Bangkok Glutton

One of the things about turning 50 is seeing — or I should say experiencing — how quickly my eyesight and hearing have deteriorated. Even restaurant menus are beyond my purview; when the lettering is too small, I have to straighten my arms to read, only to discover my arms aren’t long enough. It’s unsettling, after all these years, to not know exactly what you’re going to eat, or to not have a handle on all the dishes available to you.

My hearing is another issue. People frequently say things to me either too quickly or too softly, and I’m pretty sure the problem is with me. This makes me quite angry. But my anger isn’t because I can no longer hear what other people are saying. It’s because people still feel like they have to talk to me in the first place.

All the same, I was excited when I heard from Aarya that she was going to show me her “hometown” in Loei, on the banks of the Mekong River, a place I had never been. So when Aarya invited me on a road trip of her province, I put on my fat pants — which are now just my pants — and followed her there.

We met at the airport, where she picked me up in her blue pickup. We had a big day ahead of us, so we headed off immediately to our first destination, Pa Hin Ngam National Park. Perhaps stupidly, I had not yet eaten breakfast, so I was eager to see the options when we got to the park entrance. Alas, there were none. After traveling a further 2 km and parking in front of a mountain with a rambling metal staircase built around it, we found a bunch of vendor stalls selling piggy banks made out of bamboo, a coffee stall with great iced tea served in a bamboo container that we could take home (there was a lot of bamboo), and a natural medicine vendor who let us sample his “sore throat” tea, but really had tea for every possible ailment: period pains, headaches, arthritis, even hemorrhoids.

But no food … though we did discover an elaborate shrine (including clothing rack full of dresses) set up for the spirit of the mountain, whom, the coffee vendor told us, she’d dreamed of only the night before. “She’s very pale and so so tiny,” she said, describing the spirit’s appearance, which conveniently lined up with the statue of her at the shrine.

Maybe I would get lunch at our next stop, the “Mt. Fuji of Loei” only 15 minutes away. We piled back into our car and drove to the visitor’s center, where there was an “aharn tham sung” (made to order) and noodle stall. Alas, Aarya had no confidence in them. “Let’s wait until the next village,” she said. “They just opened yesterday.”

On the way up the hill, taken by a repurposed tractor with seats added onto the back and in the front where the plow used to be, we passed by avocado, guava and dragonfruit trees, and our guide even let us pick some of the wild guava — shaped and colored like a tennis ball — to taste. They were full of seeds which were a bit bitter, but the flesh itself was fragrant and wonderfully crunchy. We picked a bagful to take home to Aarya’s mother. The trek itself up the hill, made up of three “checkpoints”, was fun if a little alarming in our tractor.

But still no food. So on our drive to our third stop, Phu Kradueng, we insisted on stopping in town — only to discover it in the throes of a rocket festival, a huge (for the village) procession blocking the road as “mor lam” music blasted from the speakers of a truck.

When we finally did make it past the procession (after busting some of our fave Thai dance moves alongside a man dressed as a nurse, a woman jabbing a faux penis on a stick into the sky, a couple of children, and a happy monk) everything was closed except for a restaurant called “Thum Loei” which served, obviously, som tum.

So we of course ordered som tum, a local pad mee (fried noodles) and kanom jeen sot (fresh fermented rice noodles with a dipping sauce) as the sky opened into a downpour and an enormous spider the size of my hand scuttled down the wall behind Aarya.

But we were finally getting our food. Our som tum arrived, funky and fresh if a little sweet, as did our Loei-style noodle salad (which we had to send back for more lime juice because frankly it was super-candy-like-sweet):

We also had a dish that Aarya says is served all over Isaan in different iterations. Here, it was comfortingly plain, a nice foil to the spice of the other two. Aarya says that her mother makes it with local deep-fried catfish at home, and I was excited to try that for myself.

Heading North towards the river the next day, we made it to the border town of Ha Haeo, where we were told the bridge — rickety, wooden, the kind you see in your nightmares — had been washed out by the rains.

Luckily for us (they said), there was a bamboo “raft” that people were using to cross the river at another juncture. Little did we know that they really did mean a “raft” (or should I say “two rafts, requiring the dexterity of a teenaged gymnast”?)

Obviously, I made such a fool of myself screeching as I teetered over the water that a Laotian woman took pity on me and ushered me to the other side. When we got there, we paid a border crossing officer 90 baht each and were left to our own devices. We were in the middle of a sleepy village where a few people were grilling meat over charcoal as a few others halfheartedly attempted to sell things. A temple, decorated with hand-drawn murals depicting village life (including soldiers and government officials) was the main draw here. Luckily our breakfast awaited just steps away: what Aarya called “pho” and what we just call “guay thiew”: a heaping bowlful of it, leavened with freshly picked morning glory and plenty of Lao Beer to fortify us for the walk back.

