Bangkok Glutton

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.

Khao soy at Hom Duan

If you are a Glutton like me, visits to the dentist can be especially excruciating. The half-hour/hour-or-so that it takes to clean my teeth are the minutes I spend regretting every single thing I’ve put in my mouth for the past six months. I will never eat again, I promise myself as I white-knuckle my way through yet another pass with the dental probe, the Dennis Hopper to my dentist’s Christopher Walken. I will stop eating forever, as soon as this is over.

This is a promise I invariably break the minute I step out of the dentist’s office. After all, surviving yet another near-death-by-drill experience calls for a celebration. Celebrations = food. So, if you are like me, you may choose to celebrate with an enamel-staining flat white and a cavity-inducing strawberry waffle at Roast, before ambling over to Ekamai Road and joining in the ever-growing queue snaking out the door at Hom Duan, a glorified rice curry shophouse vendor specializing in Northern Thai food favorites.

The popularity of Hom Duan — which I first learned about from Chef Jess Barnes now of the new Lady Brett on Thonglor — is simple: a wide range of Northern Thai food, close to your office and air-conditioned (because it’s hotter than Daenerys on a funeral pyre out there right now, you guys). There’s the expected, like khao soy and kanom jeen nam ngiew; there’s stuff that’s harder to find, like pounded young jackfruit salad (thum kanoon) and one of my favorite things to request from my aunt Priew in Chiang Rai, gang pak pang, seasoned liberally with chilies and crumbled fermented pork (naem):

If Hom Duan were anything other than an eat-and-run khao gang spot, it would be one of the most difficult tables in town to score. Instead, people are willing to brave the line because they know that someone, somewhere will be getting up any minute now. You just have to be willing to share tables. And as you are waiting in line, there are oh-so-many options to mull over:

Jackfruit salad, nam prik ong, gang ho, stir-fried veggies, deep-fried pork, and other stuff

Not surprisingly, lunchtime from noon onwards is a monster to negotiate, crowd-wise, so if you have some leeway with your time, going earlier is better than later (Hom Duan is open from 8:30 in the morning onwards, but supplies are obviously limited!) My favorite things on the menu were the gang pak pang, the young chili dip set (nam prik num with pork rinds and veggies) and the pounded jackfruit salad. It’s certainly the right time of year to go — you will not regret ducking out of the searing midday heat for this food, I promise.

(All photos by @sergiomireles)

Baba ghanouj and chicken shawarma at Shoshana

I once met with a street food writer from Singapore who said he thought food bloggers should be subject to a certification process, to prove their opinions were worthy of publication. My immediate reaction was — and I apologize in advance — “How Singapore”. My second was to laugh, in relief, at the fact that nothing on earth would ever be able to stop anyone from ever publicizing their useless, worthless opinions on anything. As long as Perez Hilton and Andrew Breitbart and anyone else who has pulled a string of words out of their ass is able to publish all the nonsense they can muster, I and my uncertified, unqualified brethren will be safe.

Because let’s be honest here. Not only are we “writers” (and by “writers”, I mean people who write stuff in a public forum, like internet commenters). We are also “food writers”. That means we are doubly cursed. Let’s face it: anyone who can read can write. And most people who can write think they are pretty good at it. This is the reason why writers are some of the most miserable human beings you will ever encounter. The value of their work — unlike, say, a cheating sack of shit like Tom Brady — is completely subjective and unmeasurable, unless you count Nobel Prizes or book sales (and no one wants to count sales unless they’re JK Rowling or Dan Brown).

Now apply that to food. EVERYBODY EATS. Everybody eats more than they read and write. It’s a fact. Google it, as Marco Rubio would have said. And most people have an opinion on what they eat. So food writers are doubly useless. They write about what everyone, literally every person on earth, does every day. Everyone is an expert on this.

Sometimes I tell people that I’m more into the historical and social and political ramifications of what we choose to put into our mouths, and that the taste/atmosphere/and even artistic aspects of food are secondary to me. This is mostly true. But I usually don’t feel like I have to make excuses for how useless I really am. I’m a food writer. Food is fuel. My opinion is not more valuable than yours. And as crazy as I am about food, well, so is everyone else. Because food keeps them alive. The bar is that low. The bar to food writing is practically in the basement, it’s so low. I could be worthless, the absolute worst, and maybe I am … but I will always be qualified to be a food writer.

I think the people I went to journalism school with probably see food writing as cushy, a waste of a degree in a way that, say, being a political correspondent in Afghanistan would not have been. To them, it’s like selling out. So I wonder about selling out in other fields, too. Like, how terrible, really, was “Star Wars” for George Lucas? Did its incredible success basically suffocate his artistic vision? Some cinephiles would argue yes. And of course there are musical equivalents, so so many of them. Do you think those guys in Genesis miss the days when they were playing behind Peter Gabriel dressed as a condom to a crowd of budding dungeon masters? Or do you think those days are a faint haze that they try to forget as they sip their pina coladas by the pool at their estates in Mallorca? I think I know which way Phil Collins is leaning. And “A Song of Ice and Fire”? How thrilled is George RR Martin with its success now, really? You know the answer.

Luckily for me, I will never have to worry about the corrupting influence of success and the need to compromise for your fans, because I have always been a sell-out, and I have no fans. Not so for Shoshana, the longstanding kosher eatery in the Old Town that has been around since Khao San Road (i.e. “backpacker’s paradise”) was a thing. Testament to the scores of Israelis who flocked to the area while on holiday, Shoshana is still known for its Middle Eastern/Israeli favorites like hummus, shawarma, shakshuka, falafel and a creamy, garlicky baba ghanouj (“eggplant salad”) that may be the best in the city. They also now do schnitzel and chicken livers, and even bagels. Oh yeah, and there’s Thai food. Why? Well why not? Even though they’re in the middle of Old Town and there may be hundreds of better Thai food places around them, staying alive and thriving after all these years means expanding your menu and installing air-conditioning and putting in more tables. So if eating at Shoshana at lunchtime occasionally feels like eating with the pirate’s crew on the Black Pearl, know that this is the price both you and they pay for success, and that the food is still worth it.