Author Archives: Bangkok Glutton

Dry suki and sauce at Manop Sukiyaki

I know it’s not very cool of me, but I don’t like to watch Woody Allen films. It always ends up (excuse my French) pissing me off. This is just the stuff on the screen that I’m talking about, not even his personal life. Watching Husbands and Wives was downright excruciating.

Call me shallow, but I just can’t get past the fact — especially with the mid-career Woody Allen stuff — that he got away with casting himself as a romantic lead in most of these movies. Even in the Annie Hall era, this requires more suspension of disbelief than I am capable of exerting. His movies require that you believe this man — who is constantly complaining, who always needs taken care of, who weighs less than me — is capable of drawing beautiful, frequently younger women to his side. Wassup with that? All those dry, pursed-lip onscreen kisses he has forced us to endure all of these years, like watching someone finish off a chicken wing while still trying to keep their lipgloss intact grossgrossgrossgrossGROSS. I mean, are all these women blind? And deaf? Juliette Lewis, what are you doing? Come on Diane Keaton, you got other options, gurl! Julia Roberts … well, ok, it already looks like she’s thinking of throwing herself into the Grand Canal. Just go ahead and do it, honey. Maybe a gondolier will sweep by and rescue you. I’d take my chances.

Of course, I can say this now, before my husband leaves me for a 24-year-old. I know this is the likeliest post-breakup option for him, because he has actually told me, to my face (“I won’t lie. I would go younger.”) Meanwhile, we live in a world where I would be forced to marry an octogenarian with (hopefully for him) impaired hearing because I have no marketable skills of my own. We could watch tennis and talk or not talk about soup all day. Maybe Woody Allen will be available by then and I will be forced to eat my own words. But who am I kidding? Woody Allen could get a 24-year-old if he wanted to, too.

I can’t say I’m the only shallow one around. People use appearance to figure out what food they want to eat, too. It shows in their choices: grilling chicken or fish, smoking on the grill or glowing white on the skewer over charcoal. Fresh chunks of mango piled sloppily over grains of rice glistening with coconut milk. Steaming noodles in broth with fish meatballs or a splash of bright pink fermented tofu sauce. It’s not hard to figure out why you would want to eat this stuff.

Unfortunately, the pleasures of Thai sukiyaki — adapted from the Japanese noodle dish but even more slatternly, sloppier — are not readily apparent. Ordered dry (hang), it’s a mess on the plate, a mixed-up melange of glass noodles, egg, green onion and whatever protein you’ve opted for, pork or chicken, beef or seafood. Even with broth (nam), it’s like Asian ribollita, an indiscriminate stew that suggests instead of shows. Yet the best versions of this dish make you forget that it’s a mess. Like a lot of Thai street food, the secret lies in the sauce.

At Manop Sukiyaki Rod Kraba (622 Soi Charoen Krung 27, 02-332-5516), suki is king, and the sauce (based on fermented tofu, spiked heavily with chilies) is the queen that made it all possible. Sure, there are dishes like guaythiew kua gai (chicken-fried noodles) and roast pork (chewy during rainy season because of the increased humidity), but they assume you are there for the suki. From 6 in the evening on, the back of a truck turns into a kitchen capable of churning out some of the best suki in the Chinatown area. The location is similarly as homely as the dish: an otherwise-abandoned alleyway with the occasional cat or cockroach. But unless you are absolutely sure this dish is the Woody Allen to your Mia, don’t turn back, don’t be deceived. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Today’s text from my friend James:

I lol’ed in a taxi because it is true. There is a certain type of expat in Bangkok, who works hard and is good at his job, but is also unrelentingly miserable, eyes fixed on a future that will inevitably not involve Bangkok. This makes them turn to different outlets into which they can funnel all that energy and desire, and, since many of these expats are also terribly wholesome, those outlets are usually Type A competitive things that involve sports. Like Crossfit.

I know about this, because I was a Lonely Expat in Tokyo. I didn’t want to do the Lonely Tokyo Man ritual, which usually involved pondering life over a cup of coffee and a cigarette at a Jonathan’s on a Friday night. This was also pre-Crossfit, and I could not afford to join a Tokyo gym. So my weekends were spent walking from my place into Shibuya, which would burn up most of my Saturday. It made me feel like part of the city, as disconnected and alone as I was. For those few hours, I was just like everybody else. It was an outlet. It was my Crossfit.

There are different ways to Crossfit. What I mean is, where there’s a will, there’s a way. Just because George RR Martin takes 10 years to finish a book and “Game of Thrones” is nearing the home stretch of its television run doesn’t mean I will soon have to do without Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister — there are umpteen fan theory sites, sites dedicated to comparing “Game of Thrones” with real historical events, sites on which wonderful people create alternate universes in which my second boyfriend Rhaegar Targaryen comes back to rule the Iron Throne. If there is a need for something, that need will eventually be met. Sometimes, all one has to do is to simply be patient.

