Category Archives: food stalls

by | 11/03/2011 · 2:29 pm

Something Special

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I — like many of my fellow Bangkokians — am feeling a bit down. The kind of down that doesn’t bear talking about.

So why am I writing a blog post? To tell you the truth, I don’t really want to write a blog post. For something that is better done, funnier and far more likable, you should deffo check out writer/actress Mindy Kaling’s blog: http://theconcernsofmindykaling.com/, because we all need a little bit of inspiration now and then, and where better than from the author of “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” (the answer is yes).

Do you want your inspiration to come from somewhere closer to home? I am nothing if not obliging. Let me do you a favor and direct you to another something special, http://mysousvidelife.wordpress.com/. Is she not adorabun? Someone get this woman a cooking show, stat! Another thing: despite being a “flood refugee”, she is still decorating Halloween cupcakes and figuring out fun things to do with all those shmackets of Ma-Ma noodles lurking in all our kitchen cabinets (no need to front, you know you have them too).

Are you still here? Geez. Well, if you’re not up for something fun and uplifting, I’m your girl. As one would naturally expect, the floods are taking their toll everywhere, including on the sidewalk. Many, many, many of my fave vendors are MIA: the buay loy guy on Mahachai Road; the khao kluk gapi (rice with shrimp paste) vendor in front of Baan Phra Arthit; the Hainanese chicken rice people in front of Great Shanghai; the chicken and bitter melon noodles guy behind Emporium; the Sukhothai noodle guy (why didn’t he call to tell me?) next to Klong Saen Saep; and the guay jab people across from Benjakiti Park. There are more, many more whose absences I have yet to discover and mourn.

 

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These people spent their working lives making us happy; now they are gone, with nothing to mark their absence except maybe a shuttered storefront or, more disconcertingly, nothing at all. They have vanished into thin air.

Then there are the people who are stubbornly sticking it out. They deserve special plaudits, because they are idiots*. Riverside, prey to the fickle lords of high tide? Sign me up! Alongside the beef noodle folks at Nai Soi and the famously taciturn Roti-Mataba is Khao Na Gai Ha Yaek (085-124-5511, open 10-19.00). Just steps down Phra Arthit road from Roti-Mataba, this chicken-and-gravy on rice vendor is quietly packed most lunchtimes, but inspires none of the usual fanfare, which makes it very special indeed. Yes, there is the khao na gai (35 baht), as well as versions with gun chieng (sweet Chinese sausage, 40 baht) or runny fried egg (42 baht), or best of all, both (47 baht). There are also noodles topped with chicken gravy, deep-fried noodles with chicken gravy, and sticky rice with red pork. But the namesake dish is the best.

Wandering down the road at high noon, unable to find ANYTHING I once loved in a landscape that looked familiar but wasn’t, this plate of chicken gravy on rice crowned with torn fresh coriander, fried egg and sweet sticky sausage was a godsend, the best thing I had eaten in weeks. I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be hungry, and ate it all.

*Obviously, I don’t really think they are idiots.

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

by | 10/20/2011 · 3:22 pm

When Gluttony becomes a chore

Fish rice porridge at Sieng Gi

(Photo by @SpecialKRB)

When the Popes lived in Avignon, they had a lot of visitors. That goes without saying, of course — what Pope doesn’t have a lot of visitors?  And visitors who are visiting always expect dinner.

Well, the Pope couldn’t just have any old dinner. When he entertained various and assorted important people in his cavernous grand hall-slash-dining room the size of a private airplane hangar, diners could expect to spend the next 4-5 hours with their butts firmly planted in their seats, enjoying, on average, 24 courses a night.

What did they have for dinner? Well, first and foremost, the higher the food was from the ground, the closer it was to God. So there was a lot of this kind of food — fruit, lettuces and veggies that grew up out of the ground instead of those nasty, dirt-burrowing root vegetables. There was, obviously, meat, but it had to be roasted; none of this boiling business was allowed, because boiling was for peasants. The kitchen responsible for these 24-on-average courses is surprisingly small, considering: the size of a generous living room as opposed to, say, a hotel lobby. But there are three ovens set up — obviously, roasting was a big deal.

As I listened to the tour guide as she wended her way through the upper reaches of the Pope’s Avignon palace, I couldn’t help thinking — how? How could he do it? I struggle with two big meals a day — yes, the old stomach is not what it used to be. While I am not immune to obsessing over gray hairs or wrinkles or sagging jowls or the Great Beyond that awaits us all, the thing that I miss most is my incredibly efficient, ever-elastic digestive system. Where did it go? Especially now that floodwaters are breaching the gates, and supermarket lines are as congested as the expressways where everyone has parked their cars, and spicy lemongrass shrimp Mama is worth its weight in gold … I find stuffing my face does not hold the allure it once did. Where did the beautiful past go? (I ask this as I look down at my own supermarket cart, the contents of which are: avocados, squash, and Betty Crocker French onion dip mix. Everyone else may be equipped for the floodpocalypse, but I will have a much easier time making dip, yo!)

