried fish and some stir-fried greens. We had a nice time with well-made food, and the crowd was respectable but quiet.

Today, Jeh Oh is packed with iPhone-wielding diners like Bungalow 8 was with cocaine-fuelled investment bankers in early-aughts New York. The feel among everyone is celebratory and self-congratulatory, mostly for having braved an hour-long wait on the sidewalk in the afternoon heat. The staff, for their part, are brisk and efficient. They do not sell beer (unlike in the old days, when you could get a beer woon, or beer slushy), but you can bring in your own. The duck is still good, served in a deep mahogany broth.

There are still other good things on the menu that are perfect for pairing with rice porridge, like a nice yum of cashews, a decent fluffy Thai omelet, ably stir-fried morning glory with red chilies, and squid stir-fried with salted egg yolk, a particular favorite of mine.

But who am I kidding? Obviously no one is ordering rice porridge here anymore. The star of the show, on every table in the shophouse, is Jeh Oh’s “tom yum” with two packages of Mama noodles, topped with a variety of items ranging from kebab-shaped pork meatballs to fresh crab legs. These bowls, most of which are large saucepan-sized, are then sent out to the tables with a couple of eggs cracked on top at the last minute, cooking in the hot broth as they are brought to diners.

I am a bit of a Mama noodle connoisseur. It’s almost always one of the first meals I have after I return from a long trip abroad. We always have several packets in the house for emergencies (ie I am too lazy to even order food). My husband favors moo sap (minced pork) flavor, while I think the shrimp tom yum flavor is the best flavor ever for any instant noodle. As Thais, we both prefer Mama brand noodles.

So I think I can be trusted when I say that there’s not a little tom yum seasoning in Jeh Oh’s broth. There may be a real tom yum base in there (it’s not unheard of for a rice porridge restaurant to have tom yum soup too), but it’s definitely zhooshed up with some MSG-laced magic courtesy of those little Mama packets. And that’s when I realized why Jeh Oh is so line-clamberingly popular: it’s like the tom yum Mama that you get at home, with some deluxe stuff on top. The “tart, spicy” flavor that bloggers rave about? That’s what can be found on your local 7-11 shelf. Thank you, Thai President Foods Plc!

Not that I’m complaining. I ate that whole thing up, almost singlehandedly. Gotta make my time outside of the house count, after all. But next time, I’ll remember that nothing is stopping me and my bald head from ripping open two packets of tom yum-flavored Mama noodles on my own, throwing in some shrimp and minced pork, cracking a couple of eggs on the whole caboodle, and calling it a day in the comfort and privacy of my own home.

After a rainy day, a stroll down the Bangkok sidewalk is less of a walk in the park and more of a studied advance, Indiana Jones-style, into an ancient temple guarding a magical figurine in the depths of a South American jungle. Any false step, and your fate will be sealed, but it won’t be a poisonous arrow through the eye or an enormous boulder ready to crush you. To some, this fate may possibly be even worse: a sudden, warm explosion of water that splashes up your shin, wetting your pant leg and getting between your toes. Yes, I’m talking about soi juice, and it seems to be a particularly Bangkok phenomenon, but if any other city can also lay claim to dirty body temp water lurking like a ticking time bomb underneath random loose sidewalk concrete tiles, please let me know.

But even the threat of a soi juice soaking isn’t enough to keep me away from Bantadthong Road in the Sam Yan neighborhood, my new favorite area for street food explorations. I passed by once while in a taxi and was immediately transfixed by the bounty of neon sign-fronted food outlets, many open-air, with a few old-school aharn tham sung (made-to-order) shophouses scattered throughout. From the back of a speeding taxi, it looked like 9th Avenue in New York, or a tantalizingly welcoming neighborhood that you pass through and can’t find again in a recurring anxiety dream (is this just me?) I made a pledge to myself to return one day.

It turns out, my friend Nong (@lovenongdesigns) made a similar pledge while zipping through the area in her own taxi one evening. So we both, with my sister Chissa and my friend Karen in tow, returned to the Sam Yan area one night with the express intent of exploring this area, newly sprouted from the ruins of the former Suan Luang market. I remember complaining loudly about Chulalongkorn University’s plans for this area after razing the former street food strip and displacing my beloved nam kang sai (Thai shaved ice) vendor to Saphan Lueang. When I returned after the razing, what remained was a sterile, questionably grammatically named shopping mall set next to a mostly-empty park and a collection of twee Chinese-style shophouses that would not have looked out of place in Epcot Center. Out of the former strip, only Nai Peng (now renamed Jay Fon), remained.

Now I am back to eat my words, literally. I mean, Suan Luang Square (the development that displaced the immediate vicinity of the former market) is not that interesting to me, exploration-wise, but the entire area around it is top-notch, ripe for a good long wander on an empty stomach. The shophouses have become lived in, even with their new-ish slicks of paint, and trees that look like they belong, not like confused out-of-town tourists, now line the alleyways that once housed car repair shops. Prime exploration fodder seemed to me to be the stretch of Bantadthong Road from Chula Soi 10 to the Centenary Park.

In fact, the only area that made me want to run away has the exact opposite effect on most people: the sidewalk in front of Jeh Oh, of the famous Mama noodle seafood bowl. This was the queue when we arrived at 5:30:

Needless to say, a quick bite there wasn’t happening. But a very patient and friendly group of Thai diners on the sidewalk who had yet to tuck into their seafood noodles did allow us to snap this photo, showing what these dozens of people were lining up in the street for:

But even without the brag-factor of getting to dine at the area’s most buzzy shophouse, we had options galore, and that included a clutch of secondary outlets for street food vendors that have begun living the dream and are expanding. One such outlet is Elvis Suki, a former favorite that I hadn’t been to for years after a disappointing visit to the original Yotse vendor with @tonedeafinbangkok.

Now you can ignore every bad thing that I said about this place before because Elvis Suki is awesome, and their delicious scallops — and more importantly, the baked seabass in banana leaves — are back to their former glory (eating my words, part 2). Like a handsome ex-boyfriend that you haven’t seen in a good long while, I’d forgotten about the bewitching mash of lemongrass, lime leaves, coriander and brown bean sauce that coated the skin, permeating the fish’s succulent white flesh. So one good thing about a second outlet for this vendor is that you can be sure that they will have the seabass in stock, which is a relief after years of hurrying to the original location at 5:30 because they only had 15 fish to sell a night. I was especially happy after hearing Karen say that she could eat this fish every day for the rest of her life.

As delicious as it was, we tried as best as we could to limit our food so that we would be able to sample the other eateries that beckoned like sirens in the surf. So our next stop was Banthat Tong Roast Duck, a spot on Chula Soi 12 that lured us in with their vividly yellow shopfront and lingering aroma of grilling duck, which can be ordered in place of kai yang (grilled chicken) at this Isaan-style restaurant.

For this diner, at least, the duck was light on the meat but big on the bones, a winged version of present-day Kim Kardashian. Karen said eating a piece felt like flossing her teeth with duck bones. The som tum polamai (fruit som tum), however, was great, even if it made us cry.

By this point in the evening, we were well and truly fatigued, even though we had only eaten a couple of meals and walked a few blocks taking photos of other people’s food. In line for dessert at Ginger Soup, we decided to just call it a night. However, we do have a wish list for our next night of exploration, and it might include these places:

Until then, I will have memories of the best thing Karen has had this trip, Elvis Suki’s seabass, juicy and sweet, pungent and herbal. With that in mind, we can consider this post a Chapter 1. I personally can’t wait to see how this particular book ends.