Bangkok Glutton

Flaky roti and massaman beef curry at Yusup Pochana

While doing research for a story recently, I came across the menu for the Dining Room at the House on Sathorn, the former Russian Embassy that has been turned into a drink-dine-function space by the W Hotel. Chef Fatih likes to emphasize the creative process that spawns his dishes by drawing their names directly from his past experiences. So you can order something like “Early Morning at Tsukiji Market” (bluefin tuna/seaweed/avocado/wasabi) or “Once Upon a Time in Istanbul” (lamb belly/eggplant/hummus) and feel like you’re being told a story and offered a voyeuristic glimpse of someone’s life through a series of “slides” that probably taste delicious too.

Naturally, I thought of the menu that I would create as Chef Fatih, but culled from my very own experiences.  There could be “Sophomore Year of College” (frozen pizza/cocoa nibs/instant noodle powder/hemp seeds) or “Limbo in Palo Alto” (whitefish/tortilla/avocado/artichoke). I could get more ambitious and go for “Junior Year Abroad in Tokyo” (curdled milk/mentaiko/nori/pickled plum) and “Penniless in Culinary School” (torn-up baguette/hard-boiled eggs/grated carrot/black olives). Maybe we could end the evening with a heaping helping of DIE BITCH DIE (herring/monterey jack/triscuit/gherkin) in honor of my high school boyfriend who cheated on me, not that I care that much anyway. Or “Barfing at Gas Panic in front of Agee the hot Japanese-Brazilian bartender” (Budweiser/Jack Daniel’s/Jagermeister/Goldschlager).

If I were to concoct a dish for “Early Wednesday Morning in the Bangkok Rain”, it might be something along the lines of (braised beef/potato/flaky dough/cinnamon/coconut cream/peanuts). It would be delicious, because it would be modeled after the breakfast-lunch I had at Yusup Pochana (531/12 Kaset Nawamin Road, Tawmaw 97, 081-659-6588), considered one of Bangkok’s best Thai-Muslim restaurants but one I had yet to go to because I am lazy. Yusup Pochana has all the Thai-Muslim faves we have come to know and love: biryanis, South Asian-inflected curries, mataba (a sort of crepe stuffed with fish, beef or chicken), a pungent hot-sour soup strong enough to cut through the other dishes’  sweet coconut milk and a respectable array of noodle soups.

Lots of curries. This one is the massaman.

The online love for Yusup’s curries falls almost squarely on the rich massaman, a dish that is almost entirely Malaysian-influenced but a deeper and more aromatic version than others commonly seen in Bangkok. The even more beloved “kuruma goat” curry is only available on weekends, and the khao mok (biryani) is okay, but it’s really the mataba that drew raves from my friends from KL (excellent meat-to-dough ratio) accompanied by a generously chunky ajad of cucumber, shallot, and chilies in a sugar syrup. I, meanwhile, was enamored of the roti, which was so supremely flaky and light that it reminded me of clouds and made the roti at other places look like baked rubber cement. The roti here versus there is like croissants versus dinner rolls. Don’t miss out on this stuff.

To get here without a car, your best bet is to take the BTS to Mor Chit and then a taxi. The earlier you come, the better.

“Dancing shrimp” from Petchburi Soi 5

A lot of the things I learn about Thailand, I stumble into out of ignorance. You would think I would know more than I do, but there are a lot of things in Bangkok that they don’t think to teach you. One of those things is where to hail a cab.

How to hail a cab is fairly simple: pretend you are pointing at the taxi with your entire hand, and then beckon with your palm to the ground. Why you would do this instead of raising your hand like anywhere else, I’m not sure. I’ve heard it’s because it’s impolite to show your open palm to anyone. The best Thai cab hailers manage to beckon with a mix of insouciance and grace that minimizes effort while maximizing effect. Drivers always stop for these people. I’m still perfecting my technique.

Back in the days when I was still raising my arm for a taxi like Tracy Flick in English class, I had just moved back to Bangkok from Paris and was preparing to move back out again, to Palo Alto. I was living on Wireless Road, and on my way to dinner with my parents at a place called Shintaro near the Ratchaprasong intersection, back when there was still a Regent Hotel. To find a cab more easily, I thought I would cross the street to Lumpini Park and hail a taxi going in the direction towards Ploenchit. It seemed like an easy enough proposition, despite the deepening dusk and the cacophony of bird sounds that erupts from the trees just as the sun goes down, making it more difficult to tell drivers your final destination.

Let me tell you, so many taxis passed me by. So many. It seemed like these cab drivers were even more desperate to give up money and keep from working than they usually were. When a taxi finally did slow down for me, I wasn’t even sure if they were for hire or not, so desperate was I to avoid walking to the Regent Hotel in my hugely impractical high-heeled mules.

The taxi driver seemed deeply nervous. When I told him to take me to Regent Hotel, he actually told me no, that he would take me somewhere behind it (Thai cab drivers are so temperamental, and so particular about where they go). As long as he was taking me somewhere fairly close, it was fine by me. But when he parked in a dark alleyway next to the hotel and lit a cigarette, I started wondering what was up. His hands were shaking. It was different from other taxi rides.

