Bangkok Glutton

Banana leaf curry at Raja Restaurant in Kuala Lumpur

Throughout the years on this blog, I have pretty much demonstrated a Taliban-like commitment to eating Thai food the way Thai people eat it. It seemed like a no-brainer to me because a fork and spoon are so obviously the best eating utensils ever created. Why on earth would you struggle with a fork or, god forbid, a pair of chopsticks, when presented with a curry and a plate of jasmine rice? Because, no duh, the best way to eat something is the way locals have been doing it for years, and that this was obviously a rule that would apply to every cuisine, no matter what.

Then I went to Vietnam, and discovered that I have been eating the Vietnamese fried crepe — banh xeo, supposedly named after the sound the batter makes when dropped into a sizzling pan — wrong for years. It turns out the brittle, shell-like crepe is not the vehicle for the herbs: it’s the herbs that are meant to enclose the crepe, the leaves rolled up like an egg roll and dotted inside with bits of crepe crunch like croutons before they are dipped in a sweet-tart sauce and brought to the mouth.

Banh xeo, or stuffed Vietnamese crepe

Somehow, in all my years of patronizing Vietnamese restaurants all over the globe, no one thought to tell me that Vietnamese people eat their crepes differently than I was eating my crepe. They would just set the plate on my table and walk away, possibly resisting the urge to tell me, just like I resist/don’t resist the urge to tell other people, “You are doing it all wrong”. They simply seemed happy that I was there. This is because Vietnamese waiters are better people than me.

I was resolved to learn from my mistakes and to eat things properly from then on. But what happens when you don’t want to do it, even when presented with incontrovertible evidence that you’re DOIN IT ALL RONG? When our friend May took us to a banana curry leaf place called Raja Restaurant on a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, I was forced to face this very question.

Because, let me tell you, eating gloppy food with bare hands is definitely my gastro-Achilles heel. Meaning, THERE IS NO WAY THAT IS HAPPENING. I mean, I’m Northern Thai and I can barely eat sticky rice with my fingers. The thought of all that unseen hand guck coating those grains of rice just makes me want to scrape my tongue with a chainsaw. So apologies, banana leaf curry originators. To the first people who thought of tearing a leaf off of a tree, tipping delicious curries from pails onto those leaves with a hefty mound of rice and a dollop of pickles and then having at it with their gross-ass bare hands, I say: hell naw. I say, I’m sorry. I say, it’s great you are eco-friendly and all, but thank God for the fork and spoon. Cuz when I see people doing like they’re supposed to and eating banana leaf curry with their hands, the grains of wet rice sticking to their fingers as they maneuver their way through their meal, it makes me think of this:

Stuff I would rather do than eat wet curry rice with my hands

1. Get a painful charlie horse in the middle of a great dream
2. Wear a repurposed garbage bag for two weeks
3. Go to a Michael Buble concert
4. Wash my face with sand
5. Drink creme de menthe instead of water for a month
6. Stub my toe really hard on something
7. Go without sleep for three days
8. Go camping (same as #7)
9. Watch a “Glee” marathon from start to finish
10. Eat a raw hotdog from current-day Leonardo DiCaprio’s crotch

In conclusion, I have to say thank everything worth thanking that the folks at Raja Restaurant are not judgmental asses like yours truly and happy to give a fork and spoon to anyone who finds themselves manually challenged. That’s pretty great of them. Because their food is really wonderful, and it would be a shame to miss out on that incredible curry due to my dumb neuroses. As for eating Thai food like Thai people … well, who am I to say how people eat? It’s nobody’s business but yours.

It’s no secret that these past few days have been the hottest that Thailand has seen for decades. I can barely drag myself back home before I want to plop myself onto my couch and go to sleep. That is, after I carefully dry out the sweat-drenched handkerchief I have taken to carrying around with me for when I inevitably start melting on the Skytrain platform. I have bought an assortment of handkerchiefs for just this very purpose, in different colors to suit my varying moods. My transformation into elderly Japanese man is nearly complete.

Many people say that global warming is to blame for hot spells like these. Yet, as with everything else — people who congratulate themselves for having not read A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, like illiteracy is a badge of honor — there are a handful of naysayers who seek to buck the conventional wisdom. These are the people who insist that what we are experiencing on a global scale is a normal blip in the sequence of things, and we are not slowly broiling ourselves to death. English-speakers liken them to ostriches with their heads in the sand. Thais have a term for them too: they are frogs in coconuts.

The term is old-fashioned, but it still applies. The coconuts may have changed, but they are still there, air-conditioned, sprawling, outfitted with many Starbucks and Burger Kings for your particular convenience. They are our shelters from the cruel concrete world. They also, somehow, harbor decent “street food” dishes, even though you have not trawled through winding alleyways or braved potential carbon monoxide poisoning for them. When it’s this hot outside, one need not suffer so much for a good bowl of noodles (as long as you’re willing to pay for it). Here are three places where the coconut yields some good-enough flesh.

