by | 09/10/2012 · 2:44 pm

A haven for the overlooked

Veggie curries and stir-fries at Raan Booniyom

I lost my iPhone a couple of weeks ago. It is hard for me to believe I have lasted this long without it. The one thing I clutch  at parties when there is no one to talk to, at restaurant tables when I am inevitably the first to arrive, at home just because — my iPhone was a personal lifesaver in a restless sea of social awkwardness and negative thought spirals.

I am now up to my neck in that sea. No one tries to contact me anymore. I feel like people like me less. Yes, I know, my phone is gone. Also, I hate talking on the phone. Don’t pester me with logic! The point is I feel cut off from everything, neglected, and lonely. Overlooked.

I think it’s easy for vegetarians who love food to feel overlooked here, as well. Thai food has never been known for being particularly meaty the way American food is, but it seems to be a lot easier finding a good vegetarian meal in the States than it is here. And the places that do exist in Thailand are often criminally ignored. I’ve been guilty of this myself. Even though I know there are tons of wonderful ways to cook non-meat ingredients, I don’t actively seek vegetarian places out (except for Rasayana Raw Food Cafe, which has wonderful soups. I’m not kidding). It has to be right in front of me.

That problem is compounded when you factor in street food. Perhaps it’s because Thais feel “authentic” Thai food must have fish sauce or shrimp paste in it, or because there are not enough Thai vegetarians around, but when people ask me about street food stalls that are also vegetarian, there are few places to recommend.  Does Lemon Farm count as street food?

Well, Ubon Ratchathani has its act together when it comes to this. Raan Booniyom (corner of Thepyothi and Srinaruad roads, 086-871-1580) — less a stall, more a cafeteria, to be honest — offers everything that any vegetarian in Thailand would be happy to try out. In business for the past decade or so, Booniyom is possible because of the efforts of a group of local volunteers who arrive daily to dish up stir-fries, curries, salads, noodles, desserts, and anything else you could think of that is vegetarian.

Veggie “shrimp chips”

A khao lad gaeng (curries over rice) counter offers the choice of one curry over rice for 10 baht; 20 baht for three curries. An aharn tham sung (made-to-order) section cooks up stir-fries a la minute. A vegetarian guay thiew (soup noodles) stand costs 15-20 baht; veggie som tum for 15 baht is also on the menu. Possibly best of all are the different drinks available, ranging from nam macaam (tamarind juice) to taro milk and something called “mushroom juice”: need I mention they are homemade?

Homemade drinks on display

Is there something like this in Bangkok? Um … not that I know of. That’s not to say  that a volunteer-run vegetarian “cafeteria” couldn’t open its doors, somewhere (hopefully close to me), thanks to a group of enterprising food lovers. In fact, I’d be happy to be the first customer! Let me know! Just don’t try to call me.

(Photos by @SpecialKRB)

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Filed under Asia, curries, food, food stalls, Thailand, Ubon Ratchathani, vegetarian

by | 09/03/2012 · 12:56 pm

Misson: Sort of possible

Beef noodles at Niyom Pochana in Lampang

It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me when I say that I’m terrible at directions. No matter how hard I try, my mind sort of switches off as the landscape flashes by, and before I know it, I’m where I need to be through no effort of my own.

So maybe it was a bad idea to go to Lampang for the express purpose of trying out some beef noodles I had eaten a few years earlier that I remembered were pretty good. My directions to the hapless, Chiang Rai-born driver we hired for the day: “There are some famous beef noodles at a stall near a temple in town. There is lots of greenery around it.” If we were lucky, this would be enough. How big can Lampang be, amirite?

Not a surprise, then, that we got lost. Many times. It turns out there are lots of temples in Lampang, the third-largest town in Northern Thailand and home to a large deposit of lignite. Go Lampang!

There are also lots of different definitions on “famous beef noodles”. Whereas I meant “delicious noodles with beef in them”, other people took it to mean “the closest noodle shop to where I am right now at this moment”, “that place that I heard might have noodles across town”, and “the barbecued pork on rice place”.

We bulled our way onto various temple grounds, disturbing monks doing their laundry and workers eating their lunches.  We squeezed our van into various dead-end alleys and one-way thoroughfares. Worst of all, we walked — from one end of a road to another, up and down sidewalks, investigating every sign. Let me tell you (please! Let me!), it’s not cool in Northern Thailand’s third-largest town at the moment. It’s not even a little breezy. More than once, we thought: maybe these noodles aren’t that good? Maybe we’ll eat somewhere else? Somewhere close and convenient?

But that’s not what we’re about. The whole point of our existence is to find that One Special Place that will serve us something good and/or do it in an interesting way. It took about three hours to chance upon the one man — a driver of the horse-drawn carriages for which charming little Lampang is known, if Lampang is known for anything at all — who told us to go straight, turn left, turn right, and then left again. Simple! Beef noodles were to be ours, after only half a day spent searching.

Niyom Pochana shopfront

Niyom Pochana — known also as “Oyo” (I don’t know why) — is actually located in the shadow of Muangsat Temple (I knew there was a temple somewhere) on Charoenmuang Road. Its specialty is actually its meatballs, both beef and pork, as well as its generous additions of boiled pork, freshly-blanched beef slices and stewed beef atop soft rice noodles, a clear pork bone broth and a handful of shredded cabbage leaves.

