Bangkok Glutton

Grilled river prawns Ruanthai Goong Pao

For whatever reason, I’ve been going through all my old things, combing through high school and college mementoes for no reason other than to delay doing real work. Aside from the occasional wince-inducing photo with Ill-Chosen Boyfriends 1-5, I stumbled on a treasure trove of music — or, at least it would be a treasure trove if I still had a cassette player, because I don’t have one, and haven’t seen one since about 1999.

Tapes. Lots and lots of tapes, in a blue zip-up Case Logic container, remember those? Mix tapes, too, because that was how people showed their love back then. It was the music I listened to from roughly 13-17 — the best music of our lives, at a time when it mattered most to us, before we got really busy or our tastes corrupted by boyfriends who preferred classic rock. I would argue that the music of 13-17 is the music we love most. Even if it is New Kids on the Block, or Spice Girls, or whatever else you are too cool to admit to now. You will always secretly love this music most.

Finding those tapes was a blessing and a curse, because it inevitably led to … where the hell are the rest of my tapes?! Where is my Kate Bush “Hounds of Love,” or my XTC “Skylarking”, or even my China Crisis — stuff I listened to nonstop along with the Replacements and my “Pretty in Pink” soundtrack. What happened to REM’s “Murmurs”? Who took my Bauhaus? And how the f#$k did I get four copies of Pearl Jam’s “Ten”?!

River prawns are the mix tapes of Thai cuisine. Bear with me here. They are like foie gras to French food, caviar to the Russians, hamburgers to the USA. They are, inevitably, the favorite food of Thais, secretly or not: big, juicy, flavorful, adaptable to nearly every Thai treatment and ubiquitous if you aren’t too picky.

That’s the bad thing about them, too. Because, while you can get them anywhere, even Chiang Rai, even down the road from your house at the corner next to the gas station, it’s not the best. No, the best you can get is in Ayutthaya. Really. Every Thai knows this. The best grilled river prawns in the country are in Ayutthaya, the old capital of Siam before Bangkok, and still the unofficial capital of all that is prawn-related. And, in Ayutthaya, the best grilled prawn restaurant is arguably Ruan Thai Goong Pao (1/2 Moo 4, Wat Cherng Lane, Tambon Ratchakram, 035-367-730). So when my friends Nat and Cha invite me for a lunch a mere 18 songs’ ride away, of course I will say yes.

Stir-fried morning glory with garlic and chilies

It’s easy to say that anything tastes good as long as the dipping sauce is decent, and that saves a lot of Thai seafood restaurants all over the country. But when the prawns (and I use the word “prawns” because “shrimp” doesn’t really convey the size of these things) don’t really need the dipping sauce, that is something special. They come to the table hot, halved, and barely opaque, meant to be pried — with difficulty — from their shells in a way that makes it impossible for you not to splatter your neighbor. The orange goo in the head, meanwhile, is supposed to be mixed, painstakingly, with each grain of rice on your plate, so that everything is coated in shrimp head. Nat and Cha look askance at my attempts to dab the top of my rice with the goop like butter on a cobbler, but I can’t help it: shrimp goo is just not my thing. But if you are Thai, or truly know Thai food, that is the way you are supposed to eat all your river prawns.

It’s not just about river prawns: there is the obvious tom yum, or spicy lemongrass soup with seafood, and shrimp baked, Chinese-style, in a pot with glass noodles

along with thick, juicy lotus stems stir-fried with surprisingly plump prawn legs.

But if you go without having a single grilled river prawn, just go ahead and buy the ticket out of Thailand right now. Because that is ridiculous, the equivalent of owning four copies of Pearl Jam’s “Ten”.

Uni don, topped with 5 kinds of Japanese sea urchin

My first concert was the Ramones in Cleveland. I was 16 years old and I went with my friends Tanya, Jen, and Jen’s dad, who was not a Ramones fan. Tanya wore an old prom dress ironically. I, having never been asked to a dance, wore a black miniskirt and a camo t-shirt from Kmart. Since this was our first concert, Tanya and I tried to fight our way to the front of the stage in a vain attempt to catch Joey Ramone’s eye, only to be thwarted by a mosh pit that formed an impenetrable barrier to our groupie aspirations. I mention this because the Cleveland mosh pit was nothing in comparison to the throng awaiting us at Tsukiji market on the day before New Year’s Eve.

Tsukiji market was supposed to have left us by now, but hasn’t, because its new home is not quite ready. I also imagine the original architects of the scheme have, in a Brexit-like fit of remorse, lost enthusiasm for the move. In any case, Tsukiji is with us for a little while longer, a fact that both Japanese and tourist gourmets sought to take advantage of in the last gasp of 2016.

Have you ever been propelled forward without any help from your arms or legs? This was the feeling that day, like a salmon rushing inexorably upstream. Have you ever been hit on the back by an old lady wielding an umbrella? I can now say I have, twice. Old Japanese ladies, freed from the societal constraints of having to make nice for 60+ years, like nothing better than to aggressively tap on the small of your back with their umbrella handle when they feel you aren’t moving as briskly as you should. So why put yourself through this? The answer is obvious.

Sea urchin buffet, walkway-side

If you have the fortitude and patience to stick out the career mosh-pitters and Japanese grannies, a feast awaits you anywhere you choose to walk. We started our breakfast with a couple of rice bowls at a spot tucked into the second floor off the walkway — a spot just like many others peppering Tsukiji that offer a choice between three types of bluefin tuna or five kinds of domestic uni.

