Category Archives: Bangkok

by | 01/14/2011 · 7:44 am

Little mysteries

After what seems like a lifetime, I’m back at home, ignoring the wobbling towers of correspondence that have popped up, like furtive mushrooms, all over my house. I’m not ready to deal with Real Life just yet. So let’s procrastinate with a lil’ post before the chore monster intrudes once again!

Hongreeee

(Photo by Marijke Whitcraft)

You know you’re back when you’re at Emporium, minding your own business, and a Hitler-themed music video appears on the monitors, complete with faux-Fuhrer moustaches and synchronized “Sieg Heil” choreography. It’s by a Thai music band named (I’m not making this up) Slur, the song is called “Hitler”, and there’s a disclaimer in the beginning about how they don’t want to “offend anyone” with this video, but, uh, count me (and my ears) offended anyway, which is why I’m not linking to it. What’s next, dressing up as “Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge Trio”? A dance routine in matching Idi Amin costumes? If you’ve done something really really bad and want to punish yourself, then by all means search for it on Youtube. It’s a mystery why people thought this video might be a good idea.

I’ve been busy pondering a lot of little mysteries lately. How can my body stubbornly cling onto its blubbery layer of flesh, regardless of the number of calories ingested? How do you make a lobster bisque using a coffee machine? Why does Winona Ryder go for Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites? Life is blooming with these puzzles, maybe because I’m on a huge Agatha Christie kick and have been reading one mystery after another (yet my Jonathan Safran Foer languishes unread. I go for the real quality stuff, I do).

But today I’m not in the mood to contemplate yet again the mysterious case of Bangkok Glutton and the Disappearing Ankles. I’ve got a new mystery to uncover, literally: What is in those intriguing lotus leaf-wrapped parcels sold streetside on Rama IV?

Lotus leaf-wrapped parcels, so mysterious!

Turns out it’s khao haw bai bua, or “lotus leaf rice” — wrapped in a convenient little package and steamed with gingko nuts, sliced pork, shiitake mushrooms, lotus seeds, Chinese sausage, dried shrimp and salted egg, a substantial hit of starchy flavor. There are two places along Rama IV (roughly across from the entrance to Sukhumvit Soi 22), a shophouse and a stand; the shophouse is the original and called “Khao Haw Bai Bua Lung Chu”.

The rice parcels are 35 baht each, and there are also Chinese-style steamed shrimp dumplings (kanom jeeb), 10 for 30 baht; flat stuffed rice noodles (guay thiew lod), 25 baht; and steamed white Chinese buns (salapao), 7 baht each or 3 for 20 baht. Atmosphere recalls a mix between an old-school Chinese restaurant and a nursing home, so I suggest calling in to take out.

What's inside

Khao Haw Bai Bua Lung Chu

2815 Rama IV Rd., 02-240-1812, 081-242-2533

Open: 8.00-24.00 daily

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, food stalls, pork, rice, Thai-Chinese, Thailand

by | 12/03/2010 · 8:07 am

The Ugly Face of Chauvinism

I have inexplicably agreed to be on a panel at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand to discuss foreigners cooking Thai food. While I am happy to do it, I am also a little apprehensive. This is the grad student who had to give her presentations sitting down in order to keep from passing out or vomiting. This is the friend who hates talking on the phone because that form of communication is too immediate and invasive. This is one of your speakers, guys! Hopefully I have moved beyond panic attacks and am now at peace with being a gibbering idiot.

Another reason I’m worried? Because I am a great big hypocrite.

Let me explain. I have been writing a street food guide for the past year, a project I have been super-quiet about because I don’t want to jinx it (yes, I am that type of person). It’s called “Bangkok’s Top 50 Street Food Stalls” and it will be out early next year (knock on wood. Fingers crossed. Turn around three times).  In it, I detail different types of stalls — yummy duck porridge; buoyant oyster omelettes; exuberant iced coconut milk desserts; extravangantly stuffed flat noodles.

And not a mention of a northern Thai noodle dish, anywhere.

I know what I’ve done. I know there is ample khao soy and kanom jeen nam ngiew to be had on the city’s streets. Believe me, given my issues with northern Thai food I have tried almost all of them. But I feel like 1.) the best ones are branches of Northern Thai institutions, so why not go to the real one, and 2.) there are so many other great stalls out there. Really, though, there is no excuse. I am guilty of culinary chauvinism. I don’t want to believe Bangkokians can make a decent bowl of khao soy, much less approach the personal Freudian nightmare that is nam ngiew.

And, I am sorry to say, this is not my only prejudice. As long as I’m laying it all out there: watching the movie “Invincible”, I was struck by how Mark Wahlberg (who plays an Eagle) had a girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) who was a Giants fan. Uh, WTF?! Because there is no, no, never, ever, never any way I would go within two feet of a Cleveland Browns fan. Sure, some of them may be nice and all, but to date or even marry one? Are you kidding me? (This from the person who still cannot show her face at Bully’s because she almost got into a fist fight with a Cardinals fan two years ago. He was almost 50! I could have taken him).