Niyom Pochana meatballs

Don’t be late, because the meatballs can and do run out. Perhaps, next time, barring any more delays (I mean, I can’t get lost again, right? Right?) I will get as many brimming bowlfuls of beef meatballs as I can possibly eat. At least we found the place, and I can rest easy and sated knowing that our hours-long search was worth it.

(All photos by @SpecialKRB)

 

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Filed under Asia, beef, food, food stalls, noodles, Northern Thailand, pork, Thailand

by | 08/28/2012 · 11:31 am

Strange combinations

O-tao in Phuket town

(Photo by @SpecialKRB)

There are moments in everyone’s lives that are so strange, they might as well have been scripted. One of mine was a scant few years ago, during my second pregnancy. Well into my second trimester and approaching my third, I went to Macau with my husband, his family, and his family friends — getting one last plane trip in before airlines stopped letting me and my big belly on the plane.

Macau is an interesting place, full of an interesting history that seems to get shoved to the wayside somewhere in favor of the new thing in town: casinos. Lots of them. Like Las Vegas, it’s now a place built on dreams, full of places built to look like other places, and other places meant to spend lots of money. It was also something that, aside from the food, we were singularly unable to share in: never gamblers, we awkwardly gawked our way through the lobby every day, watching the strange dances of the dealers and the hopeful, window-shopping our way through this and everything else. And it was definitely not a place for 6-month-pregnant me: just a few weeks before getting relegated to a wheelchair because of my enormous weight, I could only walk a few minutes at a time before having to sit down and rest.

Not surprisingly, all that money changing hands tends to draw an interesting element, especially at night. There were an awful lot of beautiful girls milling around the shopping mall, looking like they were waiting for someone. Maybe they really were waiting, scanning the horizon for their friends, hatching plans to see a movie, getting ready to share some hot wings. I honestly don’t know. But when I sat down to rest my stretched pelvis for the umpteenth time on the long and arduous walk back to our hotel room, my husband sat next to me, and a girl sat next to him, and promptly laid her head on my husband’s shoulder.

Let me set this scene for you. Me, a gigantic bulbous mammoth with a huge protruding belly. My husband, next to me, sitting stock still. My husband’s parents and their friends, standing behind us. Girl, apparently very sleepy, with her head on my husband’s shoulder. No one says anything. Some female passersby look, cluck at this strange combination of people on a bench, and shake their heads: whether at me, a big ol’ fatso who cannot just stand up and ask someone/anyone what is going on; my husband, who cannot shrug his shoulder and walk away; or at the girl, who is very, very tired — I don’t know. What I do know is that it is appalling, but in the funniest possible way. If I ever, at that moment, harbored that question of Do I Look Fat in This? the answer was: oh, most definitely yes. Otherwise, why would that lady decide to sit there, cuddling with my husband? Was there a question of This Is Weird and What Should We Do? Well, certainly. This was a moment that required examining my own feelings: surprise, indecision, humiliation, check. Exhilaration? Yes, that too. What happens next? Call my bluff then, Life. Just do it. Maybe I am a gambler after all …

… (although not much of one, if your parents are just milling around, looking at bath salts close by. She eventually got up and walked away).

The point of this long and tedious story is, strange combinations excite similarly strange feelings. It might not make sense, but it somehow works. This is something the Hokkien Chinese in Phuket — a community largely responsible for Phuket’s street food scene today — have taken to heart. Want oysters slathered atop a mix of egg, flour and cubed taro and dressed in lashings of minced garlic, soy sauce, bean sprouts and pork rinds? Sure, why not? How about thick yellow noodles fried with pork, chicken, fish and crispy greens, topped with a raw egg yolk, raw slivered shallots and, again, pork rinds? Of course.

Hokkien fried noodles at Mee Ton Poe in Phuket

O-tao, the Hokkien-style oyster omelet dish, is best represented at Ji Pien, a stall that has been around for nearly 80 years in one location or another in downtown Phuket. Its current incarnation, over 40 years old, is at a nondescript stall along Soi Phoonphol 7, where the hardworking chef churns out plate upon plate of o-tao topped with oysters, shrimp and/or squid (there is also a vegetarian version), as well as a small roster of curries atop kanom jeen (fermented rice noodles).

Ji Pien in Phuket

For fried noodle lovers, there is also Mee Ton Poe, which enjoys two locations, but I always go to the one on Phuket Road. A vast range of fried noodle dishes awaits, many a variation of the mee pad Hokkien (Hokkien fried noodles) on nearly every menu in town, but the real treat here is, besides the amiable service, the curries the staff eat at lunch. I’m not kidding. They are homemade and delicious: fiery gaeng trai pla (Southern Thai fish entrail curry), or the milder and no-less-flavorful gaeng prik (chili curry).

And if you still haven’t had enough of strange combinations, Phuket has you covered on the dessert side of things too: o-aew, a shaved ice dessert laden with bananas, colored syrup, and a jelly made from soaking o-aew seeds in water and said to protect diners from getting ulcers. Where to get it? At the moment, it’s available at a place called — where else? — O-Aew, across from the entrance to Soi Sun Uthit.

O-aew in Phuket town

(Photo by @SpecialKRB)

 

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Filed under Asia, bamee, dessert, food, food stalls, noodles, Phuket, seafood, Southern Thailand, Thailand