Bangkok Glutton

While traveling, it is occasionally fun to hear remarks that you may have made to a visitor to your own country — call it “conversational karma”. In my case, it came from being warned repeatedly that this dish or that morsel might be “too spicy”, and to beware. This has never made me not think of the kid glove treatment I give people who come to Thailand, which no one has ever associated with chilies or spicy food before, no siree.

Like the Thais, Koreans came into contact with chilies in the 1600s, courtesy of the seafaring Portuguese. And like the Thais, Koreans have taken to chilies with a vengeance. There is rarely something adorning the dinner table that is not slathered in some kind of chili sauce, ready to be cooked and wrapped in greenery of some kind, a handy food delivery system in lieu of those sadistic metal chopsticks that Koreans like to use. If it’s never come into contact with chili before, no worries, they have it covered. I learned this the hard way when I went to Krispy Kreme for the first of what would be many times (I have a 7-year-old) and ordered the “hot original”. No, the “hot original” is not a glazed doughnut hot from the oven. It is a doughnut flavored with kimchi spices and then glazed. This would explain its bright orange color and the bits of scallion that appear to float on the surface of the dough. For once, it was indeed “too spicy”. My son was not a fan.

But it was summer, and many other delights awaited us. For example, the chilled buckwheat (and sometimes corn!) noodles, a great relief to this particular Glutton allergic to most other types of flour:

This was a great relief at mealtimes because the weather was so stultifyingly hot, it made me actually miss Bangkok. It felt like walking around inside of a microwave. Needless to say, it was murder on everyone around me, as I had chosen the occasion of this trip to start experimenting with natural deodorants. I spent the week oscillating between “orange alert” (smelling like ketchup) and “red alert” (lamb souvlaki).

The Korean antidote to hot weather is (quite characteristically for people who believe that eating ginseng is good for you) consuming even more hot food. This is why we ended up at Gobong Samgyetang in the mall (it has a Michelin star don’t you know) ingesting hot chicken-ginseng soup at midday. The samgyetang features a whole chicken — not post-steroid Ben Affleck-sized, but juvenile-sized — stuffed with rice and ginseng, boiled and served in its own broth with dates and a smattering of sliced leeks and black sesame seeds. Served with a side of pickles, kimchi, and a “bone bucket” into which to throw your discards, it is both delicious and sweat-inducing. On weekends, Gobong only serves either sanghwang or hanbang samgyetang (with added medicinal herbs). This one-pot meal is considered a summertime go-to.

If chicken stew is meant to improve your stamina, I guess even more stew could turn you into Wonder Woman. With this in mind, our friends took us to get kimchi jjigae (kimchi hotpot) at a convivial, buzzy restaurant where everything was in Korean, including the name. Everyone was thoughtfully given bibs to wear, but the cooler, in-the-know Koreans simply draped these bibs over their laps, because unlike me, they wouldn’t be sloshing their grody kimchi juices everywhere. This stew was served with sides of cold soup and dried seaweed, as well as chilled guava juice, all meant to lessen the sting of the spice. Koreans seem more thoughtful about this than the Thais, whose anti-spice remedies amount to laughing at you, cucumbers, and rice.

Such is our love for chicken that we even made time to trek two hours out of town (on three different trains) to Chuncheon, where a street crowned with a giant golden rooster is lined with myriad restaurants all serving the same dish: dak galbi, or chicken stir-fried on a hot plate.

 

Our friend Michelle tells us that dak galbi was a dish favored by poor students who dreamed of dining on real galbi made from red meat, but could only afford chicken. So the dish was rebranded as galbi, although it in no way involves “ribs”. Our host Jay ordered two servings of intestine to go with the chicken, probably because he was punking us. Not surprisingly, this stirfry — chicken, intestines, cabbage, scallions, onions et al — are wrapped in lettuce leaves and eaten with your choice of sauce, kimchi and raw garlic, if you like.

Incidentally, that is also the way we ate our Northern Chinese-style lamb kebabs, skewered and cooked in front of us at the table and later dipped into spices like dried chili and fennel seed while still dripping with fat:

Of course, no trip to Seoul would be complete (for a Thai, at least) without some Korean “barbecue”. Our hosts ordered us both pork and chicken, plus copious amounts of soju (distilled rice liquor) and enough kimchi to sink a dinghy, but before embarking on dinner we had to pass the test of the complimentary appetizers: a mound of Jay’s fave, black beef tripe, accompanied by pickled perilla leaves and several cubes of raw liver.

