Bangkok Glutton

Artist Maitree Siriboon with his work “Mondrian Buffalo”

I first met Thai artist Maitree Siriboon while hitching a ride with my friend Top Changtrakul to the far outskirts of the province, where you can still see agricultural activity. Top was working on an art project, and part of it involved filming Maitree, clad only in silver hot pants and a pair of wings, running across a field towards the camera. There was no background music, only the sound of Maitree’s breathing. He had to do several takes because someone (me) kept making noise. The only people watching were me, Top, the sound guy, and a couple of very confused duck farmers. I never saw the final product, but I imagine it was a striking image: a solitary, otherworldly figure, attempting to transcend his mundane surroundings by running to … us.

I liked Maitree immediately. He is open and positive, smart without being patronizing, and, obviously, extremely creative. He would probably attribute his lack of pretension to his Isaan roots, and he is always incorporating his background into his artwork, seemingly working out his identity in the gaze of the audience. It’s something that I think is very brave, because it’s so exposed. What is especially interesting to me is his incorporation of his upbringing in Isaan — a populous but poor region that is often looked down upon by Thai urbanites — in all of his work. Of course, what we see in art is totally subjective, and we could go on and on about how intent doesn’t have to mean anything to the observer/listener/reader.  But when I see Maitree’s work, I see “This is me, take it or leave it” and always feel empowered by that.

American chef Dan Barber once said that the greatest cuisines of the world are born out of poverty and necessity. Isaan food is Thailand’s version of this type of cuisine. Unlike the rest of the country, which is verdant and fertile, parts of Isaan are dusty and dry, and the food — strong, spicy, quick to make, sugar-less — reflects that. Like Maitree’s art, it is direct and makes a big impact. Although in Bangkok that food is often bastardized by the local sweet tooth, there are still major sections given over entirely to serving Isaan dishes, the most popular street food in the country.

After 5pm, the strip along Henri Dunant Road on the Royal Bangkok Sports Club side is one of those areas. The sidewalk becomes a mass of locals looking for a bite of som tum infused with fermented Thai anchovy (pla rah), deftly grilled pork collar,  or even a pot of jim jum (Isaan-style sukiyaki). The food is unapologetically simple, and in its simplicity it is very Isaan. Take it or leave it.

Green papaya salad with fermented anchovy juice

The most popular vendor on that sidewalk is Raan Boon-Henri Thai-Isaan, the second stall on the sidewalk when you are approaching from the Siam Skytrain stop. The specialties of the house here are the som tum kai kem (green papaya salad with salted egg) and the salt-encrusted grilled fish, but everything you could expect from an Isaan restaurant is on offer including decent moo namtok (spicy pork salad with roasted rice kernels) and mucho, mucho iced beer.

Spicy sliced pork with sundried pork in the background

If you are able to brave this unending heatwave and willing to dine next to a line of parked cars, you too can feast on the fruits of Isaan ingenuity in the way it’s probably best: outside, with many friends and a couple of gallons of beer. And if you are art-minded, check out Maitree’s “Save Thai Buffalo” series at the YenakART Villa from June 9th.

Duck noodles at Chia 

There was a time when I was really busy, and I was complaining about that. Now that I am no longer busy, I would like to complain about this. I don’t know what happened, but somehow awesome work opportunities haven’t found their way to my couch. I guess it’s a cyclical thing.

So I’ve taken this downtime as the chance to focus on the things that really matter, like who has yet to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There are some shocking (to me) omissions.  I mean, everybody has their own (wrong) opinion, but there are some surprising people who haven’t been inducted yet, like Journey and Peter Frampton. Aren’t old white guys in this organization’s wheelhouse? The omissions that really rile me are the Pixies and Rage Against the Machine (yeah, I said it). I have a feeling people overlook the Pixies because they think Black Francis is an asshole, and because Rage Against the Machine are too rap-rock. But come on. The freaking Red Hot Chili Peppers were inducted in 2012!

No, instead they induct guys like Steve Miller, who doesn’t even really want to be there — who is, in fact, as annoyed as John Boehner yelling at a pack of trick-or-treaters to get off his lawn. Everyone is, again, entitled to expressing themselves, but if the ceremony was such a pain, why go man? Why not stay home in Margaritaville? Why this guy?  Steve Miller is Easy Listening dressed up as rock music. It’s for the type of person who is too embarrassed to admit to themselves and others that they like Adult Contemporary. It’s the Coldplay of the ’70s, the music I turn on when I want people to leave my house.

Places like Victory Monument are the Steve Millers of food: incomprehensibly popular. They seem to have everything you want, but nothing is even remotely memorable. For the street food lover, the stretch along Rama IV between the boat pier and Klong Toey Market is far more overlooked — even by me. “Where to go tonight?” I ask my friend Dwight of bkkfatty.com, who is willing to come along with me for an evening trawl with Portuguese food lovers Goncalo and Joao. “Rama IV?” he suggests, and I say, “Oh yeah. I forgot about Rama IV.”