Aarya was understandably nervous and, as she had decided to buy a whole case of Beer Lao, two bottles of whisky and two bottles of village-made “lao khao” (white spirits), decided to pay our obliging salesperson to carry the items across the river so that we could edge our way, slug-like, along the raft on our own. It was 10:30 and they were preparing to get rid of the raft, so it was urgent work. That was when, after we had basically crawled across step by agonizing step, we discovered that the water was only knee-high; our salesperson had simply hiked up her sarong and crossed the creek on foot. So much for the raft. It was our first experience with the border crossing in Loei.

We had better luck later on along the Mekong, a mighty stretch of ochre-colored water across which Laos was clearly visible. At a collection of seafood restaurants specializing in pla nam khong (the local fish) and freshwater shrimp, we stopped at a restaurant advertising its “dancing shrimp” (a spicy salad of live baby shrimp — sorry — with lots of chilies and garlic) and enjoyed a leisurely afternoon by the water with our lunch, happily not balancing over it on a flimsy raft made of lashed-together bamboo.

I stayed up late after returning from Gramona, mainlining coffee and watching “Below Deck” on the couch in order to stay awake. It was imperative for me to make it to the seafood market, if only for the bragging rights of being able to say I went to a market that would be closed off to me under normal circumstances. I imagined that once we got there, we would simply browse through the merchandise as Jordi explained to us the different types of seafood from around Spain. I did not expect to have one of the greatest meals of my life.

Cordero, who originally hails from Bolivia, said to me that his trip to this market truly opened his eyes to the breadth and variety of seafood available to Barcelona. What I will say is that, although we Thais are quite spoiled, seafood market-wise, Barcelona’s is a great market, full of great products from all around the world — Icelandic salmon, Maldivian tuna, local sardines as glittery as any jewel.

We arrived at 2 in the morning, and although the market was presumably in full swing, the walkways were mostly taken up by beeping box-movers (I do not know the term for this vehicle) and the occasional roaming pack of smoking men. There were no lookie-loos besides us, as entrance is supposed to be strictly limited to people with a professional badge. All the same, they did not give us trouble in spite of the fact that we were very obviously tourists, here to get in everyone’s faces with our idiotic questions and invasive iPhones.

Jordi explained that he expected us to choose what we liked best out of the floor, and then we would take it upstairs to be cooked at one of the three tapas bar/restaurants upstairs (Jordi preferred the middle one). But in doing so, we would have to walk the expanse of the market, which was roughly the length of two football fields. We saw various large tuna in different stages of breakdown; countless big cuttlefish in their ink; and Jordi picked up a few feisty lobsters — one from France, one from Canada, one from Spain — to demonstrate their desirability. He then showed us how to pick a good fish with various snippets of advice, some of which we already knew (bright eyes, red gills, shiny, non-slimy scales) and some that we didn’t (picking up a fresh fish and it remaining somewhat stiff is the sign of a strong swimmer with good and delicious muscles).

All the while, Jordi is greeted by various people who seem delighted to see him, and we have to wait more than a few times, shuffling uncertainly from foot to foot in our cold-weather jackets (the temperature inside is understandably brisk), as Jordi discusses this or that manner of business with one of his many market friends. It becomes evident that we need to make a decision as quickly as possible, so I point to the limpets — known as “lapas” in Spanish — and say, “What about those?”

Jordi seems less than enthused, but picks one up for me to suck at. “Do you know how to eat these?” he asks, and to be honest, I think I’ve had them before, but I don’t remember. Right there on the market floor, he breaks off the “horned” part of the limpet before handing it to me, instructing me to suck the coral-colored stuff inside the rubbery “stem”. As for the scaly cloven side, he tells me to break it apart with my hands, picking at the pink meat with my fingers. It is all very sweet and indescribably fresh. There is juice on my face and hands. I look around for a trash can. There isn’t one. Jordi tells me to just drop the remnants onto the floor.

He directs my interest instead to the langoustines, which we tried yesterday and which Jordi declared to be “mid”, as the kids would say (I spent 6 months with kids, so I know all about “mid” and “riz” and am now cool by association). We watched a seller “unpack” langoustines from Scotland by picking them, live, from tiny tubes lined in paper like candies, tossing them unceremoniously into a bin on the floor. Jordi picked one up, showing me how to run my finger along the shell: “It needs to feel smooth, not slimy,” he explains before bending the langoustine a bit to show the skin underneath the rim of the shell. “The meat needs to be thick and strong here, or when you cook it, it will break apart. This langoustine is no good,” he declares, tossing it back into the bin before the vendor picks it up himself, breaks off the head, sucks the head, and peels the tail to enjoy as a sort of mid-early-morning snack.

We decide to follow suit, picking up langoustines that Jordi deems much better, like the one above. There is obviously something transgressive about eating a vendor’s wares raw right in front of him, but the taste of the langoustines made it worth being rude: the tail sweet and briny, the head like good sea urchin.