Much was made of the demise of Sukhumvit Soi 38 (by me?) but in reality, it hasn’t really gone anywhere at all. No, really, even though a few buildings have been leveled and Daniel Thaiger has decamped to greener pastures. There is, and will always be, a need for affordable street food in Bangkok, even on Sukhumvit. Many of the usual suspects are still there, like this mango sticky rice vendor — only in slightly different locations:

You can still have this at Sukhumvit Soi 38

(Photo by Karen Blumberg)

Soi 38 has become less of a collection of street food vendors loosely congregated around the mouth of a soi and more like a Singapore-style hawker center, mostly located in the basement of Sutti Mansion (plus a few holdouts — mainly the OG Soi 38 vendors — who are now clumped further along into the soi). The “food court” looks like this:

Here, located in the sub-soi off of 38 which still hosts the fruit shake, mango sticky rice and pad Thai vendors, you can get: khao soy, Isaan food, Japanese favorites like ramen and curry rice, Chinese specialties, pork noodles, fish porridge, Chinese pork noodles (guay jab), chicken rice and egg noodles. Across from the pad Thai guy, Isaan-style salt-encrusted fish still grill on rotating skewers, pork satay still smoke over an open flame, and a new roti stall has set up shop. The seating is easy to get and it’s relatively cooler than out in the street. It’s also an altogether more manufactured, touristy experience. Beggars can’t be choosers, though, can they, especially when it comes to that mango sticky rice? (Longtime customers advise getting the mangos here and buying the sticky rice across the street at Khun Mae Varee.)

Old guard holdouts still cling to the main road, mostly along the left side of Soi 38. Beyond the other mango sticky rice vendor, there are still the yum (spicy salad), chicken rice, egg noodle, and Thai shaved ice dessert stands, plus pork trotter on rice (khao kha moo), more guay jab, more fish porridge (khao thom pla), fish noodles, and what are still my parents’ favorite Chinese-style egg noodles (bamee) in town. The only glaring omission is the Chinese-style congee (jok) place, which has moved to a sub-soi between sois 38 and 36. My advice: get to Soi 38 before stuff somehow reconfigures again and you are left searching for another Crossfit with which to sate your Sukhumvit street food needs.

Springy fishcakes at Krua Apsorn

Thai people are the ultimate food hipsters. If a place has gotten too much press, has become too popular, or is too convenient, it is automatically devalued in the eyes of the food hipster. That gets you less “food cred” (i.e. the mental points you give yourself for posting a photo of a hard-to-get culinary trophy on social media), therefore rendering it a waste of time. Nothing is more excruciating to the food hipster than posting a photo of an out-of-style dish (say, tuna tartare) from a passe, all-too-accessible eatery (think hotel restaurant). It would be the hipster equivalent of killing yourself, or professing your love for Imagine Dragons or Taylor Swift (unless you are being ironic, like wearing a sweatshirt with a picture of your cat on the front, or actually marrying your cat). (That said, I enjoyed Ryan Adams’ version of “Bad Blood”. I AM NOT ENDORSING TAYLOR SWIFT, signed, hipster).

I am too old and fat to be a hipster, yet — like every other Thai — I otherwise fit into the basic definitions of the “food hipster”. To the Thai food hipster, if more than 10 people have heard of the food place you are raving about, then “everyone already knows about it”. The breath you have used in talking about it has already been wasted, stealing oxygen that would have otherwise been successfully utilized by someone else. What you have just done is useless, and, by extension, immoral. OMG PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT POLO FRIED CHICKEN, a thousand food hipster voices cry out in anguish. MY GRANDMA LIKES THAT PLACE. You don’t even have to be Thai to be a Thai food hipster. After I emailed someone a suggestion to try Jay Fai, the reply was “Isn’t that in the Lonely Planet guide?” (FEEL THE BERN).

I’ll admit it: I regularly eat at Krua Apsorn. The food is reliable, the service is fast, and some of their most popular dishes are my favorite renditions of that dish, anywhere. A case in point is the crabmeat and long bean stir-fry, a dish you will probably find on every table in the restaurant (alongside the cowslip creeper stir-fry, the green curry with homemade fish meatballs, and/or the pillbox-shaped crabmeat omelet):

You’ve probably had this before

Many, many legit Thai food lovers eat at one of the Krua Apsorn branches (on Dinsor Road, or preferably in Dusit) every day. But it’s not cool to say so. It’s like saying to a room of Williamsburg 25-year-olds that “hey, this Missy Elliot person is pretty good.” OK MOM.

It’s like being reliably good, easy to find, and comfortable to sit in (aka air-conditioning) are actually bad things that should be actively avoided. Food hipsters like to flirt with danger. Oh, the fried chicken is hand-foraged from a dumpster out in back? The oil in the wok hasn’t been changed since the vendor’s mother opened her doors in 1956? The restaurant is located on top of a tree in the Kanchanaburi jungle? These are all risks that true food-lovers are willing to take. Take the Ruenton Coffee Shop in the Montien Hotel in Bangkok, which appears to have been last renovated in the spasm of economic hedonism that accompanied 1980s Thailand. The food here is not only excellent, the service is efficient and the portions are BIG. Also, it is deserted.

Not just chicken rice: Ruenton’s yen ta fo

Perhaps the most naff place you could think of as a food hipster is the one that everyone in the world already knows about. Someplace like Blue Elephant, which even has a branch in London, that’s how well-known it is. Does this mean the food is something to turn your nose up at? I was so confident of having a decent meal there that I allowed my friend Susie to comp my lunch, so I can risk looking like I sold my soul for a deluxe multi-course meal of butterfly pea dumplings, warm duck salad, stir-fried stinkbeans in shrimp paste, a green curry, and a side of mango with sticky rice (it’s mango season after all).

Butterfly pea dumplings at Blue Elephant

This is probably the least food hipster-y thing I’ve done in a while (aside from lunch today, which was at Greyhound Cafe, come at me haterz) so I wanted to make sure I got my stomach’s worth.  Maybe next week I’ll be back to slurping beef blood noodles in an alley and risking malaria riverside as I down raw prawns plucked from the Mekong. Or maybe I’ll be eating hotpot for dinner at 5:30 at MK (it’s so healthy, you guys). There’s a whole city of food out there.