Indeed, uni has become kind of a big thing: next to the kanimiso (crab innards) stand, another vendor grilling fist-sized meaty scallops topped with dollops of the stuff, rendering the chewiness of the scallops almost negligible. Yet another, making up for its dearth of sea urchin by serving up freshly shucked Japanese oysters the length of one’s hand, with nothing to season them but hope and greed. More uni, simply sliced open and served on ice with a spoon. Somewhat improbably, soft wah-wah mochi (cloud-like rice cakes) dusted with powdered sugar, stuffed with cream and topped with a single giant white strawberry. And always a place set aside to eat all these things, because walking while eating in Japan is so gauche.

But if you hate the state fair-ness of it all, there is also the actual, bona fide sushi bar. Like Bangkok and its wok cooks, every neighborhood in Japan has one: the eatery that considers itself a step above the rest, with a chef that rivals Kyubey’s. You seat yourself in front of the chef and your banana leaf, take what they offer to give you, dampen any expectations of American-style spicy tuna rolls, and for God’s sake, don’t ask for salmon (unless they are these gorgeous almost-eggs):

A morsel of almost-ikura, on a bed of sushi rice

Sushi is supposed to be the main event here, but a lot of times, it feels almost like an afterthought, like the rice at the end of a meal in Shanghai. The real soldiers that fight your battle against hunger for you are the appetizers: usually sashimi and then a parade of grilled or fried whatsits and whatnots, whatever is in season, whatever will impress. This is how I manage to encounter something new on every trip: one year, live baby fish, in season for only two weeks out of the year as the snows from the Japanese Alps thaw. Two years ago, I had cod sperm sacs grilled on a slab of Himalayan sea salt, an experience I repeated this time with my daughter:

There were more oysters, fresh, and a steamed kinki (orange roughy) in a Chinese-style sauce, but the most memorable thing for me was the sea cucumber — the meat of which was sliced and served in a ponzu sauce (anything in ponzu is delicious), the guts of which were dropped into very hot sake and drunken like Jagermeister shots at a frat party. This was a personal first.

Sea cucumber in ponzu

This is all heavenly, of course, unless you don’t like sushi. If you are my 6-year-old son, you don’t like it very much at all.

NO SUSHI

Specialty of the house: egg noodles with broth on the side at  Buoy

I am supposed to be a writer, but it’s been a long time since I’ve really written. I no longer tell people that I do anything for a living, and I no longer think of writing as part of my identity. If I were to tell the truth about what it is that I do, a calling which gives my life real meaning, I would say that I watch television.

I watch a lot of TV. It’s like my job that I haven’t been paid for yet, but that I still do because someday I expect a check to show up in the mail. I am as rigorous about it as doctors who check in on their patients, or accountants who do stuff with numbers. Here’s my day: I wake up and watch CNN until I absolutely cannot bear it (about 45-50 minutes), then I switch to Ellen DeGeneres. I try to catch “Veep” and/or “Silicon Valley” if I can. Maybe some “Hoarders” or “Love at First Sight”. Then I take a lunch break, and then I watch the “Sopranos”. The rest of the day is devoted to Netflix. If it’s Monday or Tuesday, I can watch American football all day long and not have to change channels. It’s a pretty full schedule.

Sometimes, I go to the gym. It’s the only thing that consistently gets me out of the house. I have not one, but two personal trainers, both of whom are named Champ. One is “Big Champ” even though he is little, while the bigger one is “Even Bigger Champ” (just kidding. He’s “Little Champ.”) Both like to give me advice on where to eat, probably because it is the only thing I like to talk about while working out.

Some of their advice is terrible. I can say this because they like to make fun of me, and I only realize they are making fun of me after I have been humiliated. Like when they tell me that the “chicken at Lumpini Park is delicious.” Now let me give you some advice: don’t go to Lumpini Park and ask people about where to get good chicken. You aren’t going to end up with chicken (see: som tum at Hualumpong Station). Just take my word for it.

But because they are Thai, some real advice slips out occasionally. For a while now, everyone has been telling me about a killer bamee egg noodle place called “Hia Buoy” (or “Uncle Pickled Plum”, named after the owner, 10/2 Soi Polo, 081-629-5231). He offers a few soup noodle dishes like yen ta fo (pink seafood noodles), but the real standout is, of course, the egg noodles with pork and tom yum seasonings, silky and full of flavor. The servings are decently big (though not so big that I can’t eat two), and when I order hang (dry), as I am wont to do, I get a little bowl of aromatic pork broth on the side, because it’s the right thing to do. There was a time when Thais expected you to eat dry rice and noodles with a side of soup, you know, because it would help the rice kernels and noodle strands go down. Now when I go to a noodle stand and order hang, vendors usually don’t give me anything on the side, and I end up feeling like when I see a playlist of “Greatest Punk Songs of All Time” that includes Green Day and Blink 182 and then I make a face like:

I will never stop using this photo

Like, why not just go whole hog and include Avril Lavigne while you’re at it? Oh, Offspring, never mind. LOL Elvis Costello.

All the same, I will probably end up downloading it, because I have no standards or pride. Also, I need something to listen to while I’m on the road in Japan. I will be there for 3 weeks, sans television! Wish me luck.