1. Bamee Sawang

Egg noodles with wontons and barbecued pork at Bamee Sawang at Emporium

This outpost of the famous streetside bamee vendor on Rama IV Road is probably the most popular noodle place located in Emporium’s newishly-refurbished Food Hall (Sukhumvit 24, BTS Phrom Phong). It’s almost the same thing, but without the fluorescent green lighting or the elderly Thai man who insists on reminding you (over and over again) that alcohol is not allowed on the premises.

2. Peninsula Plaza

Peninsula’s beef boat noodles

Despite the relentlessly “fancy” surroundings — like the sitting room of your favorite stuffed doll-collecting widowed aunt — Peninsula Plaza (153 Rajadamri Road, BTS Rajadamri) has long served some of the most popular bowls of “boat noodles” in the city. Incongruously called “Provence”, the specialties here are actually upscale versions of Thai street food, like Thai-Chinese-style porpia sod (“spring rolls” wrapped in white flour dough and slathered in a sweet sauce) and deep-fried wontons. The boat noodles — so called because they were first served from the boats that plied Bangkok’s canals in the 1940s and seasoned with a dash of pork or beef blood mixed with salt — are by far the most famous, considered an oasis of flavor in an otherwise timid menu.

3. Nuer Koo

Wagyu beef noodles in broth at Nuer Koo

Even I was skeptical about this place, since there is another fancy beef noodle place that my family is fanatically loyal to. But if I don’t feel like trekking to this other place, and want to take the Skytrain with my collection of multi-colored handkerchiefs, then Nuer Koo at Paragon (4th floor, Rama I Road, BTS Siam) is my most likely destination. They too offer wagyu and “Japanese kobe” beef noodles, as well as kurobuta pork for non-beef eaters. Not surprisingly, this kind of imported beef noodle bowl costs a pretty penny, but then again, no one said the luxuries of the coconut would be free.

Banh xeo, or stuffed Vietnamese crepe, named after the sound the batter makes when dropped in the pan

There is nothing Thai people understand less than the desire to be alone. When someone slopes off, declaring an interest in taking a solitary walk or — heaven forbid! — a meal alone, the obvious conclusion that most Thais will draw is that there is something wrong. Because there is nothing worse than being on your own, with nothing but your thoughts for company. There is strength in the collective “we”. In the solitary “I”, there is just you.

The tendency to leave ingredients unadorned is another thing that Thais would rather not do. Sure, there are the raw vegetables that go with salads or dips, but they are the supporting players, the antidotes to things that need balancing in the ultimate battle for harmony on your palate. But everything is just that: a force to be counteracted. Everything is meant to be manipulated for the greater good, no stray acacia leaf or shrimp paste ball left to its own devices. What would fish meatball want to go off on her own for, anyway? Who does fish meatball think she is?

This is what makes Vietnamese food so interesting to me. There is the furious jumble of salads where lightly blanched slices of beef vie with pickled onions and julienned bits of carrot and glass vermicelli, and soup noodles heaped high with greens and christened with a bit of fish sauce and a dash of lime juice. But it’s just that — a mix that comes apart in the mouth, free to remain carrots and coriander leaves and noodles despite being part of a dish, readily identifiable and unobscured by a paste marinade or egg netting or any other highfalutin culinary trick seeking to meld every component of the dish to some higher ideal.

A typical bowl of pho 

And then there is the issue with the chilies: ultimately why I think Vietnamese food resonates with so many people in a way that Thai doesn’t. There isn’t the cloud of chilies literally obscuring your tastebuds. Vietnamese food isn’t a food-based “Fear Factor” where you are expected to endure varying levels of pain in the pursuit of eating like a local. It’s just there, a similar mix of textures and sweet, salty and sour tastes, but presented much more simply and accessibly. As Karen says, it’s “gently flavored”.

I think this sort of laissez-faire attitude is exemplified most by Ho Chi Minh City’s “Lunch Lady” (Nguyen Thi Tranh, Phuong Da Cao, District 1), who cooks something different for lunch every day and still has no problem expecting people to come to her streetside stall for a bite. In Thailand, where people are so hospitable it can become an affliction, there would inevitably be the worry that people might not like what you are cooking that day. Here, the attitude is, “This is what I’m cooking. You can take it or leave it.” Paradoxically, diners appear delighted to be told what to eat. These are the same diners that probably enjoy being yelled at by irate Asian ladies. Future street food cooks, mull a little on that.

The “lunch lady” at work

I should add: diners are happy to have their choices taken away, as long as that food is very good. On the day we arrived, there were thick, glassy rice noodles like glittery udon — what Thais would call guay jab yuan — in a lurid, Will Arnett-colored broth flavored with pork bone and chili. The soup held slices of fatty pork, deep-fried shallots, coriander, bits of fried pork rind, boiled quail eggs and cooked prawns, and the noodles were inevitably heavy and difficult to eat. This bowl was accompanied by both fresh and deep-fried spring rolls and an iced green drink that tasted like pennywort, or bai bua bok. Whatever they chose to plonk onto our table, we ate, and we enjoyed it.