Times like these call for drastic measures. Times like these call for khao thom (rice porridge). Boiling some rice with water sounds like a pitiful meal, but to me, right now, it sounds heavenly: the straight, almost sweet taste of watery rice, the purity of white porridge, amenable to anything you wish to pair it with — fish, omelet, stir-fried leafy vegetable, and even you, strange pickled shredded turnip, or you, weirdly pink fermented tofu glob, yes. Even you. What better to fix what (sort of) ails you, this ennui of the stomach that no grilled rib-eye something-or-other or braised pork belly this-and-that can fix?  What better to fortify you through this wait?

Good places for khao thom, if you can get to them:

1. Khao Thom Bowon — Across from the entrance to Wat Bowonniwet on Phra Sumen Road, this rice porridge shop is open from 4pm-late. They claim to be the originator of pad pak boong fai dang, or stir-fried morning glory with chilies.

2. Jay Suay — On Plang Nam Road, next to the famous shellfish omelets of Nai Mong Hoy Tod, this rice porridge shop is also open at night. It is especially known for its pork dishes; a personal favorite: pork meatballs in a clear soup flavored with pickled plums.

3. Khao Thom Polo — On the corner of Soi Polo and Wireless Road, this shop is almost perpetually packed for dinner. The dish that seems to get everyone fired up, despite the extreme spice factor, is their gaeng pa, or jungle curry.

 

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, food stalls, rice porridge, Thailand

by | 09/16/2011 · 3:33 pm

Mid-life crisis

Beef mataba (stuffed Thai-Muslim pancake) at Roti-Mataba

When people talk about having a mid-life crisis, they are thinking about something like a loss of identity or the mourning of things that have passed us by, never to return, like the opportunity to go braless. Or the ability to digest 1 kg of meat without any repercussions. Or a deep, uninterrupted sleep. Oh, so many things to mourn!

But there are other things, more insidious. Because I am all about listing bad stuff, over and over again, here’s another one: being taken for granted. Underrated. Your opinions rendered irrelevant. Low tide at sunset, and you the fish wriggling in the shallows, somewhere between a dead jellyfish and plastic bottle.

And it’s not just about getting annoyed by things that other people inexplicably LOVE, like that teacher on Glee, who, every time he opens his mouth, moves a part of me that wants to kick his face in, even though he hasn’t done anything to me ever (I’m not lying. He’s on TV now and I want to shoot myself. Yet I can’t change the channel. Is this the point of Glee?) It’s about being dismissed in spite of your successes. In this context, I am obviously not talking about me, sitting in front of the television on a butterfly chair borrowed from my grandma because I have no furniture. I’m talking about Greyhound Cafe.

Because, for whatever reason, Greyhound is not considered a serious place to eat, the “See Fah” of the contemporary Bangkok dining scene. But let me tell you a story about Greyhound. Once, 100 years ago, it didn’t exist. Emporium was new, rising up out of the rubble of the last Bronze Age. My friend Tutti and I were making the rounds of this new, glittering place and she got to talking to a gentleman hatching plans to open a new restaurant in the next few months. He said the menu would be a bit strange, a bit of this and that, a Thai-Italian mix. Being the wonderful people we are, we waited until we left him to laugh at his idea. Thai-Italian? Awful. Who would eat this dreck? Fusion suxx!

Today, this man is probably on a yacht in the Andaman Sea, snacking on “Sandwich in a Bowl”, in a T-shirt reading “Complicated Noodle 4Eva”. Spaghetti pad kee mao is commonplace, and cutesy versions of Thai food staples like fried rice, nam prik or khao pad are everywhere in the city. This place now has a gazillion branches. Yet it’s still “just Greyhound”, mired in the restaurant version of a mid-life crisis. It was the best sort of fusion — a look into the future, reflecting how Bangkokians really eat. But what have you done for me lately, Greyhound?

Roti-Mataba (136 Pra Arthit Rd., 02-282-2119, open 9am-10pm except Mondays) is not a fusion restaurant. But it’s also in a mid-life crisis.  Among the most popular places to try Thai-Muslim food in the city, this khao raad gaeng (rice and curry) standby is seen as touristy, a bit blah, ignored in favor of younger, newer Thai-Muslim places that are harder to find — hence, more “authentic”. Later, sometime in the evening when the rats are scurrying next to your table and your beef curry noodles are strangely flavorless, watered d0wn in a failed attempt to make them last longer, you think back to the cheery, well-lit shophouse that is Roti-Mataba, and the women who tirelessly make new roti throughout the day. Roti that would eventually be dunked into a peanut-strewn bowl of beef mussaman curry, or a green chicken curry, the surface flecked with fat and basil. Better yet, roti slathered in chocolate sauce, dotted with slices of ripe banana.

That’s when you start to feel regret. Roti-Mataba, I have been away for too long.

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, curries, food, food stalls, restaurant, Thai-Muslim, Thailand