Bangkok Glutton

There is a scene in “Exorcist 3” that is considered one of the scariest of all time. When things are labeled like that on Youtube, it’s not hard to roll your eyes and say, “yeah whatever” and continue scrolling down to something else. However, I took the time to fill my screen and turn the volume all the way up. Even with the warning, I jumped. It’s an effective scene, and it’s all in the rhythm. The scare comes at the exact wrong time, while you’re still breathing in.

It’s funny, because in real life, I am the jump scare.

You won’t expect it. I’ll say I’m hungry, and I’ll have been waiting for you to finish shopping for about half an hour. It’s maybe only 12:15. I did have a few bites for breakfast, so it’s not like I was fasting. I’ll be walking down the street. Maybe one or two places didn’t pan out, already full with diners or too difficult to find. You might make an innocuous remark about having a different kind of food. And I will kill you.

It’s scary because it’s unexpected, at least to me. Other people will see my face and guess that I’m about ready to snap, but I’m not aware of it. The only person who is expecting it is my husband, who will simply tell me “no”. But be warned: if I’m not fed, you will all die. You will be like the nurse in “Exorcist 3”. It’s beyond my control.

I was trying something new in Japan that I hadn’t tried in years. There’s this thing where, if you are a woman (and, I’m seeing nowadays, also a man), people feel emboldened to make comments about your body. This is doubly true if you are Thai. Comments like “you gained weight” and “you’re fat” are just par for the course for some of us, but it doesn’t mean that you just shrug your shoulders and say, “oh well, this is me now, I guess I’ll just live my life”. The thing in the back of your mind doesn’t really allow you to do that for some reason. Somehow, the self-loathing eventually kicks in, even after years of “you’re fat”.

But I vowed to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, for the 15 days I was in Japan. I hadn’t done that since my first trimester with my son, when all I could stomach were potato chips with sour cream-and-onion dip and ginger ale. I ended up weighing 77 kg after nine months. Where would I be after 2 weeks?

So we braved Sunday brunch lines at Eggs ‘n Things to make my son happy. We braved crushing crowds in Tsukiji for sushi breakfast to make ourselves happy. We loaded up our plates at the breakfast buffet at our ski resort, where I would daily consume two heaping bowlfuls of Japanese rice with miso soup, pickles, and a styrofoam cup of natto, whipped exactly 50 times with mustard and tare sauce to activate the gooey fibers. In the evenings, dinner came in the form of a bubbling cauldron of nabe, a mere appetizer to a succession of gut-busting fish and beef courses, all washed down with plenty of umeshu, beer and bourbon.

In Disneyland, we embarked on a full-day popcorn safari, taste-testing everything that would fit into our gaping maws and empty souls (verdict: black pepper popcorn was best, followed by curry, with soy sauce and butter a distant third). Greasy chicken legs, long “naan” stuffed with tomato bolognese, green dumplings shaped like aliens’ heads — all were fodder for our ambulatory kamikaze dive into emotional oblivion. When we reemerged back in Tokyo, I had to get new pants.

Only to head south to Yokohama, home to the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. I had somehow heard of this place for years but never gone, because I am even lazier than I am greedy. But finally the demands of the stomach grew too strong to be denied, and so there we were in Yokohama, a town I hadn’t been near in 20 years, wandering the streets in search of a sign featuring a pair of chopsticks dipping a bowlful of yellow noodles into nothingness.

There are things in the ramen museum like noodle-making workshops and the opportunity to craft your own instant ramen bowl. There is also a LOT of text explaining the history of ramen in Japan (it’s a Chinese dish that started with shio ramen, before soy sauce ramen was created in Asakusa and spread out from there) and a bit on the different varieties (very roughly: Hokkaido is miso, Tokyo is soy sauce, and Kyushu is tonkotsu broth). This is all interesting, but any minute you are not spending queueing up in line in the basement is a wasted minute. Head straight to the basement, do not pass go, do not collect 200.

The basement is a replica of 1950s Tokyo, and there are not just a bunch of ramen shops there, but also a few little shops (candy, an ice cream bar, another ramen shop with natural wine) tucked into the alleyways. Because I have no chill and no strategizing sense, I went straight for number 1, which ended up being the most popular ramen shop with a 30-minute wait. Obviously, I bitterly regretted my decision, especially after seeing Karen head off to a different shop and my son and husband going to a third, all without waits. But then I finally got to sit down and eat, and of course everything changed.

