Bangkok Glutton

Being a freelancer often means not getting paid on time (still waiting, Dotdash Meredith). But there are good things about it, too. Sometimes, you end up discovering a place much sooner than you would normally. This is what happened to me when an editor assigned me a story on coriander, and I made my way out of my comfort zone (that would be my house) onto the MRT to Santiphap Road to meet Chef Gabriela of Delia.

Delia is one of those rare restaurants in Bangkok where you feel like you’re in someone’s home, sort of like the vibe that Soul Food Mahanakorn used to have (RIP, Soul Food). You want to be well-mannered, because you’re a guest at someone’s house, but you also feel comfortable, because the house belongs to a friend. In fact, Delia is so successful at this that it is genuinely jarring to get a bill at the end of the evening. That said, it’s well worth it — especially for the selection of mezcal and the tetela, a tortilla wrapped around mushrooms and sauced with green mole (which utilizes all parts of the coriander plant!)

But I’m not here to talk about Delia. I’m here to talk about Homdee Mee Giew (“Fragrant Noodles and Dumplings”), an “aharn tham sung” (cooked to order) vendor just around the corner from Delia that’s open for lunch. That’s where Chef Gabi took me after our interview. Although the noodles and dumplings would be the thing to order here — it’s in the name after all — the item that seems most popular is their “moo grob” (crispy pork), which is frankly out of this world. Moo grob is a thing that is hard to be outstanding at, since it’s always delicious, but if one were to be especially persnickety, Homdee’s rendition is superior.

This moo grob features largely in many an ordered bowl of bamee, egg noodles freshly made with pork lard in a shophouse kitchen in the alleyway behind the shop. It’s even better with the addition of the shrimp-filled dumplings, encased in wafer-thin dough. Both the dumplings and noodles are seriously good, reminiscent of the glory days of Bamee Sawang when it was close to Hua Lumphong and the father of the family was a constant presence, making sure that no one was drinking beer with his food. If I was still writing about “Thailand’s Best Street Food” (I’m not), this vendor would definitely be included for the noodles and dumplings alone.

But if you’re not a noodle person, no problem. Homdee also serves excellent fried rice, the Platonic ideal as demonstrated by Chef Aoy in the Thai film “Hunger” (if you haven’t seen it, you should, just to see how hard the ideal plate of fried rice is to find in this city). You can even just have a simple plate of steamed rice crowned with the requisite crispy pork and gravy. In other words, Homdee has got you covered for lunch. I am counting the days until I get back.

Address: 460 Mittraphan Rd, Pom Prap, Pom Prap Sattru Phai, Bangkok 10100

I haven’t done a Thanksgiving post in a while. But I thought that now would be the best possible time to write one. Not because I’m so thankful, but because 2024 has really sucked for me, personally. Really, really sucked. Like, the worst year in recent memory. But I’ve been told by my shrink that times like these are good times to count one’s blessings.

So I’m going to tell you a secret. I’ve been keeping a list that I remember to update only periodically, called “Good Things are Always Happening to Me”. Because I am crazy, I wouldn’t normally have titled a list that way, because I think this title jinxes me. But I’m game for doing anything my therapist thinks is a good idea. So I’ve written down things like:

• “I was able to do some hard yoga poses.”
• “I had a good lunch with my dad and he gave me some money.”
• “I saw two beautiful yellow birds today.”
• “I have a place to live.”
• and so on, and so on

I don’t know if this list is changing my life, because so far, nothing’s happening. But it does give me something to do when I’m not playing Candy Crush or watching YouTube videos.

I am sure I’m not the only person who has had a shitty year. To those of you like me, I’m going to take a well-worn page out of my blog archives and, once again, reference “A Song of Ice and Fire”. It’s easy to think that right now only the bad guys are winning and the good guys are being punished. Where we are is exactly where “A Dance with Dragons” left off, more than a decade ago, with Jon Snow bleeding out into the, uh, snow (sorry for the spoiler but come on). We will likely never truly find out what happens through George R. R. Martin, but we do know there is some sort of conclusion, and that it won’t be exactly what we expect. It will be a good conclusion, but one that we won’t recognize as good until we look back on it later and realize. It will be the “green smoothie” of good conclusions, something good for us but a chore to get down.

So with that in mind, I will look back on this shitty year, and remember only the good parts of it. A lot of that means, yes, the food.

