Bangkok Glutton

Young jackfruit “soup” and Thai eggplant “soup”, with a little mango for company

Thais like to think that their food is not only delicious and addictive, but that it is good for you, too. They consider the different combinations of herbs and spices in each dish to be medicine, and prescribe each dish accordingly. Feel like you are coming down with a cold? Well then tom yum goong (spicy lemongrass soup with shrimp) is the way to go. Are you a new mother who needs to produce more milk for her child? More gang liang (Southern Thai vegetable soup) for you.

Nam prik (chili dip) could also be considered a medicine, in as potent a form as Thai cuisine allows. There is no iteration of this Thai dinnertime staple that is seen as bad for you. My friend James calls it “high tea for healing herbs”, and I want to believe him, I really do. So I find myself on the hunt for a decent nam prik vendor that peddles the kind of healing I am looking for.

At the entrance to Sathorn Soi 11, open most workday mornings until 1pm, a som tum (green papaya salad) vendor works ceaselessly doling out parcels of fried meat and freshly pounded Thai-style som tum to hungry office workers on the way back to their desks. I find this a terrible waste, since she is one of the few vendors here who sells both soup kanoon (young jackfruit salad) and soup makuea (Thai eggplant salad, a particular favorite of mine), two dishes that are like nam prik writ large. When I saw the tiny little baggies of jackfruit and eggplant glistening in the sun, I turned to her and asked whether it really truly was thum kanoon she was offering, because it is a dish that is inexplicably difficult to find in Bangkok, even in Northern Thai restaurants.

I was met with a “Huh?” because in Isaan, a Northern Thai thum turns into a soup. That is not the only difference. An Isaan-style soup is also right up on the edge of being unrelentingly, unbearably spicy, a sort of cry in the dark that can be stifled with a spoonful of rice or a handful of cucumber slices and hard-boiled egg should the need take you.  A lot has been made by well-meaning people of the need for “chicken soup for the soul”, but to my mind, there is more of a need for some motherfreaking napalm for the tongue, something that means business, something strong enough to pull you out of a serious, sleep-addled funk. If this is medicine, bring me more. But not too much because yikes, that was hot.

What I’m always thankful for: nam ngiew in Chiang Rai

I’d been keeping a list for days. It detailed all the symptoms I’d been experiencing, but read like a litany of generalized misery. “Tingling spread from hands and feet to legs, arms and face (since Nov 4).” “Muscle twitching in legs and left arm (at night).” “Difficulty sleeping (since Sunday).” “Lightheadedness when standing (2 weeks).” “Frequent thirst (since Thursday).””Soreness in left index finger (Friday).” “Stiffness in right thumb (Sat).”

Like a third grader giving a book report, I would dutifully read my symptoms to my doctor, who would dutifully jot them down. Other doctors got involved. They got the same report. Such was their delicacy that it took me a full week to figure out that they all thought I was crazy.

Brains are tricky. They tick along with the occasional twinge, but usually pretend to be under our control. Until they stop. They coax twitches and pains out of nooks and crannies and bend your reality to the shapes of their own whims. Unable to pretend we are our own any longer, the things we once care about start to turn remote and fade away. I struggled to find things to read and listen to. I started to eat for convenience.

Perhaps this is unusual for a self-professed “food writer”, but I actually don’t read most food writing. A lot of it is clubby, insular, self-satisfied. It is so frequently smug. It is the writing equivalent of listening to Justin Bieber: pretending to some genuine feeling beyond supreme complacency, confident in the knowledge that our approbation, our acceptance, is inevitable. If you charge me with writing this out of envy, it is very true. I — who must now remind herself to be in the moment at all times, who must remember that she is surrounded by the people she loves — I envy these people and their ability to rest easily within themselves.

Jeffrey Steingarten was the reason why I wanted to write about food. His writing first introduced me to Japanese beef so tender it could be cut with a fork, what it would feel like to butcher your own pig, who Alain Ducasse was, many-coursed French meals that tested the boundaries of what could be accomplished in a kitchen. Sure, he could be pleased with himself once in a while. He wrote for Vogue, after all. But what set him apart was his charm, his restlessness, and the overarching curiosity that informed nearly everything he wrote. He had to know how everything worked, and the best way to do it, no matter what the cost. And he was rarely truly satisfied. I loved that about him. If you are a food writer, I don’t care if you are BFF with David Chang or the best cook in your apartment building. But the endless questing, the need to consume the knowledge as much as the food, that is different.