Obviously we pick up a pack of these. We also, on Jordi’s suggestion, pick up another set of red prawns from Galicia, Jordi choosing them himself from a large box nearby. “See? No water,” he says, explaining which ones to buy. He tells us to steer clear from langoustines and prawns languishing for hours in a pool of melted ice. “Choose like this,” he says, pointing to his selections.

Of course, we have to sample these raw on the market floor too. The prawn heads are almost better than what I’d tasted at Jordi’s restaurant, when they were topped with caviar.

To go with our shellfish extravaganza (to which my husband is actually allergic), we also pick up three baby sole which Jordi says are good for frying, as well as a passel of the unicorn-shell sea snails that we had the day earlier. To end the meal, Jordi selects a large Alaskan cordova — a fish he’d used to demonstrate to us what red gills, bright eyes and glossy scales looked like — with the intention of baking it.

We troop up the stairs with our wares into what looks like a stereotypical tapas bar, but with a view overlooking the market floor. Inside, at 2:30, it’s quiet: most vendors are on a break, chatting over coffee, with only one other person going to town on an enormous plate of scrambled eggs. No one is drinking, but I feel thirsty (for beer, at least) so we all end up ordering a nice pint each while Jordi explains to the chef what he wants done with the seafood and orders us some tomato bread and a large fluffy tortilla to start. I remember that he and Cordero have probably not eaten at all since their dinner service ended at 1 am.

The baby cod arrives first, and it’s as good as Jordi said it would be: the skin crispy and brittle, the meat inside almost cloud-like. We pour olive oil over the white flesh and dine on the fins and small bones delicate enough to crunch in our mouths.

Next came the prawns, which were barely cooked and christened in a generous spray of rock salt. These things, once again, blew my mind. “I don’t know why people talk about lobster,” said Jordi. “These prawns are so much better,” and I have to say, I totally agree. Touched with heat and coarse salt, the heads have taken on a deep umami flavor that my brain translates into tasting like dark chocolate. It is one of the best things I’ve ever had.

The main point of the evening arrives next, hot from the kitchen, the shells billowing steam. It seems unfair to them that they have followed the red prawns; it’s like Fred Kaps following the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. All the same, they are sweet and fresh and everything you’d want from langoustines.

Obviously, Jordi is friends with the proprietor and they exchange pleasantries, as he has with everyone throughout the evening. But Jordi says he had a hard time at first making connections with people, as he was only one small restaurant; most of the customers here are big hotels and restaurant chains. I imagine the Michelin star would have helped things along; besides, the big clients rarely actually make it to the market themselves, preferring to order their seafood for delivery.

By this time, we are almost full, but Jordi’s special pick, the cordova, is on its way. It comes hot from the oven, skin blistered with the scales still on and in a puddle of fresh olive oil. We summon up what’s left of our appetites and attack, stripping the skin to reveal glistening juicy flesh without need of anything else (although, being Thai, I wouldn’t turn a seafood dipping sauce down). By the time we are done, only the carcass is left and even the head has been dismantled. The cost of the seafood: 160 euros; the cost of the restaurant meal: 70 euros, including beers for all 6 people.

Jordi and Cordero very generously drive us home, and by the time we get there, it’s 4 in the morning. It’s still dark, but the sidewalk in front of our rental is heaving with as many people as there are when it’s 4 in the afternoon. I understand that the meal I just had was a once-in-a-lifetime deal, which makes the meal even more special; the guidance of a Michelin-starred chef is similarly unlikely. Or maybe it’s the incredible seafood. In any case, I will always remember this meal, even though it has thrown my sleeping patterns off for the foreseeable future.

The piece of paper, hastily scribbled in red ink by Chef Jordi, read “12:30 Cerveceria Catalanas”. By the time we’d arrived (a wee bit late, I’ll admit), Jordi and his sous-chef Cordero were waiting near the front of a long, snaking line that double-backed on itself like the Chao Phraya River, in front of an unassuming building that resembled Barcelona’s answer to Kalaprapruek.

This was the famous aforementioned restaurant, representing a different facet of Jordi’s tapas vision: more mass-market, more commercial, way less expensive. According to Jordi, this was the kind of restaurant that might work in Bangkok: “Bread? Tomatoes? Potatoes? This costs very little to buy, but look at how much they are charging.”

Somehow, the customers queueing outside did not seem to mind that the restaurant was getting away with crazy profit margins. The restaurant inside was surprisingly spacious, made up of several rooms, all packed at Ikea-looking tables in a nondescript setting. There were nominal gestures at making the restaurant resemble a traditional tapas bar, with a “hot tapas” counter on one side of the entrance, a seafood counter on the other. The kitchen was made up of several sections, each catering to a different part of the menu — “meat”, “charcuterie”, “things on bread”, what have you. Each section numbered 2-3 chefs. This was less a restaurant and more of a tapas factory.

