Bangkok Glutton

Fried chicken and som tum pla rah at Zap 2

It was almost a full two days after the fact when I found out Ric Ocasek had passed away, in his sleep, at the age of 70-75 (no one seems to know for sure). Although I had not followed Ric’s comings and goings lately, and he had lived to a nice ripe old age, I still felt a pang of sadness for his family, his remaining bandmates and of course for myself. I still, only just two days ago even, listen to “The Cars”, their 1978 debut album. I do it enthusiastically, not by accident, not like when I end up with Gang of Four or Killing Joke on shuffle (sorry guys) and am too lazy or tired during my run to change it. I actually seek out “Best Friend’s Girl”, “Good Times Roll”, and “Bye Bye Love” in my downloads, and “Just What I Needed” remains my go-to karaoke song. They are carefully crafted earworms, but still cool, which gives my 15-year-old true inner self some plausible deniability.  The Cars were labeled as “new wave”, but they could have been considered alternative, even though they were played on mainstream radio. They rarely veered off their slightly offbeat course (save for the maudlin “Drive”, the ’80s precursor to every song by Train). Today, the Cars are classic rock.

I don’t really know what it is about them that enabled them to morph into everyone’s idea of their own particular brand of music — Was it the Boston thing? Ben Orr’s sleepy eyes? Or were the songs just simply that catchy? — but their work is classic in the way that New Order and Depeche Modes’ ’80s output is classic. It hasn’t aged badly like, say, some of Motley Crue.  It’s not “niche”. And by “niche”, I mean that it’s not Justin Bieber (which I also listen to, but only “Purpose”, and nothing before or since OK I mean I have standards OK).

I know this isn’t really Justin Bieber

(via GIPHY)

I used to have a rule that I would never eat Thai food outside of Thailand. That’s because I thought of Thai food as niche like Justin Bieber and that it needed the special fairy dust provided by authentic Thai shallots, or the tiny pungent Thai garlic. The nasty funk of real Thai shrimp paste, or dare we say it, fermented anchovies. Let’s not even go near bird’s eye chilies versus jalapeños.

But all that has changed here, of all places, in New Zealand. Or maybe it was just desperation. In any case, I found myself on Dominion Road, ground zero for all Asian food in Auckland, awaiting an actual Isaan meal at the confusingly named Zap 2 Restaurant (639 Dominion Road, 09-638-6393) (unnecessary musing: where is Zap 1? No one knows, including Google). It specializes in Northeastern Thai favorites like larb, fried chicken, grilled pork collar, various spicy-tart nam tok salads and of course som tum (including with pickled crabs and Thai anchovies!), but as this is still abroad, it also serves a full roster of Central and even Southern Thai favorites like gang som (sour curry). In short, the menu is enormous, which used to be another red flag for me but isn’t here in New Zealand.

Chicken I larb you

To last while abroad, a Thai restaurant needs to do a sort of “Cars” thing where they manage to morph into every diner’s idea of their own particular brand of Thai food. Somehow this restaurant has been around for 20 years, but for some reason I was stuck noshing elsewhere on khao soi the size of an infant and stir-fried leftovers rebranded as “Thai salad”. I will not make that mistake again.

Long story short, this is Thai food cooked by Thai people, where some of the other customers actually speak Thai. The other customers, the pad Thais, the central curry lovers, the southern Thai chili heads, are also catered to. And if the som tum is made of carrots (a little more watery, what can you do, no green papaya during a New Zealand winter) and the spicy salads a little short on the herbiage and greens, it’s still Isaan food served with a big helping of hot sticky rice and the kind of solicitous care from the makrua (chef) that is the first thing to remind you of home in a long time. It also blew my head off, chili-wise. That makes it my own particular idea of Thai food.

The “ovaltine pork leg rice” at SabX2

We are people of freedom. We love freedom. Except when we don’t. At those times, we like to be told what to do. Even if we pretend we don’t.

Some street food vendors understand this. Customers are like unruly children who need to be guided and occasionally scolded. The way to stand in line, the way to order, where to sit: sometimes, you need to be told these things.

The formidable woman who shepherds the tourist hordes at SabX2 (4/32-33 Petchburi Soi 19) is one such person, a lady who can be counted on to tell you what to do — in English, because most of the people in line with you (or possibly all) are from somewhere else. But no matter where you are from, the rules are the same for all of us: stand behind the yellow line; form one tidy queue; sit where you are told with no arguments; wait for the lady to give your order; wait for your dish, which must come in the order your request was placed; be open to being moved if more people come in; be considerate of the other people waiting in line after you.