I got the spicy miso “mini” size, and in the first few bites, you’re realizing you are eating a pretty good bowl of noodles, unctuous and savory and more-ish with umami up the wazoo. It’s after a few more sips of the broth when it hits you that you are in the presence of something great, and that the minutes you are spending from then on with your bowl of soup will be some of the best minutes you will have that day. In the end, alas, it’s all gone, but there’s the option to go back out in the line and queue again, bitterly regretting your choices until your name is called once more to sit down.

My husband and son dallied over their bowls of ramen (identical, an opportunity wasted), chosen because the shop was the oldest in the museum. Of course, they did not take pictures, so all I have to offer you is this link. Nicha ended up following my lead and queueing up after me at the same spot, a decision I did not blame her for because the ramen was that good. Karen, meanwhile, made much use of her time, trying a special anniversary edition shio ramen at the second shop to the right:

Before going to the ramen bar tucked away in the balcony for an even-better tonkotsu ramen:

And then we had dinner.

The next day, I had attempted to bite my daughter’s head off at lunchtime because I was hungry and wanted to have sushi, but not at a sushi place I’d ever tried before, because that would be too easy. We zipped to and fro through Ginza only to find ourselves in a department store at the kind of restaurant that Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson end up in after Bill Murray sleeps with that Sausalito chick. Which is to say that it was both soulless and expensive. But at least I was angry.

So that night, we decided to keep things simple by eating at a cheap izakaya across the street from our hotel, the kind with 300 yen beers and pictures of butts plastered all over the walls. Imagine my surprise when I go through the door to see my daughter and husband at a table but startled to see me. “Didn’t you get my messages?” my daughter asked. “Knup can’t come in here.” And believe it or not, the thought did not cross my mind that a place like Japan, where beer is sold in vending machines, would prohibit a 13-year-old from joining his family for dinner at an izakaya. “Oh,” I said. “I guess we’ll find somewhere else,” and we promptly left that place, feeling a little strange because it’s not every day when you’re turned away for dinner with your family by your family? But then again, I had tried to kill my daughter earlier so…

I wasn’t wearing a coat, and Knup wasn’t equipped with much of a palate, so we roamed the streets for quite a while, eschewing Tokyo-style sushi with rice seasoned with red vinegar made from sake lees; soba with shrimp tempura; and grilled eel donburi. We were hemming and hawing between McDonald’s and a soy sauce ramen shop when my eye caught sight of a grill over a charcoal brazier in a dining room. Upon stepping inside, the man asked me if we had a reservation. “No,” I said, but something in my expression was so pathetic that the man relented and seated us after making sure that we could eat lamb.

It was a yaki-Hokkaido lamb shop, specializing in all cuts of the animal: skin (very chewy, no matter how much you grill it), tongue (tender), “arm” (similarly tender and simple), liver (delicious) and most popularly, loin topped with chopped leeks. There was also brain, wrapped in foil to keep it moist:

So happy was I in Knup and my food luck that when my family contacted me to ask where I was (why would I be waiting in the lobby when there’s a whole city of food out there?), I only felt a twinge of resentment before sending them our coordinates. Before long, five of us were crowded around a grill, running the staff ragged with order after order and singing along to a soundtrack of Howard Jones and Asia. If the server regretted letting me in, he didn’t let on. Or maybe he knew that as long as I was fed, Tokyo would be safe from the monster. Whatever he thought, it was the perfect way to end our stay.

I’ve been to Loei more than a couple of times now, after falling in love with the province just last year on a research trip. Its dreamy mountains, idyllic riverscapes, and, yes, obviously deliciously unique cuisine are things that make the AirAsia plane rides to the tiny one-plane airport in town a bearable necessity, even if flights frequently get cancelled or reshuffled around due to lack of customers. I mean, the appeal is inherent in the name itself: Loei is so remote, suspended in a limbo between North and Northeastern Thailand and perched on the topmost edge of the country, that its very name means “beyond” in Thai.

Even so, I have never been to “town”, as it were, mostly dissuaded from the enterprise by, well, not hearing a thing about it from anyone else. There is a popular notion among expats in Thailand that one provincial town looks exactly like any other; although this is absolutely not true in many cases, it would probably hold true for Muang Loei.