None of us asked to be here; burdened with this knowledge, we navigate our lives with varying degrees of ease. All of the people I admire are aware of this, and have the generosity of spirit to allow for how difficult it can be. We all have our strategies for how to make our way through the world, like living our lives for others, or immersing ourselves in our faith or our work, or, like Jeffrey Steingarten, searching for the perfect Everything. When we forget how to live our lives, we can only live by example.

So this year, I am thankful for Jeffrey Steingarten. I am thankful for my friends and family. I am thankful for the people I listen to and read. I am thankful for freshly baked biscuits slathered in homemade apple butter, and pie crust straight out of the oven, and bolting down a Northern Thai breakfast of thinly sliced eggplant flavored with the juice from pulverized black field crabs and many, many handfuls of sticky rice eaten so quickly that your throat hurts with the pain of it. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Thank you for whatever the future may bring.

Chicken on the grill at Chicken Guy on Thonglor Road

Five years ago, I wrote about trying to shed by post-baby fat on this very blog. It’s now 2015, my son is in kindergarten, and I am still in the same place I was in when I started Bangkok Glutton, except now I’m older. Struggling with your weight and all the stuff that goes with it (knee problems, health issues, nagging from your mom) while staying an avid fan of all things edible is a chore even at the best of times. When you’re stressed out from all sorts of other stuff, it’s nearly impossible — unless you go all-out and become one of those people who detail to you every single thing they’ve ingested that day in lieu of actual conversation. I am now one of those people. You can make like my friends and family and stop paying attention now.

My new trainers-for-a-month, Dan and Dave, look after my nutrition and my physical fitness, respectively. Not surprisingly, nutrition is the very thing I have been struggling with for the past five years. Dan tells me that, in order to succeed in my goals, I need to cut out a few things from my diet. Those things are: caffeine. Alcohol. Sugar, including fructose and honey. Grains, including rice, noodles and bread. Legumes. Grain-fed beef. Pork. Duck. Any oil not coconut or olive. And anything made by anyone else. Half of my plate should be vegetables, and half should be protein. I can eat nuts and seeds but lay off the tofu. I should become BFF with lemon water. This is all so my body will begin burning my vast stores of fat, instead of the sugar that I have been living off of for the past 43 years. Before every meal, I envision the face of my trainer Dan, who thinks eating canned tuna mixed with wasabi is a treat: “Do I need this [insert bread-related item here]? Will it help me reach my goal?”

I end up documenting everything obsessively in a food diary. I become unbearable company, which is okay, since all my meals are at home anyway. I read cookbooks at night before bed, fantasizing about food. In the mornings when I wake up and take a sip of my hot lemon water, I literally want to die. I tell Paleo Robbie, whom I’m interviewing for a “clean eating” story, all about my problems within the first five minutes of meeting him. He gives me a strange look. “Some people don’t do well on ketosis,” he says. I decide that I will use that excuse for the rest of my life. Sorry for barreling into you on the Skytrain. Excuse me for cutting in line at the bank. I don’t do well on ketosis.

However, there comes a time when one must do as one does, because that is what they are pretending to do for a living. Like eat street food. It’s a shame that street food is LITERALLY THE DEVIL for this diet. It is full of delicious things, like noodles and rice and fried stuff. It probably has MSG. It most definitely has soy sauce and/or fish sauce. But life must go on. I try to compromise where I can, and that means a vastly reduced set of dishes: namely, gowlow (noodle soups without the noodles) and beef meatballs on a stick without the sauce, baby.

Bamee asawin “gow low” at Bamee Gua on Langsuan

But the very best thing for diet street food is Isaan. It’s all the meat of course, and the plate of fresh veggies that usually accompanies your meal. The fact that everything is grilled helps too.

Marinating meat ready for the grill at Jay Dang on Petchburi

Salt-encrusted, lemongrass-and-lime leaf-stuffed fish at Jay Dang

But if you must maintain tunnel vision in order to keep focus, like me, it’s best if the vendor serves only meat and nothing else to tempt you back into sugar-burning mode. That’s where the Chicken Guy on Thonglor Road (between Thonglor sois 17 and 19) comes into play. His stand is literally a grill set into the sidewalk, spattered liberally with grease from the chicken thighs he cooks daily. The thighs are juicy and lightly flavored, perfect for days when you need something from the streets in order to maintain the illusion that you haven’t tipped over entirely into insufferable gitface land.

Chicken guy is open in the mornings until he sells out.