There is not much I can tell you about this except that it tastes exactly like it looks. I preferred the liver cubes seared, wrapped in fresh perilla leaves with a nice big dab of ssamjang (brown dipping sauce). The soju didn’t hurt either.

 

Barbecue was the glue that held the American South together. Served at political rallies as a way to lobby for votes and at church parties as a way to lure lazy congregants, barbecues became associated with celebrations and a surefire way to deliciously dispose of the hordes of wild pigs that lived in the forests at the time.

The production of pork became a mark of Southern American patriotism, a way of making sure the South was self-sufficient. Attending a barbecue was not considered especially patriotic, because of course you would attend a barbecue, who wouldn’t, unless you were crazy and had no friends. The “whole hog” was used — this was no time for getting queasy about pig parts — so diners could get their choice of cracklings, Boston butts, bacon, ham hocks, fatback, ears, tongue, spleen, feet, tails, smoked intestines stuffed with sausage, and souse (an indiscriminate mix of the hearts, lungs, skins, etc). The lucky pig was cooked slowly through indirect heat from wood or coals that had to be painstakingly replaced every 10 or 15 minutes, in a smoky shack built over the pork situation just for the occasion.  The resulting meat, after 10 hours of work, was served with lemonade and whisky, because a party’s a party. These barbecues were considered “class-blind” occasions, a place that served as the glue for Southern society. The story of barbecue — a tradition that became entrenched in the 50 years before the Civil War — turned into the story of America.

It doesn’t take a great leap to say that Thai street food could once have been considered roughly the same thing, the glue that held Thai people together. There were places that were, quite obviously, closed to no one — staffed with plastic stools and steaming hot vats of something edible and, ideally, a grumpy person who would put you in your place — but clamored over by everyone, because the food was that good (and cheap, but mostly good, because you don’t have a cook and you can’t cook, don’t pretend). The knowledge of the best of these places among Thais was like scrapping over baseball cards with a bunch of nerds, something that either solidified or obliterated your personal street card. Plus one if your knowledge extended beyond your personal neighborhood; +5 if it included a different city (usually Chiang Mai); -10 if it involved a different country, because who cares. The idea of this mix, and this glue, was what drew me to Thai street food in the first place: that I could easily insert myself into the “we” of it all, if I could just pick up a pair of chopsticks and march out onto the sidewalk.

And the stories behind street food, I loved those too. How it turned some families into millionaires over the course of one generation; how it enabled record numbers of women to join the workforce, and others to gain financial independence and flexible hours if you were good enough in the kitchen and had good kids to help you, like Ian Kittichai’s mom. The “American dream” could actually exist, in Thailand, if you were good enough or smart enough. You could become just like that moo ping dude on Silom Road, probably the most durable success story in all of Bangkok street food-dom. Who would not want to become Hia Owen?

But when people talk about becoming an adult, a lot of it involves resigning yourself to stuff and accepting “reality”. Like, I accept that I will never see the White Stripes or Prince play live. I accept that my blonde hair makes me look like the crazy albino guy who stalks Whitney Houston in “The Bodyguard”. I accept that George RR Martin will probably never finish “A Song of Ice and Fire”, so I will have to finish it in my head, knowing that everything I choose is the right way for the series to end. Street food will change, because time changes everything, and progress is inevitable, whether it’s artificially induced or not.

So when our friend Matt came to Bangkok to write about street food, it only made sense to check out something that would, in all likelihood, become one of Bangkok street food’s futures: the “thalad” (market), a collection of many street vendors under one roof, sharing tables and resources. Vincent showed us one of his favorites in his ‘hood, Asoke, called “Thalad Ruamsap”, a lunchtime standby for all the office workers in the area.

Inside, you get two interlocked “food courts” featuring a plethora of choices, from the very basic (rice with fried omelet) to the harder-to-find (a chili dip station; Northern Thai food; fermented rice noodles with different curries and fixings). We, naturally, went hog wild, picking everything we could find until our table was a heaving mass of bounty that drew side-eyes from every Thai who passed us by.

