Bangkok Glutton

Beef noodles at Wuanood

Note: The owners here are actually Thais who have studied abroad in the US. The basic premise (that we cross-pollinate our culinary influences when we spend any amount of time somewhere else) holds, doncha think? 

I have never been a fan of Khao San Road. The bucket cocktails, the blaring music competing from both sides of the street, the endless parade of pad Thai/fried spring roll carts standing in for Thai street food — it’s all pretty much my nightmare, aside from being in an actual club blaring the Black Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get It Started” on a never-ending loop as a bunch of fraternity bros high-five each other over my head.

All the same, the decision to clear the street of its street vendors from August 1 onwards is baffling to me in many ways. It’s not just because we always thought Khao San Road would be untouched. It’s because of the reasons behind that assumption: namely, the budget-conscious backpackers who form the backbone of the clientele there, the fact that the Thai economy relies heavily on tourism, and the likelihood of these tourists wanting to see something that doesn’t look like what they left back home. What would end up taking these vendors’ place? If you guessed 7-11, Starbucks, Burger King and some nearby shopping malls in the offing, congratulations, because I guessed that too and we are officially guessing twinsies.

At a time when Thailand is undergoing a gradual strip-mallification, Thai food continues to proliferate and flourish abroad. Sometimes it is not in the form that many Thais recognize … but them’s the breaks. Was Kurt Cobain thrilled to see fraternity bros enthusiastically mouthing the words to his songs in concert? No, he was not. Was Prince thrilled to see various people maul his songs onstage during a tribute performance? No, he was not. Cooks abroad, making food for people who are not necessarily Thai, are doing the very same thing with their interpretations of these classic dishes.

Now, when I sit down to a Thai restaurant in, say, Brooklyn and am confronted with crab rangoon and a watery green curry, do I think to myself, “Gee, I wish someone would swoop in and save me/save this restaurant?” I admit, sometimes I do. But never, ever, do I ever think the answer lies in the Thai tasting robot (I will never stop talking about this forever, because it was a genuinely batshit crazy idea). I guess I am just not as proactive about these things as Thai officials are. Also, I feel like it’s a futile exercise: aside from LA, there are just not enough Thais and Thai palates in this world to ensure that dishes in Thai restaurants from Prague to Pennsylvania taste like they do in Thailand. This is unlike the situation for Chinese food in Auckland or Vancouver, where there are plenty of Chinese people around to reward authenticity. Be happy that someone else knows about green curry and pad Thai. Count your blessings.

And sometimes, something genuinely exciting happens when you grow a cuisine abroad and see it imported back to you. People saw that with Chinese-American food, a once-derided niche that is today genuinely beloved for its chop suey, moo goo gai pan, kung pao, and of course, General Tso’s chicken (all stuff that I never got to try as a kid, because my parents liked the real thing). The things that people do with sushi rolls nowadays (tempura, deep-frying, mayonnaise) are things you are just starting to see in Japan, where now even salmon is everywhere, except at serious places where it is embarrassing for you if you order it (trust me).

In that vein, Thai-American stuff is just beginning to trickle back to the homeland. Wuanood purports to serve the same recipe as longstanding fave “Nuea Grob Noodles Behind Thai Airways” on Vibhavadee Road, but they do it with a decidedly fusion-y flair. Owned by Thai-Americans descended from the original Vibhavadee vendor, Wuanood specializes in, obviously, beef noodles, but allows you — via super-detailed multiple-choice menu — to choose the cut of beef, method of cooking, and even level of spiciness, allowing a level of customization set to please even the most persnickety of diners. Beef-averse customers need not worry: you can also get pork (Kurobuta of course) and/or a plethora of sides that include yum woonsen (spicy glass noodle salad), fried spring rolls and crunchy Korea-like chicken wings. Best of all, it’s indoors and air-conditioned, so you don’t risk heat stroke from going out on your lunch hour. If this is what the coming strip- mallification of Thailand looks like, bring on the corporate overlords.

Self-portrait with noodles

You may start with a 30-minute run, or a group barre class. It’s boring and/or excruciating, but after a week, you’re hooked — the pain is nothing when compared to the glow of self-congratulations after the fact. I AM AWESOME, you think, so you do it again. After a while, like a drug, that hour-long class seems like old hat; it’s new heights of boredom and pain that you now seek. Some find that backbreaking solace in Crossfit, or marathons, or iron man competitions. Others take a different route: meditation, a cleanse, or detox.