“Everybody does,” Dwight says, and it’s true. It’s just that Rama IV is just such a miserable stretch of road if you don’t know what you’re looking for. But if duck noodles and Thai-style shaved ice are on your radar, you’re on the right track. At Chia Duck Noodles (2856 Rama IV Rd. across the road from Esso gas station, 02-671-3279, also referred to as Xia, or Sia, because the romanization of Thai letters is so hard to pinpoint), noodles come awash in a rich, almost velvety broth of unsurpassing duckiness, festooned with a shower of deep-fried garlic, tender duck meat, cubes of duck blood and a flourish of fresh coriander. And that’s just the noodles. There’s also roasted duck on rice, and duck stewed in Chinese herbs, and platters of well-seasoned thigh meat and duck innards to contend with.

Noodles aren’t complete without dessert. Although I’ve been put out by the closure of Suan Luang Market and the shaved ice place that was my original go-to, I haven’t really gone out of my way to find its replacement. Thanks to Dwight, who appears to come to this place on a weekly basis, I now have a place I can (almost) walk to called Thao Tung Peng Ang, down the road from Chia. My favorite thing about Thai shaved ice is its flexibility: you have a choice of toppings that range from the Chinese-inspired (lotus root, gingko nuts, grass jelly) to the distinctly Siamese (selim noodles, tubtim grob, coconut jelly) in either longan juice, ginger syrup or coconut milk and topped with a generous mound of shaved ice. Even better is what Dwight came up with: a scoop of vanilla mixed with a swiftly frozen egg yolk, leaving a stripe of extra-fatty yellow through the cream and garnished with slivered candied mango. It was the best ending to an evening of street food and a nice reprieve from our unrelenting heatwave.

Every Songkhran starts the same way for me, at 5 in the morning in Hua Hin. My husband’s family has a family compound next to the beach, on land gifted many years ago to their ancestor by King Rama V. That ancestor, Somdet Chao Phraya Borom Maha Pichaiyat, had seven wives and 35 children, and every one of those children has a residence on this beachside parcel of land named after the family patriarch, “Baan Pichaiyat”. My husband’s grandmother, Yuwadee, is his last remaining child at 96.

What’s really funny (only to me) is that I remember staying at this place as a kid, dealing cards with my future husband’s cousins and trying to play soccer on the beach at low tide, when the receding water left little islands of sand deemed perfect for a football game. We played “bullshit” in the hallways, forcing our parents to step over us on their way to the buffet table. We pushed our luck with tennis when the heat wasn’t overpowering. We ate rice and omelets when we got hungry, doused with plenty of Maggi, and I talked everyone’s ears off with my Michael Jackson trivia. No one cared that I wore glasses and had a mullet. It was my favorite Thai New Year’s ever.

Now when I see those cousins they have kids of their own, and we never play those games anymore. But we still see each other every year in our customary purple, worn to commemorate Chao Phraya Pichaiyat’s birth day (Saturday, associated with the color of Prince and Barney.) We make merit at the crack of dawn with a procession of 20 monks who pass down the road that runs through the compound like an artery, bypassing the shrine devoted to the family patriarch before ending abruptly at the sea.

Praying at the Chao Phraya Pichaiyat shrine

The setting is the same, but the food — now that we are adults with fewer pleasures in life — is better. Because no one could possibly survive the hour it takes to set up for the monks without food, there are deep-fried patongko (Chinese-style mini-crullers) drizzled with condensed Carnation milk and instant coffee and, if you are enterprising, a sunny-side-up fried egg.

And after the alms-giving ceremony, the main event: khao thom pla (fish and rice porridge) and khao na gai (rice with a cornstarch-thickened chicken gravy), a particular Chinese-influenced favorite that never fails to appear at a family gathering. I like to garnish mine with the usual coriander leaves, fresh scallions, sliced green chi fa chilies and cubed sweet Chinese sausage, but I forego the fried egg for the slivered ginger and deep-fried garlic bits that are meant to top the fish porridge, because too many condiments are never enough. I swear the ginger and garlic make all the difference.

Later, the grownups gorge themselves on kanom jeen (fermented rice noodles) swimming in what they call gang nua (“beef curry”) but what everyone else knows as gang kiew waan nua (green curry with braised beef shank). The children (and anyone else who feels lucky) get to brave the head-bruising ploy tan, when the pu yai (family elders) throw heavy Thai coins into a waiting scrum of young elbows and fists. Winnings are hard-won (my mother-in-law once chipped a tooth) and jealously defended, safeguarded in every mother’s purse and forgotten about the next morning.

I guess there is comfort in knowing where I will be every April 13. And what I’ll be eating. When I see our children forging new memories of their own (overpriced horseback rides on the beach, risking various limbs to set off fireworks at dusk, terrorizing everyone else at the pool), I hope they too think back on their childhoods in Hua Hin as their favorite time, ever.