Author Archives: Bangkok Glutton

Grilled snails on the street at Sukhumvit 38

Unless something really, really sucks, we usually want things to stay the same. That’s why progress, when it comes, always throws us for a loop. So with the news that the street food area at the entrance to Sukhumvit Soi 38 will soon be replaced by a spanking new development, I find myself as perplexed as the next old person with a lawn, and as much in denial:

1. How could this happen when it is so popular, with both tourists and locals?

2. ANOTHER property development? How could they be so short-sighted?

And then, 3. How could they do this to me?

Because, as much as other street food places have (and soon will) find themselves homeless in the path of the powerful god of gentrification (see: Bamee Rungrueang on Sukhumvit 26; Tang Meng Noodle near Sukhumvit 49), this is the first one to really hit home. Where else will the mango sticky rice ladies greet me, where I can bump into my parents on the way to the egg noodle vendor, where the Thai dessert stall ladies can completely ignore me? Where else will I be able to find a complete street food ecosystem — organically grown, spontaneously grouped, and dare I say “authentic” — a mere 5-minute motorcycle taxi ride away?

Thai street food has become a home for me in a lot of different ways. It’s given me plenty of fodder to write about; it’s nourished me with food that has been occasionally mind-blowing; it’s taught me a lot about how Thais live and interact with each other. It’s also provided me with a sort of community where I feel welcomed and included — Sukhumvit 38 was a part of that. And, yes, the fiery woks, sweating, beanie-clad cooks, plastic chairs and tables wreathed in steam from a just-cooked bowl of noodles, sidewalks grimed in picturesque squalor, all of this served as a reminder that I was indeed in Thailand, and that it felt like nowhere else on earth. For me, Thailand is all about this sense of spontaneity, of possibility and anything waiting for you just around the corner — even maybe the best meal you’ve had yet.

But Thailand is changing, and street food with it. Some of Sukhumvit 38’s vendors will sink into retirement, and some will find new homes, probably in a food court at one of the city’s inexhaustible supply of new malls. That would be a shame, because as nice as it is to sit in air-conditioning for a while, the food somehow seems nowhere near as good. It’s funny, really: having said repeatedly that “it’s all about the food”, I find myself realizing that the secret ingredient in a lot of the stuff I sample is sitting streetside or in the shophouse, hobbled by inconveniences, surrounded by strangers. Sitting with everything laid out for me on a tray, utensils helpfully provided, makes the food seem picayune in comparison, something to fill my stomach until I have something better to do. The food is no longer the destination. To think that this is probably the future for Thai street food makes me want to stick my head in a vat of McDonald’s french fries.

Yet Bangkok is still full of streets just like mine, where a curry rice lady shares space with a noodle guy just down the road from my house. I only need to walk a few steps to get an old-fashioned cup of Thai iced coffee from a woman who has been there for the last 50 years, and the ice cream guy and Isaan sausage guy go past my house in the afternoons. Only a couple of months ago, I opened the door to find that a made-to-order vendor had set up shop right next to me. Street food as I know it is still around. I’m going to make sure to try the made-to-order guy the next time I see him.

Banana leaf curry at Raja Restaurant in Kuala Lumpur

Throughout the years on this blog, I have pretty much demonstrated a Taliban-like commitment to eating Thai food the way Thai people eat it. It seemed like a no-brainer to me because a fork and spoon are so obviously the best eating utensils ever created. Why on earth would you struggle with a fork or, god forbid, a pair of chopsticks, when presented with a curry and a plate of jasmine rice? Because, no duh, the best way to eat something is the way locals have been doing it for years, and that this was obviously a rule that would apply to every cuisine, no matter what.

Then I went to Vietnam, and discovered that I have been eating the Vietnamese fried crepe — banh xeo, supposedly named after the sound the batter makes when dropped into a sizzling pan — wrong for years. It turns out the brittle, shell-like crepe is not the vehicle for the herbs: it’s the herbs that are meant to enclose the crepe, the leaves rolled up like an egg roll and dotted inside with bits of crepe crunch like croutons before they are dipped in a sweet-tart sauce and brought to the mouth.

Banh xeo, or stuffed Vietnamese crepe

Somehow, in all my years of patronizing Vietnamese restaurants all over the globe, no one thought to tell me that Vietnamese people eat their crepes differently than I was eating my crepe. They would just set the plate on my table and walk away, possibly resisting the urge to tell me, just like I resist/don’t resist the urge to tell other people, “You are doing it all wrong”. They simply seemed happy that I was there. This is because Vietnamese waiters are better people than me.

I was resolved to learn from my mistakes and to eat things properly from then on. But what happens when you don’t want to do it, even when presented with incontrovertible evidence that you’re DOIN IT ALL RONG? When our friend May took us to a banana curry leaf place called Raja Restaurant on a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, I was forced to face this very question.

