If you go to Thailand and don’t try any of the national dishes, it means you need to return. With good reason, most hotels offer only breakfast – so you can go out and explore the Thai cuisine during the day. It is almost impossible to stay hungry in the country of the thousand smiles. The variety of dishes that simply is not available back home, the incredible spices and amazing seafood are waiting for tourists around every corner.
Three advantages of South-East Asian cuisine:
- Taste
- Price
- Exotics
Massaman curry
The Asian version of everyone’s favorite goulash. This is a good dish to get acquainted with Thai cuisine, since the amount of spices used in this dish is not extremely high. Massaman curry is basically meat that has been fried with onions, in a sauce of coconut milk and curry paste. Served with potatoes or rice.
Price: starting from 80 baht
Tom Yam Kung
This coconut milk soup is the country’s “business card”, and has a huge number of variations. The most common recipe includes shrimps, fish (or chicken) broth, Shiitake mushrooms, lime or lemongrass and Tom Yam pasta. Each chef complements the dish with ingredients to suit his or her taste: tomatoes, rice, galanga, ginger, seafood, etc.
Price: starting from 60 baht
Som Tam
A spicy salad, which is prepared quickly, inexpensive and delicious. Green papaya is not a fruit but a vegetable for the Thai people – one that serves perfectly as the main ingredient for Som Tam. First, the straw sliced papaya is mixed with chili and garlic. After that, tomatoes, green beans, nuts and shrimps (or crab meat) are added. To finish off, the salad is sprinkled with lemon juice.
Price: starting from 30 baht
Plah Plow fish
Grilled fish seasoned with all sorts of fragrant spices and herbs, with a crispy salt crust. Plah Plow can be served separately or with a side of rice or vegetables. A popular dinner option for both tourists and locals.
Price: starting from 90 baht
Khao Pad rice
Khao Pad is basically made from everything the cook got his hands on. Boiled rice is fried with meat or seafood, vegetables and spices. Sometimes eggs are added, and the dish is served with fruits and herbs on the table. It is important for the rice to not be just warmed up in a pan, but decently fried. To add juiciness, it can be sprinkled with lime juice.
Price: starting from 40 baht
Khao Man Gai
Boiled “fat” rice with chicken. One of the few dishes that will suit the more delicate stomach. The chicken is cooked separately, and then the rice is cooked in its broth. Sometimes broth can be poured over the dish when it’s ready, or served in a separate bowl with some winter melon. Served with a mix of soy and bean sauce, seasoned with garlic, ginger and chili.
Price: starting from 40 baht
Khao Pad
The rice is fried together with the chicken, later all kinds of vegetables and seafood are mixed in during the cooking process. Soy sauce or fish sauce is served separately or can be added to the dish on request. Those who prefer non-spicy food better ask for the sauce to be served separately.
Price: starting from 40 baht
Yam Nua
A spicy salad that’ll quickly satisfy a tired traveler. The main ingredients are beef, onions and tomatoes – but the highlight of the dish is the abundance of spices, including mint, coriander, lime and, of course, chili. If you want to try Yam Nua but don’t like spicy food, just ask the waiter to put less chili (or to remove it at all).
Price: starting from 40 baht
Gang Dang
With the red curry Gang Dang, you can experience the typical Thai harmony of sweet and sour. Tender meat is cooked with plenty of curry in coconut milk, complemented by kafir-lime leaves. It is interesting that Gang Dang used to be not popular at all amongst tourists, it has only recently been gaining popularity.
Roti pancakes
It is absolutely obligatory to try these little pancakes and bring this gastronomic delicacy home. The dough is rolled out in a thin pancake and laid out on a frying pan. The filling (usually banana) is put inside, the pancake is wrapped like an envelope and fried on both sides. Chocolate, condensed milk or another topping is poured over the pancakes as a finishing touch.
Price: starting from 30 baht
Street Food
Thai people don’t usually cook at home. There are several reasons for this: gas is expensive, there are a large number of street cafes and mobile carts with food available all over town, and last but not least – lack of time. Therefore, at any time of the day and night you can grab a cheap and delicious local bite, or go to a European restaurant.
The most efficient way to satiate your hunger is to buy some street food. A gas cooker and a workstation are attached to a motorcycle or a cart, and this improvised kitchen on wheels goes on the streets of the city to feed the hungry fellows. Street food carts are in demand among both the “farang’ (foreigners) and the local population. Everyone who has visited the Kingdom, surely has a picture of this mobile food engineering miracle…
You can buy a hot meal, or you can grab some light snacks that come in a great variety in Asian countries: small skewers, amazing seafood cooked in different ways, sweets with fruits, and even exotic insects. Street food is safe because it is cooked fresh right in front of you, and the abundance of spices not only gives a colorful taste and aroma – but also helps keep the dish fresh. Often you can find some dishes in a street food cart that you wouldn’t find in a normal restaurant, and you’ll pay only a couple of pennies for it!
“Hits” of the street food carts:
- seafood or meat kebabs
- Kan Jin (rice noodles with meat or fish and vegetables)
- Chin Bow (boiled meatballs and sausages that are grilled and served with Nama Jin sauce)
- Hau Moch (crab or fish mousse with curry sauce or coconut milk; wrapped in banana leaves)
- Hokkien noodles (fried noodles with seafood, fish or bacon).
An extra mention goes out to Thai sweets, which even on picture look so delicious that you can’t wait to try them. Add to this a fantastic flavor and attractive prices – and your beach holiday will turn into a gastronomic tour.
Thai sweets
Kwai Tod
Bananas breaded with flour, sugar and sesame are grilled and sold for weight. Sweet, fat – and of course, caloric.
Price: starting from 20 baht
Khao Tom Mud
Envelopes made from banana leaves with sweet rice inside, tied with stems or stabbed with toothpicks. Looks very similar to the bundle which little May received as a gift from the forest spirit Totoro in the Japanese anime “My neighbor Totoro”.
Price: starting from 10 baht
Khao Niao Mamuang
The super popular “Mango sticky rice”. The rice is boiled in coconut milk and pieces of aromatic mango are added to it. The rice can be colored, and as an extra the food stall sellers sometimes serve it with coconut sauce.
Price: starting from 30 baht
Roti Sai Mai
Colorful threads made of cane sugar are the Thai version of our Western cotton candy. Sold in bags, but you can also eat them as a filling inside the roti pancakes.
Price: starting from 20 baht
Khanom Tarn
Yellow pies made of rice flour and coconut milk.
Price: starting from 20 baht for three pies.
Tong Yord
Egg yolk boiled in sugar syrup. Small balls are made from the sweet dough and sold in bags of several pieces.
Price: starting from 20 baht
So! What have you tried of the above? Did you like it? Please tell us in comments below!