We thought the shophouse might be difficult to find, but of course that was not the case, since the line into the shop stretched out along soi 19. The unusual name SabX2 is because this vendor has two specialties: egg noodles (bamee) and pig’s trotter on rice (khao kha moo), braised with the addition of ovaltine powder to enhance the pork’s sweetness and richness. Both dishes cost 100 baht apiece, but diners pay extra for egg noodles in soup (bamee nam). On a recent visit, the bowls of egg noodles outnumbered plates of the pork rice, but only just.

In case you don’t know, there is no branch in Singapore

You are not coming here for Thai smiles. You are coming here to eat and nothing but. That means that if you have to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with a total stranger, with someone’s spit-out pork knuckle bones in front of you on the steel tabletop, you will. It’s not all a scene out of Oliver Twist, though. One of the men working there rushed to give me a plate of the last pork leg rice (by noon, they only had kaki, the fattiest part of the leg, on offer), earning him a reprimand from the lady because I was served before my dining companion’s egg noodles and wontons with barbecued pork were ready. Moral of the story: come earlier for the pork leg. It takes longer to run out of the egg noodles.

Another conclusion: a mean mommy fosters a sense of community. We got to know our dining companions, Singaporeans eager to try out some Thai street food.  When we left, the line was as long as the one we saw when we arrived, stuffed with people waiting to be told what to do.

The future of street food?

You can tell when the popularity of something has crested when companies begin to incorporate parts of it into their own identities. If you ever see a Nike commercial featuring something like “Know Your Enemy” or “Bullet in the Head” by Rage Against the Machine, it is time to call it a day, our corporate overlords have declared themselves.

So when you see a sign like this:

It is time to really ponder, what is street food? Is it the dish itself? Or is it the difficulty of striking out on your own? Is it the promise of discovery? Or is it community aspect of it, the commingling of people at the same table, glued together out of necessity, in a quest for a good plate of noodles or rice. Although I have derided some diners in the past as being the kinds of gourmets who prize atmosphere over the food, it turns out that street food lovers like me are the other end of that spectrum: the ultimate atmosphere seekers.

The so-called “street food cleanup” has been largely quiet since the run-up to the last election, suggesting that the Bangkok government (BMA) has washed their hands of an initiative that academics have charged with “hurting tourism” (Bangkok Post, 27 Nov 2018).

But that doesn’t mean efforts to impose a Singapore-style tidiness haven’t stopped completely. Even in Chinatown, the birthplace of street food, superstar seafood purveyor T&K Seafood (and its less famous rival) have been forced to clear its sidewalk and offer only tables indoors, effectively cutting 75 percent of its appeal to diners. Authorities are still clearing spaces, but are no longer framing it as “we’re Kevin Costner and the vendors are Robert Deniro in ‘The Untouchables'”. They are no longer saying they are “restoring order to the streets”. They are sneaking a bite from your dessert when you’re in the bathroom.

So it’s time to seriously consider what form street food will take on in the next few years. Shophouse vendors — the ones who have made enough money to be able to rent out a space and are established enough not to worry about getting kicked out, like Joke Samyan  — are currently immune from the threat of change, but the mobile vendors will face a dilemma as they decide in what form they should operate. Should they band together and form a Singapore-style outdoor hawker center? Or do they seek the relative safety (and air-conditioning) of the shopping mall? What does your Magic 8 ball say?

Unlike the bucolic canal-side idyll presented by Icon Siam, The Market shopping mall seems geared primarily towards locals, with its “Siam Square under a roof” concept and, yes, “street food”-focused floor, where prices promise to dip as low as you would find them on the streets.

Shopping mall food courts that include street food usually make sure to include big names; at Emporium, for example, you get Bamee Sawang and the pork knuckle vendor from Soi St. Louis (making a restaurant’s bid to serve similar street food even more inexplicable).

So as you would expect, the street food court boasts its own local stars. There is  Chinatown dessert stalwart Sweettime:

And another favorite of the neighborhood, longtime fish ball specialist Lim Lao Ngo. Marketed here as a “bistro”, this outlet offers things you wouldn’t find on the street in Chinatown, such as a salmon and a river prawn noodle version, priced accordingly (165 baht).

Salmon, original fish ball, and river prawn noodles

As you can maybe see, plastic features prominently here. The chicken rice vendor Rungroj Khao Man Gai even includes plastic models of hanging chickens in their window display, a mimicry of the traditional display favored by the chicken rice vendors outside. It did not encourage me to try the chicken rice here.

Other vendors included Kha Mhu Fukui (pig’s trotter on rice) and Yen Ta Fo Jay Nung (pink seafood noodles). But opportunities still abound for the enterprising vendor. Missing were a guay jab (rolled pork noodle), congee and Thai-style rice porridge stall, so if you make any of these things, you still have a chance. You can then rest easy that, even if the streets are ultimately cleared, or if the world heats up to levels unbearable for noshing, you will at least have made your choice.