Bangkok Glutton

Wall of cooling turtle jelly

In all my trips to Hong Kong, Causeway Bay has consistently been my least favorite place to go. The reasons seem obvious: 1. I always get lost 2. I don’t know where to go 3. Did I mention it’s confusing and I invariably get lost there?

What I was missing was a neighborhood guide. Tadd, a Cantonese Singaporean who has lived in Causeway Bay for years, is the perfect person for the job. This is a woman who clearly loves this place, a study in contrasts that hosts not only the most expensive retail space in the world (in fact, Tadd says McDonald’s had to move a few blocks because it would have had to sell 16-17 hamburgers/second to make up for its rent), but is also home to a Hong Kong that, to its long-time residents, is becoming more of a distant memory: chaotic, Byzantine, busy, and yes, easy to get lost in.

Luckily, there are lots of delicious places to use as landmarks. A turn down every alleyway yields a wonderful place for rice porridge, a good stop for pineapple buns, delicious Macau-style egg tarts that are lightly charred on the outside and runny within, gently braised bits of cow lovingly layered over rice or noodles. Up yonder is the best store for fermented tofu; next to rice porridge is the store to go to for every variety of pickled plum imaginable. Tadd walks us to what she says is her daughter’s favorite wintertime restaurant, and it turns out to be snake soup (Se Wong Ke, 24 Percival Street, Causeway Bay), its different varieties meant to address different ailments such as coughs, a cold or I-don’t-kn0w-I-just-don’t-feel-like-it-anymore — what I would have ordered).

I guess I’ll have one of those?

And culinary discoveries are not the only ones to make here — under the bridge, at the invisible border where Causeway Bay meets Wanchai and the “spicy crab under the bridge” restaurant, elderly Chinese ladies await customers who flock here especially to curse enemies or ward off those who would curse them, with the help of some candlelight, figurines and the sturdy sole of a shoe to batter someone’s written-down name with. On a busy night, the intersection rings with the sounds of shoe heels battering plastic, over and over again.

Ready for business

But we’re here for the food. As is always the case with Hong Kong, it’s almost impossible to fit everything inside your stomach that you want to stuff it with, because no one ever has enough time or room for that. But some standouts included Chiu Chow Garden, where we feasted on crazy-fresh fried fish, an assortment of perfectly stir-fried greens, the “famous” roast chicken, and stewed goose on a bed of fried tofu to soak up its juices “because in Hong Kong, you must eat goose”, says Tadd. Although the Chinese in Thailand are predominantly Chiu Chow (or Teochew) and the Chinese-Thai food in Bangkok is supposed to reflect that, nothing we had in Hong Kong reflects anything we’ve had in Thailand, including the introductory and closing servings of bitter tea, meant to aid digestion.

Cold eggplant in a stellar sesame sauce at Chiu Chow Garden

After dinner, to settle our stomachs, Tadd takes us for “dessert”, which should never be referred to as dessert ever forever, because that would hugely disappoint anyone with images of sugarplum anything in their heads. It’s called guillinggao, or turtle jelly, and it’s traditionally made from powdered turtle under-shell mixed with different Chinese herbs to correspond to your ailment. Yes, it’s medicine, just like snake soup, and HK people eat it for “dessert”, because they are that sort of good person that exercises on their holidays and appoints themselves designated driver even before anyone threatens to tell their mom.

Wikipedia says turtle pudding became a thing after an emperor almost cured his smallpox with it (before abandoning his treatment and dying). Today’s versions probably don’t really contain actual turtle shell (only herbal approximations), but tell that to all the people who stop by Kung Wo Tong on their way home from work, or after a run (!), or during a date (?) — not only for one of the different kinds of turtle jellies, but for a healing tea, or bracing “liver detox” that tastes like a mix of wood polish with raw turnip. I get the “cough” one, which ends up being less bitter than the others with a slight peppermint aftertaste, palatable enough to eat half a cup of on a full stomach. Emboldened by the fact it isn’t as awful as I had originally envisioned, I even joke that I will be there the next morning to try it again. I don’t, though. I have braised beef brisket on silky egg noodles, because duh.

Tom yum pork noodles at Zaew Thonglor

Before I begin, I want to share with you what made my day today. It was this photo (via Jezebel via Getty):

I think it’s the expression on his face, the trying-to-be-serious look of a toddler told to pose nicely with his great-aunt for the family photo. It’s the expression of someone trying to do his duty, fer serious this time. It’s the look I have on my face right now.

One of my favorite movies ever is John Carpenter’s “The Thing”. I don’t watch it too often because I don’t want to get sick of it like I did with “Clueless”. But it should be no surprise that I love it as a movie that’s ripe to use as an analogy for basically anything, ever. If you haven’t seen it already (and why not, what’s wrong with you), it’s about an isolated bunch of guys stuck in Antarctica for science-wonky work and what hijinks ensue when a super-cool discovery made by nearby Norwegians turns into something not-so-cool when it starts eating people and assuming their identities.

It’s not as scary as Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, because it doesn’t hide and attack when you’re not looking. It’s right there, in front of you, pretending to be somebody you know. It’s only later, when it shows itself, that you realize how truly horrifying it is: an amalgam of everything you recognize, combined and twisted into something monstrous. It’s the familiarity — and constant evolution with each entity that it absorbs — that is scary. Even more terrifying is the fact that no one knows who the monster is, possibly not even the monster itself. This is the most familiar detail of all.

Everyone has encountered “The Thing” at least once in their life. It’s that person seated next to you at a dinner party who suddenly starts spouting off about crime in Chicago without warning before alighting on opinions about American race relations that would make anyone with ears (i.e. me) want to jump out a window immediately. It could be the random man at a party who walks up to me only to ask if it is true that prostitutes hold a high social status in Thailand. It could be the friend who congratulates you on your scholarship, but that it was obviously granted because I am Asian (at Stanford, because there aren’t enough Asians there). I’ve met “The Thing” a gazillion times, and like MacReady, I have never vanquished it.