There was no fare due on the meter. So I took 100 baht out of my wallet and threw it at him before leaving the cab. I was willing, at this stage, to walk down the street in my high heels. But even though I knew something was wrong, it wasn’t until much later when I realized he thought I was a prostitute. Because I was hailing a cab from Lumpini Park at twilight.

Since I am in the mood to give tips, here’s another one for you: don’t go with your Isaan friend to try his favorite childhood dish unless you are very, very sure you are hungry, or that his favorite dish is something like grilled chicken. Because you could be in for a big surprise. In my case, the surprise came in the form of a dish called “dancing shrimp”, which does not refer to fresh shrimp “dancing” on a grill, or “dancing” in a bubbling soup, or “dancing” in the proximity of any cooking fire whatsoever. No, these shrimp are alive. And they are babies.

The “dancing” probably refers to when the baby shrimp are scooped into a bowl, drizzled with fish sauce and vinegar, mixed with coriander and green onion, and sprinkled with chili powder, ground toasted rice kernels, and a small squirt of fresh lime. To subdue these little suckers, you are meant to cover your bowl with another, empty bowl in order to shake those babies to oblivion without getting any gunk on yourself. You can then eat them with minimal interference. Of course, you can opt instead to watch them “dance” on your table, desperate in their ineffectual gyrations to get away from your gaping maw.

When my friend Maitree took me for “dancing shrimp” (goong then), it was at one of the restaurants along the Isaan strip of Petchburi sois 12-14, and the shrimp were collected from fish tanks that lined the sidewalk. These restaurants no longer serve this delicacy, because the shrimp have become more expensive. But streetside baby shrimp served live in a chili sauce is still a possibility, thanks to this vendor along Petchburi soi 5.

The “dancing shrimp” vendor displaying her wares

You are meant to enjoy your baby shrimp at home with some mint and sawtooth coriander, but if you ask nicely, you can eat it right there, in front of the 7-11 with the rest of the vendors on the soi waiting eagerly for you to keel over and die. Just make sure to tell them to go easy on the chili powder. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Chinese-style congee with pork and egg at Joke Ruamjai

I have a lot of pet peeves. Pet peeves — not street food — might actually be what forms the real fuel for this blog, so I nurture them, like children. My culinary pet peeves are few but strongly felt (eating soggy rice with my hands; using chopsticks with curry rice; overcooked, soggy soft-shell crabs). My social ones are similar, like people who say something is “fascinating” or “interesting” when they clearly mean the opposite.

Don’t worry, I haven’t run out of pet peeves — I have literary ones, too. Or ones for popular reactions to other people’s literary creations, like to the different houses in the Harry Potter books. Like, why is Hufflepuff the most denigrated of all the Hogwarts houses? When did qualities like “loyalty” and “kindness” become the doofiest of all the characteristics that a person could have? There are people out there who happily let all and sundry know that they are Slytherin, the house of “cunning” and “resourcefulness” and, oh yes, the occasional batshit crazy genocidal maniac or two. The ones who only wanted Purebloods to enter Hogwarts. Never mind that, though. At least you’re not Hufflepuff! As long as you’re not loyal or kind, you’re set! Phew, well done!

This also applies to many people’s opinion of JRR Tolkien’s Frodo Baggins, aka the “weaker Baggins who is nowhere near as cool as his uncle Bilbo”. I clearly disagree. I posit that Bilbo is a dumbass who lucked into the ring and took on that burden without any consideration of the toll that it could have taken from him, because he was completely ignorant (aka a dumbass). This level of ignorance enabled him to live with the ring for years and years, with barely a nick in that plastic-wrapped, impervious psyche. Frodo, on the other hand, knew. He knew that the ring was bad, and that the journey would be terrible, and that incredible difficulties lay in wait for him for very little reward. And he went anyway. Frodo is braver than Bilbo.

The Chinese-style congee known as joke is the Frodo Baggins or Hufflepuff house of Thai street food. This roadside staple, stirred for hours until the grains of rice break down into a sludgy, starchy mass, has been called “food for children, or invalids” in forums as vaunted as “Hangover 2”, but whoever wrote that has clearly not actually had joke. The best ones — uniform grains, delicious pork meatballs, ample toppings — also manage to infuse flavor into the porridge itself even before the introduction of the obligatory vinegared chilies and fish sauce. Add a raw egg, broken into the hot sludge to barely cook before the yolk is stirred into the grains to stain the bowl a sunny yellow, and you are, as they say, golden.

At Joke Ruamjai (Sukhumvit Soi 23, about 50 m from the entrance to the left, 02-258-4373), they are old hands at congee, including preserved squid with their standard pork meatballs (instead of the less popular blanched pork liver) and topping the lot with slivered ginger, green onion bits and deep-fried mini-crullers — a pretty impressive mix of both tastes and textures. The sign looks like this:

All the same, even Frodo-like joke must bend with the prevailing winds, and Joke Ruamjai also has a pretty formidable array of stir-fries at lunchtime, plus 5-6 curries and a hulking big pot of pig’s trotter, which is an impressive way of hedging your bets.

Lunchtime curry rice selection

I would aim for breakfast or lunch (Joke Ruamjai is open from 7.30), but if you can’t make it until later, try to get in before 10pm.