It’s easy to say “I’m detoxing for 30 days, don’t feed me anything good”, and then eat soup and be mean to your husband all month long. But if you really want to do it, and to be held accountable, you go to something like Samahita Retreat in Samui, where detox, yoga, and, yes, weight-loss programs are available for anywhere between 7 to 14 days.

Samahita’s slogan is “Breathe into a new life”, but my friend Trude would say a more honest one would be “Luxury fat farm”. Open since 2003, Samahita means “centered” and its default setting is its “yoga/core/cycle” program, which every guest automatically gets once they book into the retreat. This basic default mode means that you aren’t required to stay the minimum of 7 days that it takes for the detox or weight loss programs to take effect. So naturally, this is what Trude, Fiona and I chose. It was not until I arrived on the premises that I discovered that “yoga/core/cycle” means yoga, core, and cycling classes because duh (I thought it meant some sort of yoga like “sun cycle”, only “core cycle”. Whatever ok?)

Gwyneth judges me

The “yoga/core/cycle” program involves up to 5 hours of classes, including morning meditation and breath work, yoga flow, core class in the afternoon, spinning, and then a gentler, “restorative” yoga. In the evening, you get another hour of meditation if you want. There is a morning banana and coffee and tea from 6.45 on, and a “hot” breakfast available from 9.30 while you are already in yoga class, but the bulk of the eating is done from 11am to 8 at night, when the dinner buffet closes down. In the afternoon lull at 3pm, you get a “snack” that is invariably a fruit that skinny girls always seem to eat, like papaya, watermelon or dragonfruit. I am detailing this as clearly as I can because 1. I am a pig and 2. this is ultimately what Samahita is all about.

In other words, besides being “centered” and working the crap out of you with its fitness and yoga classes, Samahita is mainly about (excuse my French) “le poop.” If you have problems in this area, Samahita is there to fix it with its smoothies, its juices, its poop-y fruity snacks, its all-you-can-eat lunch and dinner fiber buffets. I can attest (again TMI) to going to the bathroom twice a day; my companions, three. In any other setting, this would be cause for alarm and a trip to the pharmacist. Here, it was merely a byproduct, evidence of our detox.

And the food? The food. The food is a portal through which any culinary pathology can pass and thrive, uninhibited. Gluten-intolerant? Lactose-free? Vegan? Wary of garlic and onions? Every food phobia you can think of is acknowledged, cosseted, tended to like the weary feet of a tourist at an upscale Thai spa. There is even a handy food index:

Note the “Thai food” warning

Not surprisingly for a place that must denote its Thai food dishes, the clientele is overwhelmingly Western, with a smattering of Singaporean and Japanese guests. Many, if not most, of the guests knew Thailand solely through their experience at Samahita. This might explain why the food caters to a crowd that prizes purity first and taste second: the buffet changes daily but always features a salad, steamed veggies, a dip with crudités and a “green power soup” that I strongly suspect are the pureed steamed green vegetables from the night before. The focus is on freedom from meat, from sugar, with the occasional nod to dairy, wheat, eggs and even fish.  Things that hint at “sweet” are simply nods at those things, security blankets that don’t mean anything. This comes into focus most clearly in things like the “chia chocolate pudding”, which Fiona calls “the most anorexic pudding ever” and tasting as if “a chocolate bar had been waved over it during assembly”.

Perhaps this is why much of the Thai staff, when confronted with an actual Thai and a Thai-speaking farang like Trude, did not really take us to heart. Even Fiona noticed, telling us, in case there was any doubt, that “Yeah, they really don’t like you guys.” I think the underlying assumption (because it couldn’t possibly really be us!) was that farang whose only experience of Thailand would be this retreat would be expected to indulge in crazy things like vegan food and 5 hours of fitness classes a day. Why on earth would other people who really know Thailand do it though? To opt for a garlic-free mash of grilled green peppers instead of nam prik num, to content oneself with flat rice noodles in a vegetable-and-arrowroot gravy instead of real guaythiew lard na? In their eyes, what were we thinking?

What we were thinking was that it was nice, for once, to feel so exercised, healthy and self-righteous. All the same, three days was enough. So enough, that we plan to do it again, later this year. I will bring athletic shoes this time, so I can go spinning. It won’t be any longer than three days, of course.

Twinsies

On the way home, I bought a wildly overpriced bag of Doritos (extra Nacho flavor) and ate them outside, in a courtyard of the cray-cray Samui airport built to resemble a suburban US shopping plaza. It was the best Doritos I’d ever had, everything I’d been missing: satisfyingly crunchy, aggressively umami, yo-yo flavors both salty and sharp. That alone seemed worth the trip.