January: Deep-fried seabass in “three flavors” sauce at Pa Yunh in Petchburi

February: Kai kata (egg in a pan) at Aim Aot in Udon Thani

March: Gang pak bung with fermented pork at my aunt’s house in Chiang Rai

April: Shrimp kua kling at Haawm On Nut

May: Nasi dakae (Thai-Muslim-style fish and rice) at Nasi Dakae di Fathoni in Pattani

June: Lamb ribs at Ōre

July: Moussaka at Al-Saray Sathorn

August: Lobster rolls and steamed clams in Maine

September: Sayo at Cooking with Mon on Koh Lanta

October: Samuian Thai-Muslim tom yum soup at Somrom Space in Samui

November: Khao poon with pork heart, lungs, liver and intestine at Khao Poon Nam Jaew in Chiang Khan

It was a good year of eating! I hope that you, too, had a good year of food, and that 2025 will be a better year (and not just in terms of food) for all of us.

Just got back from Isan again. What happened while I was away? HAHAHAHAHAHHA.

If you, like me, were disappointed by the outcome of an election that feels like 5 years ago, I think we are all due to learn something from our differently-minded “friends”. That lesson is: focus on your own shit. If you feel exhausted or burned out, take care of yourself. Live to fight another day. I’ve been living in Thailand for longer than Timothee Chalamet has been alive. I’m “a’ight”, as the 30-40-year-old kids say. Concepts of thoughts and prayers.

Of course, a big part of my self-care always involves food. Increasingly that food, for me, can be found in every nook and cranny of Isan, somewhere off of a highway and tucked into a mountain hamlet or lurking behind a morning market, unheralded and unsung but always serving food packed with enough chilies to blow the part of my brain that thinks about elections away.

Road trips are always the best way, for me, to explore Isan, especially since everything is 2-4 hours away. A perfect stop for lunch/brunch: Kanom Jeen Pradok Baan Krung Yod, where, obviously, the ever-popular fermented rice noodle take center stage, accompanied by a battery of curries that includes my personal favorite, their “gang gai” (chicken curry), bulked up with yummy cubes of chicken blood. Mindful that we were in Korat (Nakhon Ratchasima), we also ordered “tum Korat” (som tum with peanuts and pla rah, a fusion of Central and Isan styles) and “pad mee Korat” (fried noodles with pork and lots of chili powder).

Just a note to point out something that I’ve noticed since working on a “spicy snack” project with a company that I signed an NDA for: if I order som tum in my broke-ass bad Thai accent, I get bland som tum, even if I assure them that I can take the heat. This has happened to me at Emporium Food Court, where I asked for 5 “met” (chilies) and got something for children (other people: why are you ordering som tum at Emporium Food Court), at Som Tum Nong Rejoice (granted, I was with a German person), and now in Korat. This wasn’t a problem when I was new to Thailand, but now that my tastebuds are as leathery and worn-out as any old Thai person’s, it’s becoming an issue. Have a look at the som tum ordered by my sister-in-law Wikki:

Now look at what I get when I order.

There is a difference, right? I’m not hallucinating? This is nothing to me! I feel like Mark Wiens!

That night, we ended up in Khon Kaen, where we were lucky enough to score a table at Kaen, arguably the fanciest place in town. Chefs Paisarn and Jib turn out thoughtful Thai dishes with purely local ingredients, and I am always looking forward to trying out what I missed last time. That night, we tried their take on “mee krob” (finished table side), a mind-blowing “thom saap” (Issn-style spicy soup) flavored with pickled plum, and a beautiful pomelo salad paired with calamari and the requisite wild betel leaves.

After a quick pit stop in Udon Thani for breakfast and an overnight in Nam Nao, we ended in Chiang Khan, a lovely Mekong riverside town that was featured in the best edition of Lonely Planet (for Isan coverage) a few years ago. From there, we could explore everything around us: the soaring peaks of Phu Kradung, the cutesy shops of Kaeng Khut Khu, and, repeatedly, the damn walking street in downtown Chiang Khan. This is where I finally got to challenge my spice threshold (it’s like going to the gym, doncha know).

We raided the morning market multiple times for some seriously kick-ass pork rinds that we could snack on with whatever chili dip we found, and saw that the locals obviously shared my yen for spicier things:

And that my love for som tum pu pla rah (som tum with pickled crabs and fermented fish sauce) would be well-matched:

But, alas: with all of the chilies I was housing, well, you can imagine how my next few days were. I picked up some activated charcoal tablets at the 7-11 (where there is a whole section of my-tummy-hurts medicine) and took it easy on my last day. This was lucky for me, because we discovered a morning/lunch vendor serving “khao poon” (the Laotian version of kanom jeen) in “nam jaew” (clear broth) with lots of special pork bits (intestine, heart, lungs, liver, kidney) that were seriously delicious after a judicious squeeze of lime and, um, more mashed chilies.

God help me, because I couldn’t help myself — I added a heaping spoonful of that mashed Karen chili to my bowl. We’ve got to get our thrills where we can, I guess. Please send me your thoughts and prayers.