People tell me about close friends, open-minded in every other way, who turn into Asia’s answers to Glenn Beck when it comes to the issue of foreigners cooking Thai food. It can’t be done: farang lack the upbringing, the tastebud training, the turbo-charged metabolisms, the innate love of the color fuchsia.  We laugh at this, but I’m the same. I have my blind spots too.

So I want to make amends before I go on this panel. Here are the Northern Thai places I go to in Bangkok when I know I won’t be going up North for a while:

People desperate for good Northern Thai noodles in front of Nam Ngiew Pa Suk

 

You know what this is

Nam Ngiew Pa Suk (Soi Phiphat, 300 m from Silom, on the right side)

Not surprisingly, this is the branch of the venerable stall in Chiang Rai. It also serves khao soy (which I find kind of bland) and khao ganjin, or what my friend calls “crazy purple Shan rice”: rice steamed in pork blood and garnished with deep-fried garlic and fresh coriander. But the nam ngiew is almost as thick, rich and meaty as the original, and very popular, unlike many other Bangkok stalls where it’s the nam ngiew that is neglected in favor of the more well-known egg noodle dish.

Maan Mueng (Ramkhamhaeng 112)

This is a good Northern Thai restaurant overall. They do everything well here: super nam prik num (roasted green pepper dip), nice gaeng ho (a sort of “goulash” of leftovers including glass vermicelli noodles and pork), and yes, a good khao soy. The nam ngiew is sort of unusual here — a thick fermented bean base that has a deep undertow of near-fishiness. I love it. A shame it’s so far away.

Maan Mueng's nam ngiew

So there. Two places I go to again and again. And not in the hopes I find something to complain about, either. I would have tried for three, but let’s not push it.

Have a good weekend. Unless you are a Baltimore Ravens fan.

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, Chiang Rai, food, food stalls, noodles, Northern Thailand, restaurant, Thailand

by | 11/26/2010 · 11:03 am

Things to be Thankful For

Yes, I know. “You’re late, beeyotch”, you say. I am indeed a day late, but last night, sitting among friends and a table groaning under the weight of delicious food, I found myself, for once, momentarily forgetting to complain about my sad-Jen-Aniston-dust-bunny-in-a-girdle existence. Instead, I found myself feeling thankful. And I don’t want to let go of that feeling just yet.

So here, in no particular order, are Things to Be Thankful For:

Pumpkin danish from La Creation de Gute in Hong Kong

Pastries. Need I say more? This is the entire reason people still get up for me on the Skytrain (cuz pregnant ladies be needin assistance!)

Geoduck sashimi in Shenzhen

Travels. Going anywhere new gives you (and by you I mean me) the golden opportunity to 1). meet great people, 2). try things you’ve never tried before, like this geoduck sashimi in China, and 3.) blather on about it endlessly in blog posts that make no point. How lucky is that?

Rambutan in Chantaburi

Thai fruit. It’s the best in the world. Really! The range and variety of fruits in this country are dazzling. And they are all delicious, in their own different ways and in their own various seasons.

Thalad Gow in Chinatown

Outdoor markets. Is there a more fascinating place to explore? From France and Hungary to Vietnam and Japan, outdoor markets are my favorite place to go to find out about a place. Someday, I may even work up enough courage to try out this pickled crab stand in front of the Old Market in Chinatown.

Tamarind chili dip with purple long beans in Sukhothai

Chili dips. They are my favorite part of a Thai meal. And they are so criminally underused, especially in Thai restaurants abroad! Tamarind, shrimp paste, crab eggs, lohn (coconut milk-based dips) — krueang jim are the dish that packs in a significant amount of protein and a wide variety of veggies, making it (and a bowl of rice) a complete, nutritionally balanced meal for millions of Thais, every day.

Chicken wings in kajorn blossom broth at Guaythiew Pik Gai Sainampung

How could I go this long without mentioning street food? Thailand, obviously, has some of the best in the world. People may be up in arms about farangs taking to their own mortars and pestles in restaurant kitchens, but Thai food’s real heart comes from the street.

Family. In a fit of earnestness (which will die at the end of this sentence), I am actually posting a real family picture and not a shot of the Kardashians. Of course, I am not in it.

Other things for which to be thankful: great wines (I would include a picture, but let’s face it, when I start being thankful for wine is the exact moment when I start being incapable of taking a picture); good friends; air-conditioning; the Steelers (haterz gonna hate!); people who are bored enough to occasionally read this blog (thanks, really); and the fact that my infant son is so readily diverted by a tissue.

Oh, and this:

Nam ngiew

I’m off to Chiang Rai next week for even more. Enjoy the start of your holiday season!

6 Comments

Filed under Asia, Bangkok, Chantaburi, chicken, Chinatown, dessert, food, food stalls, Hong Kong, markets, noodles, Northern Thailand, restaurant, Thailand