Was it good? That seemed beside the point. There were “son-in-law” eggs, steamed savory seafood custard in banana leaf cups, chili dips, charcoal crepes, pretty awesome fried bananas. That the market displayed food that appeared to have some degree of care put into it seemed good enough. That you wouldn’t have to traipse an hour out of the city center seemed good enough. Good enough, and without the threat of some clipboard-wielding policeman coming in to bust everything up. That’s where we are now, in the world of Thai street food. That’s a sign of impending adulthood, right?

You can get to Thalad Ruamsap by crossing Asoke Road from the Mor Sor Wor University and entering the alleyway next to Ochaya.

 

We can rage against the dying of the light all we want but progress continues apace, bringing with it a Starbucks and 7-11 on every corner. Soon we will become the shopping mall utopia that our ancestors had always dreamed of. Until then, we will still have to contend with food that does not come in plastic wrapping. The future cannot come soon enough for New Bangkok.

When I heard through the grapevine that Suan Plu was the next street to be cleared, I was confused. After all, this street is home to both the Immigration Office and the district police station. Why would they want to get rid of the places where they themselves eat, and where their own wives work? Not to mention that the quality of street food on Suan Plu is very, very good. But then I remembered that we live in Thailand (see: Thonglor) and that our corporate overlords progress is not to be denied.

And then when I heard that a new market would be opening up on the corner of Suan Plu Soi 3 (right behind Isaan hotpot vendor Jay Ouan Moo Jum), and that it would be charging vendors 30,000 baht a month for a 2×3 meter area, it all made sense. This would be the new street food model to be followed in New Bangkok — how better to make money than from street vendors who need space to stay downtown?

So when Trude and I went to Suan Plu to check out the space earmarked for the market, we were surprised to find out (from the local grapevine, our friend Jason) that plans had gone Thai-style kaput: quietly, with no information on why. After pouring concrete and marking out the plots, the owner had decided to fence off the entire space. Rumor now has it that the lot will become a much-needed hotel.

But we still needed to eat. After asking a very accommodating server at a nearby wine bar (where else would I be) where to go, we learned that the cart vendor just across the street was improbably popular, setting up at around 6 in the evening and usually selling out by 8pm. She claimed it was the best place in the entire neighborhood for grilled pork parts: tongue, ears, short ribs and most importantly, pork neck.

I have always thought that the best pork neck on Suan Plu was Jay Ouan. For an idea of what I’m talking about, here it is:

It’s fatty and slightly sweet, paired with a spicy tamarind sauce. It’s what you’d expect from a good Isaan place in Bangkok.

But we probably figured out we were in for a treat when people kept cutting in line to place their orders to the pig parts vendor (unfortunately, I do not have a name and he does not have a card, but he is across the street from Wine Out and Smalls, which is on the corner of Suan Plu Soi 1). Don’t worry, I lost my temper and complained. And fear not, he was smart enough to tell me that we were next. I was very hungry, you know.

They had run out of pigs’ ears by the time we had gotten there, so we got grilled pork tongue and asked for pork neck served nam tok style (spicy salad garnished with shallots, chilies, fresh mint and roasted rice grains). He asked us how spicy we wanted it, which is a question that vendors rarely bother to ask, especially busy ones with a long line in front of their cart. I always ask for “klang”, or medium (which actually amounts to one half ladle of dried spice and ended up being not spicy enough).

We took our stuff and ended up eating it furtively at Jay Ouan, which was slammed with customers and didn’t have time to see what we were doing. We agreed: pig parts guy was the superior pork neck, fattier and redolent of smoke. The grilled pork tongue, too, smoky and chunky with just enough resistance to make chewing fun. And the tamarind sauce, sweeter and thicker than Jay Ouan’s, if you like that sort of thing.

To grab your own bag of delicious grilled pig, make your way to Soi Suan Plu on a day that is probably not Monday, after 5:30 but well before 8 in the evening. Find the mobile cart outfitted with a silver chimney thing about 5 minutes in, on the left hand side if you are walking from Sathorn Road. And if someone cuts in line in front of you, jai yen yen.