Crispy tapioca cracker with mieng kum sauce

(Note: If you think I can be bought with a bottle of Pinot Noir and some nice dinner conversation … you are right? Not a question. Dinner came courtesy of Haoma and Extrovert PR & Marketing.)

One of the best things about Anthony Bourdain was his refusal to be diplomatic. This really set him apart in the food world, where usually the best thing to do when you have nothing nice to say is to say nothing at all. But such was the force of his personality, his charisma, his barefaced intelligence, that people were willing to let him slide for it, even though he had the best job in the world and was therefore a worthy magnet of our jealousy and envy.

Karen sent me a list from insidehook.com detailing all the targets of his social media ire over the years. This includes the movie “Baby Driver” starring Ansel Elgort, whose face never fails to remind me of the guy who rolls his eyes when I complain that the music is on too loud at the cafe near my house. Also, the soundtrack is vastly overrated. So I agree with Bourdain, whose writing was always best — and he was a wonderful writer — when he was raging against something.

But I don’t always agree with him. Here, this list of the edible things he has insulted suggests that he was woefully misguided on matters like hot chicken (too spicy? lol) and Frito pie (which he compared to dog poo), but very much correct on club sandwiches (like Al Qaeda), Kobe sliders (Douche City), house-made ketchup (ditto), and unicorn frappuccinos (barfarama).

Here, my own list of culinary pet peeves would have to include:

1. Dry ice. It makes me instantly suspicious of what is underneath all that haze that is obscuring it, like the sunglasses and huge visors that plastic surgery patients always wear after a procedure.
2. The movie “The Hundred Foot Journey”. I know it’s not food per se. But every time I think of it I fly into a rage. The idea that a young Indian cook has to prostrate himself before some old French lady in order to become a proper chef still makes me want to throw a vat of dal over Lasse Hallstrom’s head even today. India has no long culinary history? That dates back to before the people who became French had ever heard of pots? Those were not questions.
3. Cynicism. Sometimes it’s expected, like when McDonald’s tries to sell cold brew coffee. But sometimes it comes out of left field, in a restaurant where the chef is clearly capitalizing on his name, a bare-bones operation masquerading as something else, clearly designed to make the owners some money, finally, because it’s their time now and kids are expensive, yo. It’s the restaurant equivalent of Rod Stewart’s entire post-1977 career. Not as obvious as frozen pizzas, but not that far away, either. It’s an outpost in Las Vegas where the owner never visits.

So when I go to a restaurant like Haoma — which is not Chinese, but named after a sacred plant in the Zoroastrian religion brought to earth by divine birds — I am struck first by its naked sincerity. The brainchild of former Charcoal chef Deepanker Khosla, Haoma labels itself as an “urban farm”, where the herbs that perfume your dishes and cocktails are grown in profusion in the garden in front of you, and the fish available for your dinner is plucked straight from a barrel next to your window.

The current veggie main course of roasted cauliflower and long beans in a curry cream with crispy Job’s tears

You don’t have to worry about not understanding what each dish is, because someone, even Chef Deepanker himself, will be there to stare earnestly into your eyes as he explains exactly what went into your food. No worries if you rudely take photos of your food as he speaks — he’ll wait for you to finish. It’s this kind of obvious care that permeates every bit of the experience; it’s not a marketing gimmick, it’s not a trendy ploy.

After leaving Charcoal, Chef Deepanker said he took a food truck around the country, attempting to make sustainable food with as little waste as possible. After a few months, a friend told him it was time to go back to fine dining. Haoma, set deep into the residential wilds of Sukhumvit 31, was the result. Chef Deepanker, who lives next door, hopes to eventually harvest the root vegetables in his own garden and incorporate them into Haoma’s menu. Helping him in the kitchen is sous-chef Tarun Bhatia, christened “San Pellegrino Young Chef of 2017” by the powers that be at Asia’s Top 50.

The garden is already pretty extensive, providing the sorrel for the caramelized milk bread or the Job’s tears for the bread. The grouper with lettuce cream is the restaurant’s first 0-km dish, featuring ingredients plucked from its own grounds. It could seem precious until you remember how people have gotten sick from eating contaminated spinach or Romaine lettuce, how fish are disappearing from the water, and how pigs and cows are killed, and then you think, This might be how we will have to eat from now on. Purposefully and with an eye to the future, like the ascetic monks in the Zen temple who eat every grain of rice.

Meringue with passionfruit

And then you remember how uncool it is to be so sincere, and go back to listing all the stuff that you hate.