But there’s still food. After all, it’s a town populated by Thais, and Thais must eat, preferably good food! That’s what you will find at Muang Loei Pochana, an old-as-it-gets-here noodle joint run by a wonderfully saucy lady, who, when asked the secret for her delicious guaythiew, told us to “study hard for many years”. The noodle soup here is deceptively simple: beef or pork broth, your selection of rice noodles, extremely tender slabs of marinated meat, a sprinkling your choice of fresh herbs, green leaves and bean sprouts. So simple are the noodles, in fact, that the regulars here enjoy more than the typical condiments on the side (you know, fish sauce, granulated sugar, chili powder, pickled peppers in vinegar, the whole deal). Instead, we get a small bowl of fresh bird’s eye chilies and a tiny jar of shrimp paste — all the better to dip in your chilies and enjoy alongside your noodles. A freshly made dollop of red chili jam for the broth rounds out this lovely picture.

When pressed on which noodles she’d recommend (she sells both beef and pork versions), she recommended beef, and I was glad she did: meat soft like a strip of cashmere in a straightforward but flavorful soup. The noodles were like an afterthought, and that is the paradoxical point with a good noodle soup, isn’t it? You never come to a Thai guaythiew shop for the rice noodles. Just like you never come to the town of Loei for the town itself.

This was a long, long time ago, but there used to be a band called The Lover Speaks. I first heard them on the radio in the short few years when my tiny town had an alternative radio station, and my musical taste has been frozen in the year 1987 ever since. When I went to boarding school in Pittsburgh, I “borrowed” a cassette tape of The Lover Speaks’ first (and only?) album and conveniently forgot to ever return it. Naturally, I lost it after moving to Thailand because karma does happen, even if it happens slowly.

Even though, for whatever reason, the band The Lover Speaks faded away, Annie Lennox eventually covered my favorite The Lover Speaks song, “No More I Love Yous”. But imagine my chagrin when no one I talked to remembered the original version, and did not know of Annie Lennox’s song as a cover. Even though it was not Annie Lennox’s fault, it made me annoyed towards her, to the point that I don’t like hearing her version which inevitably pops up on something like “Murder at the End of the World” and takes me right out of the story. It is not an Annie Lennox original! There was someone who thought of it first!

So, when not one but several people I talked to — people I thought of as intelligent and informed people, even — said to me (confidently and to my face!) that Sriracha sauce was an invention by David Tran, the Vietnamese-American who started Huy Fong Foods, I was once again perturbed, chagrined like a Taylor Swift fan during the Matt Healy era. Sriracha sauce is Thai! It is named after a Thai town! David Tran got the name when he came to Thailand before going to the U.S.! There is a reason why he did not name it Vietnam Sauce!

But maybe they can be excused, since (unlike The Lover Speaks’ existence), the origin story of Sriracha itself is pretty murky. Adam Gottschalk of @otr.offtherails does a great deep dive on the Sriracha story featuring my favorite Sriracha sauce maker and probable creator of the original formula, Lakud Suwanprasop of Gold Medals Sriracha sauce. The bottles, which are still filled with small-batch Sriracha made from hand-picked and fermented goat peppers in Khun Lakud’s backyard, are sold from a store marked as Hattakamamakarn on Google Maps, on Fueng Nakorn road next to Wat Ratchabophit. The story of how his family, who used to all sleep together on the second floor of this tiny shophouse, ended up in Bangkok is very ably covered here. But if you are too lazy to click onto the link, basically different branches of the family ended up being involved with different companies that all — rather correctly, it turns out — consider themselves the original.

But Gold Medals is still hand-made, by Khun Lakud who is at least 80 years old. On my last visit to the shop, the tiny space was filled with people waiting for Khun Lakud as he painstakingly wetted the backs of a couple of Sriracha sauce labels, putting them onto the glass bottles by hand. A woman, hands in her lap, waited patiently in a chair next to him as a fan whirred back and forth between them. At least three other people were standing, waiting for what they hoped would be their turn to watch Khun Lakud as he fixed labels on their own bottles with the kind of silent concentration that a dog has when you are training him with a Milk-Bone. I felt lucky when Khun Lakud called me to sit in the special chair next, and I made my order, a manageable two bottles of anything he had (extra spicy was what was left, 60 baht for two).

It turns out they had all called before and ordered 10-20 bottles from him beforehand. As I inwardly freaked out about there not being any bottles left for me, a younger Thai girl who I assumed was a descendent came out of the back room and looked shocked to see everyone. “You ordered before?” she said to one person who told her she’d ordered 10. “Did you talk to him?” she said, pointing to Khun Lakud as he continued with the labels. “Because he’s likely forgotten.”

“There are no bottles reserved in back?” the customer asked. This was met with a no. “There aren’t even 20 bottles!” she said. It was a free-for-all. What were they going to do, arm wrestle for the remaining bottles?

I felt bad for them as I paid and left the shophouse. I didn’t dare to gloat until I reached home.