Because, let me tell you, eating gloppy food with bare hands is definitely my gastro-Achilles heel. Meaning, THERE IS NO WAY THAT IS HAPPENING. I mean, I’m Northern Thai and I can barely eat sticky rice with my fingers. The thought of all that unseen hand guck coating those grains of rice just makes me want to scrape my tongue with a chainsaw. So apologies, banana leaf curry originators. To the first people who thought of tearing a leaf off of a tree, tipping delicious curries from pails onto those leaves with a hefty mound of rice and a dollop of pickles and then having at it with their gross-ass bare hands, I say: hell naw. I say, I’m sorry. I say, it’s great you are eco-friendly and all, but thank God for the fork and spoon. Cuz when I see people doing like they’re supposed to and eating banana leaf curry with their hands, the grains of wet rice sticking to their fingers as they maneuver their way through their meal, it makes me think of this:

Stuff I would rather do than eat wet curry rice with my hands

1. Get a painful charlie horse in the middle of a great dream
2. Wear a repurposed garbage bag for two weeks
3. Go to a Michael Buble concert
4. Wash my face with sand
5. Drink creme de menthe instead of water for a month
6. Stub my toe really hard on something
7. Go without sleep for three days
8. Go camping (same as #7)
9. Watch a “Glee” marathon from start to finish
10. Eat a raw hotdog from current-day Leonardo DiCaprio’s crotch

In conclusion, I have to say thank everything worth thanking that the folks at Raja Restaurant are not judgmental asses like yours truly and happy to give a fork and spoon to anyone who finds themselves manually challenged. That’s pretty great of them. Because their food is really wonderful, and it would be a shame to miss out on that incredible curry due to my dumb neuroses. As for eating Thai food like Thai people … well, who am I to say how people eat? It’s nobody’s business but yours.

It’s no secret that these past few days have been the hottest that Thailand has seen for decades. I can barely drag myself back home before I want to plop myself onto my couch and go to sleep. That is, after I carefully dry out the sweat-drenched handkerchief I have taken to carrying around with me for when I inevitably start melting on the Skytrain platform. I have bought an assortment of handkerchiefs for just this very purpose, in different colors to suit my varying moods. My transformation into elderly Japanese man is nearly complete.

Many people say that global warming is to blame for hot spells like these. Yet, as with everything else — people who congratulate themselves for having not read A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, like illiteracy is a badge of honor — there are a handful of naysayers who seek to buck the conventional wisdom. These are the people who insist that what we are experiencing on a global scale is a normal blip in the sequence of things, and we are not slowly broiling ourselves to death. English-speakers liken them to ostriches with their heads in the sand. Thais have a term for them too: they are frogs in coconuts.

The term is old-fashioned, but it still applies. The coconuts may have changed, but they are still there, air-conditioned, sprawling, outfitted with many Starbucks and Burger Kings for your particular convenience. They are our shelters from the cruel concrete world. They also, somehow, harbor decent “street food” dishes, even though you have not trawled through winding alleyways or braved potential carbon monoxide poisoning for them. When it’s this hot outside, one need not suffer so much for a good bowl of noodles (as long as you’re willing to pay for it). Here are three places where the coconut yields some good-enough flesh.

1. Bamee Sawang

Egg noodles with wontons and barbecued pork at Bamee Sawang at Emporium

This outpost of the famous streetside bamee vendor on Rama IV Road is probably the most popular noodle place located in Emporium’s newishly-refurbished Food Hall (Sukhumvit 24, BTS Phrom Phong). It’s almost the same thing, but without the fluorescent green lighting or the elderly Thai man who insists on reminding you (over and over again) that alcohol is not allowed on the premises.

2. Peninsula Plaza

Peninsula’s beef boat noodles

Despite the relentlessly “fancy” surroundings — like the sitting room of your favorite stuffed doll-collecting widowed aunt — Peninsula Plaza (153 Rajadamri Road, BTS Rajadamri) has long served some of the most popular bowls of “boat noodles” in the city. Incongruously called “Provence”, the specialties here are actually upscale versions of Thai street food, like Thai-Chinese-style porpia sod (“spring rolls” wrapped in white flour dough and slathered in a sweet sauce) and deep-fried wontons. The boat noodles — so called because they were first served from the boats that plied Bangkok’s canals in the 1940s and seasoned with a dash of pork or beef blood mixed with salt — are by far the most famous, considered an oasis of flavor in an otherwise timid menu.

3. Nuer Koo

Wagyu beef noodles in broth at Nuer Koo

Even I was skeptical about this place, since there is another fancy beef noodle place that my family is fanatically loyal to. But if I don’t feel like trekking to this other place, and want to take the Skytrain with my collection of multi-colored handkerchiefs, then Nuer Koo at Paragon (4th floor, Rama I Road, BTS Siam) is my most likely destination. They too offer wagyu and “Japanese kobe” beef noodles, as well as kurobuta pork for non-beef eaters. Not surprisingly, this kind of imported beef noodle bowl costs a pretty penny, but then again, no one said the luxuries of the coconut would be free.