There are food equivalents of “The Thing” too, of course. A well-reviewed Thai fried chicken restaurant with the requisite surface dinginess (and a Green Bowl seal of approval to boot) to signal its authenticity, it ends up offering you a paltry handful of dried-up wings in a tiny bread basket, a bland som tum barely baptized by seasoning, a cold catfish stir-fry tasting of mud. The truth is, there is no way to protect yourself from encountering “The Thing”. The only thing you can do is to minimize the risk, like shutting yourself up in your room and ordering takeout for the rest of your life.

In terms of food, at least, Zaew has you covered. There are actually a couple of noodle joints named Saew or Zaew within walking distance of my house alone; who knows how many Zaew there are peppering the country. In any event, it’s a fairly safe bet that a noodle shop named “Saew/Zaew” will serve a decently good bowl of noodles, and Zaew Thonglor (Sukhumvit Road between Thonglor and Soi 57, 02-391-0043) is no exception.

Yen ta fo (of course, my favorite bowl of noodles ever) can be a hard sell, what with its pink color, fermented tofu base and frequently over-sweet sauce. The very best versions I’ve had walk the tightrope between sweet-salty and tart-spicy. Here at Zaew there’s not even any pretense: no sweetness, just a tart-spicy mix leavened with squidgy meatballs and the occasional bit of pork fat crackling, the best part of all. It’s delicious in a way that is different from my favorite bowls. It might even be better.

Zaew’s more popular options include tom yum noodles with minced pork and fish  meatballs, or noodles made of processed fish in tom yum broth, or egg noodles and … you get the picture. But be warned: the portions are not only gargantuan by street food standards, but possibly by Thai standards in general. No need to order those two bowls all at once unless you are absolutely sure.

Zaew’s yen ta fo

Tom yum soup at Siriporn Pochana

People have asked me why I bother to have a blog if I can’t be bothered to update it on a regular basis. My answer is that there are few other places where I can rant to my heart’s content without being interrupted by someone who has their own things to rant about. I don’t care about what is bothering them. I only want to focus on me.

My first rant today has to do with how people commonly mischaracterize George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series — *look, you can scroll to the bottom and figure out where to get the soup in the photo above, serious nerd stuff is going on right now zzzzzz* — as “nihilistic” and “dark”, a “real world” version of  a high fantasy world, replete with the grit and grime of our own terrible reality. These people are idiots.

These people are idiots because, um, maybe you haven’t heard, but the story isn’t finished yet. This would be akin to getting bummed out by “Cinderella” because her sisters ripped up her mother’s dress and now she’s crying and oh how sad is Cinderella, she never catches a break. How bleak this story is! How unnecessarily violent! I am disturbed by the unrelenting darkness! Also, I am outraged at the objectification of Cinderella in a tattered dress. Where is her sense of agency?

There’s a whole other half to this story that George R.R. Martin has yet to tell (some day). A whole bunch of other people are going to die, and secondary/tertiary characters have to come and go, the butterfly effects from their actions somehow resulting in some crazy and important repercussions that will end up getting edited out of the television series or ascribed to Bronn because he’s just so entertaining you guys. Can I go off on a sub-rant from the main rant? I am shocked at how many people don’t bother to read the books, and think that the television series is what really happens. “Oh, every one you care about dies unnecessarily and for shock value,” people invariably say. That really drives me up a wall. It’s a cascade of dumb opinions that are stoopid because they aren’t mine.

These pat responses to complicated things, these conclusions reached wholesale by committee, this is what is killing us. I get it: we are barraged with information every day, and we have to curate what stays in our brain. Vikings is on at 8? OK, stay. Pick up toilet paper because we have none left? Oops, you’re out. Examining things ourselves — even when we can’t even figure out what to have for dinner tonight, much less what to believe — is never easy. But by reflection and analysis, by thinking things through, we would be less likely to come up with stupid stuff. Like creamy tom yum soup.

Someone did it first, probably by doctoring their indifferent spicy lemongrass broth by adding condensed milk to the pot and calling it a day. The result was not only creamy and sweet, it also hid any problems with the soup itself. Score! Soon people were using regular milk, or splashes of coconut milk, or cream, or anything else that would ease the natural bite of the chili and lime and completely blanket over the flavor of the natural herbs. This is a soup that a lot of people like, but it is not tom yum soup. It’s something else, with a completely different flavor profile.

Tom yum soup is, to me, one of the most genuinely Thai dishes in the entire repertoire. You use a Thai cooking method — boiling — and infuse your water with herbs which not only smell great, but are supposed to have medicinal properties too. Later, when your “broth” is made, you throw in your protein and wait for it to cook. It sounds easy to do, but it’s not easy to pull off, because the result can be a bland, unappealing mess (trust me). It’s really hard to make a good tom yum. It’s even harder to make a great one.

Siriporn Pochana (152 Soi Mahannop, 02-224-1287) is known for its barbecued and crispy pork, but that’s only part of the reason why people stand in line for a table at lunchtime. Their tom yum soup (with nam sai, or clear broth) draws enough fans that it’s a matter of course that, when we sit down at our table, our server automatically assumes we will order a bowl. When it comes — obviously doctored with some roasted chili paste (nam prik pao) and based on a fish broth — it’s thick with chunks of sea bass and fish eggs, smelling of lemongrass and makrut lime leaves and seafood, steaming and welcome with a heaping plate of rice. Yeah, there are probably other things to think about after lunch. But it makes everything better at that moment, and that is what food is supposed to do.