Category Archives: Thailand

…it’s worth a mention because for some inexplicable reason, good Northern Thai food is hard to find in Bangkok. I think that’s why Gedhawa (Sukhumvit Soi 35, 02-662-0501) seems so popular: decent Northern food in a nice setting that is easily accessible from the Phrom Phong Skytrain stop.

Good things about Gedhawa: hard-to-find dishes like the bamboo shoots stuffed with minced pork, the “exploding” mushrooms stir-fried with pork and chilies, slices of snakehead fish slathered in curry to mask its muddy flavor and grilled in banana leaves, shredded bamboo shoot salad flavored with pounded young crabs, plucked from the rice fields. But other things are puzzling, like why typical dishes you would find anywhere up north, like pounded young jackfruit (thum kanoon), are missing from the menu, or why everything is way spicier than real northern food, as if a Southern Thai cook had invaded the kitchen (except for the khao soy noodles, which are bewilderingly bland).

At the end of the day, Gedhawa works because there’s nothing better. What I would do for a decent bowl of nam ngiew…

nam prik ong

stuffed bamboo shoots

Roughly 500,000 street food stalls earning up to half of Thailand’s GDP line the streets in Bangkok, if researchers are to be believed. Guess what? I’m going to try to sample, catalogue, and critique all the ones that could possibly be of any interest to you, or me, or anyone else, indigestion, diarrhea, and cholesterol levels be damned. This could take a lot of time, but I’m going to give it a year, and, fingers crossed, by the end of this entire ordeal, I will have a fairly comprehensive guide to show for it all (and probably a pretty substantial belly too. That is, even more substantial than the one I already have. The sacrifices I make for my art).

On for tonight: pad thai on Thonglor, which friends tell me is possibly the best in Bangkok (better than Thipsammai? Hard to believe) and Sukhumvit Soi 38, one of the best outdoor food courts in town.