Taking one of the “daily specials” print-outs from the menu (“Here, it’s for you,” he said as he shoved this into my bag), Jordi said that specials changed every day, numbering enough dishes to make up the entire menu at another, lesser cerveceria. He ordered one special (a mayonnaise-y salad of crab and squid on toast with a pickle garnish) but mostly stuck to the classics for us: a tortilla, tomato bread with ham, and a beautiful mix of charred matchstick potatoes with a runny fried egg and more Iberico ham.

But we did not linger long over our meal here; ever mindful of the mammoth line growing outside, we left after half an hour, giving me barely enough time to finish my beer before we were back out into the street, Jordi hailing the cab like a lifetime New Yorker with a wolf whistle and a loud shout.

Our second spot was Paco Meralgo , sans the Jay Fai-like line of the first place, but buzzy in a different, quieter way inside. We shared a large table with another group of 4 and did not have to wait long until a procession of dishes arrived: the requisite tomato bread with vinegary anchovies; barely-cooked langoustines dressed in olive oil; baked baby scallops in their shells; raw, meaty clams; horned sea snails resembling the spindle that pricked Sleeping Beauty’s finger; green chilies that were thinner, longer and more pungent than the regular padron peppers.

Jordi showed us how to shuck the “Carril” clams by running our butter knives around the edge of the flesh, while we pried the snails from their horned shells with thick bamboo skewers (this one dish made me miss Thai seafood sauce). To end the meal, the proprietor brought out what was said to be the special of the house, cubes of juicy beef in a clay container, peppered with crisped garlic.

Noticing how I was relishing my langoustines, risking my dentist’s wrath by biting at its legs with my teeth, Jordi said, “You like this?”

“Obviously,” I said, langoustine fat in my hair.

“This is average,” he said. “Are you free tonight? I can take you to the seafood market. We can go at 2 in the morning.”

Now, I love seafood as much as the next person. But I am also 1,000 years old. I need 8 hours of sleep on average every night, which is why I am usually tucked up in bed by 10. In fact, my phone reminds me at precisely 9:14 pm to start getting ready for bed.

But a Michelin-starred chef was asking me to go to a seafood market open only to professionals for a personal tour. Was I literally crazy? Of course I would have to go.

“Can we go tomorrow night?” I asked. “We have to go to Gramona early tomorrow morning”.

Jordi laughed, recognizing that it was ridiculous I was not jumping at the chance to go to the seafood market immediately. “No,” he said. Then he smiled. “OK.”

Our trip to Gramona had also been arranged by our friend Jean-Claude, who, it turns out, is one of their global ambassadors. We had no idea what to expect, but the company had been kind enough to send a car to pick us up, with the added bonus of getting to listen to Simon & Garfunkel the entire way there.

When we arrived, the main viticulturist, Jesus, met us, a warm, genial man who remained friendly even as my son sulked and pouted his way through the vineyard tour. The vineyard was a marvel, having become completely bio-dynamic over the past decade, with horses to work the fields, sheep to help eliminate the weeds and terrifying geese to guard the vines. Every year a man arrived with falcons to keep grape-loving sparrows at bay. The “pesticides” used were completely plant-derived.

And it was clear that, if there was a man born to grow things, that man was Jesus. He explained that every plant had its own personality, and that a successful grower had to recognize that. “Some plants are productive, some plants are lazy,” he said. “You have to know how to deal with them like people.”

Later, Jesus takes us to what he calls a “nursery”, where young plants are being trained to grow upright, their stems still spindly and small. Some have had the temerity to grow a few grapes, but Jesus says those will have to be clipped. “Their energy needs to be focused on growing up,” he said. “They are not ready to be productive yet.”

All the same, Jesus too was seeing changes to the vineyard wrought by climate change. “The Chardonnay, the Pinot Noir, I don’t know if we can keep growing it,” he said. He showed us a field where the plants looked stunted and gnarled. “These plants are fighting for their lives because they are malnourished,” he explained, adding that rainfall had lessened by more than half over the past three years. “They are doing everything they can to just survive.”

All the same, other plants thrived. When we get to the main chateau, workers are busy harvesting what looks like an entire grocery store shelf of onions. An enormous mastiff pads over to look. A cat, recognizing that my husband is allergic to it, immediately sits on his lap.

Jesus pads out with a bottle of wine and breadsticks that we immediately devour, as my son sits at a separate table out in the sun, intent on showing his displeasure with our activities. “He isn’t a productive plant yet,” I say, and Jesus laughs.

Before we leave, Jesus takes us to the chicken coop, where he literally lifts plump black hens from their nests to collect the eggs underneath. When he hands them to me, they are still warm from the chickens’ butts. It was one of the best gifts I’d ever received.