SPICEGASM.COM My travel tales and food hunting

I have to make this post because my host, Zach really adores this dish. Anywhere he goes, he will order this dish for sure. The name of the dish is Panang. I think panang is a cooking method and normally you can get the choices between pork, beef or chicken. His favorite is Panang Moo. Moo means pork in Thai. The taste is quite similar to rendang which is a popular Malay dish.

His favorite panang moo gotta be the one from the restaurant that is located at his building. It’s also his favorite because it is so convenient for him to order. All it takes is only one phone call and the dish would be delivered right to his door step.

Sometimes we do go downstairs to eat in the small restaurant that caters for all the residents around his condominium. I prefer to go downstairs as I can see more dishes being offered in the menu.

Panang Moo

This how Panang Moo looks like. Is kinda oily but I guess this how you make it delicious. Is best to eat with hot steamed rice with some fresh cucumber. If you ever visit Thailand, do give this dish a try.

Spiced Thai Catfish

I’m sucker to trying new stuff and obviously when I saw this catfish dish, I gave it a go. Most of us who are familiar with Thai food knows the famous Catfish Mango Salad. This fried catfish with Thai spice is also uber delicious. It has the crunchy texture and yet juicy and soft in the inside. I have no idea what spices they used but I hope to find out soon so I can cook it myself when I’m not in Thailand.

At the point of eating these dishes, we are schedule to fly to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. I’m very excited to be going to Phnom Penh for the first time. So do stay tune for more blog post about my Cambodia adventure.

As much as I love the street food scene around Asia, I do go eat in restaurant once in a while. The restaurant has to be either highly recommended or caught my attention. Those are my two criteria of dining in a restaurant. As for this post, Kuang Sea Food restaurant has always caught my attention while walking past it. I’ve always noticed the restaurant is super packed and that prompt me to give the restaurant a shot.

Next to the entrance of the restaurant I can see lots of aquarium with live prawns, crabs, fishes and different kind of shell fish in it. All though the picture posted looked like it has nothing in it, it actually has some prawns at the below of the tank. I took this picture while sitting down as I felt shy to go near the aquarium to take better pictures. I’m still not used to taking pictures especially when there’s a lot of customers.

Another secret shot that I took while pretending to adjust my camera. I’m always worried that some people might not like their pictures being taken. As you can see, the restaurant is always pack during dinner time.

Thai Curry Prawn

Upon looking at the menu, I can tell that this restaurant is actually offering Thai-Chinese cuisine. If you have been traveling and eating out long enough, you can tell the difference between an authentic Thai restaurant or distinguish the difference between an authentic Chinese restaurant or a Thai-Chinese restaurant. What I meant here is that this restaurant is actually own by Chinese who are born in Thai. So the dishes can actually be categorized in a class of it’s own. So to call it a Thai restaurant or a Chinese restaurant it would not be accurate.

The picture above is Thai Curry Prawn. It uses the Chinese cooking technique of stir fry. The ingredients are mostly Thai inspired. The prawn used are fresh water prawn and the head of the prawns are exceptionally big. Asian loves eating this kind of prawns where you can suck all the juices and roe from the head. Really tasty stuff but not to Western folk friendly.

Thai Kung Pao Chicken

Another dish we ordered was a chicken dish. Is quite similar to Chinese version of Kung Pao Chicken. The difference of this Thai version against the Chinese version is that it is more spicy and less sweet.

Steam Sea Bass In Lime Sauce

We ordered 3 dishes that night and the last one is steam sea bass in lime sauce. As you can see there are loads of chili on the sea bass. The sauce is spicy and sour and it is really appetizing.

Total damage for the complete meal for 3 person was 950 BHT. We also ordered 3 plates of rice and 2 bottles of water. It is not pricey if you compare with Western prices. Of course eating in the street food stalls would be cheaper but these type of dishes cannot be found in the street food scenes. I can safely say that the price is pretty standard for a Thai seafood restaurant. There are places in Bangkok where the price are even pricier. Especially in tourist area in Patpong. Kuang Sea Food Restaurant is located in Soi 12 Ratchada.

You can find practically any kind of food with the mobile food stall scenes in Thailand. Within 2 km of my vicinity of where I’m staying, I believe there would be easily hundreds of mobile food stalls offering meals from breakfast to dinner. I  think is just impossible for me to visit all these great food stalls during my short stay in Bangkok. I do however make it a point to visit as much stalls I can while staying here. Most of the stalls I have to say offer above average quality goodies.

Who needs the fancy Starbucks coffee when you can have quality coffee for as low as 25 BHT. I normally order ice-coffee and the Thai style of ice coffee has condense milk with ice. Really tasty and is best taken in the morning before heading to another stall to get some breakfast. Sometimes I have the ice coffee during tea time and have some snacks as well.

Not my best picture but here you go, some road side stall getting ready for business. It’s around 4 pm and the sun is pretty bright, this probably is the cause of why the pictures are too bright. The road is actually flanked by these mobile food stalls left and right. It does caused traffic but people just don’t seem to mind. Sometimes some of the drivers even do a quickie by stopping their car to order some food for take away.

My favorite fried chicken stall. I not sure why I left this picture out when I made the post about my favorite stall. The skin are mostly from the neck part and is damn delicious. The Colonel would be amazed if he ever get the chance to taste it. I’m not a health buff hence I don’t mind “whacking” this amazing crispy tasty skins. I will not forgive myself if I do not give it a try because of all the hype about healthy eating. As long as you don’t eat it all the time I guess it would be all right.

Next to the fried chicken stall I noticed a lady selling some sort of fried dough. In Singapore we do have something similar where it is know as “You Tiao”

I have no idea what is the name of this delicious fried snack. I bought 20 BHT worth of these golden fried dough and another 10 BHT for the dip. The dip looked very familiar to me and upon tasting it, it confirmed my guess. It is Kaya and I don’t think the Thai call it the same. In Singapore many people dip their version of fried dough in soya bean drink or coffee. It is still delicious nevertheless.

With all these affordable prices and super delicious food, how can one not fall in love with Thailand. When it comes to the food scene in Thailand, you do not have to worry about not be able to afford it. It is always a matter of whether you have enough time or space in your stomach to eat all the goodies offered.

Hway Kwang Terrace

We just finished dinner in one small stall near Zach’s home. While having dinner we decided to go look for some DVD in Hway Kwang market. The market opens late evening and closes at 2-3 am daily. After dinner, we decided to take the cab to Hway Kwang market even though is only 1.5 km away. Some days you just feel lazy to walk after a heavy meal.

While in the taxi, suddenly Zach became very quiet and looked pretty anxious to arrive the market. Since we are always together, I recognized the look that he was having. It is not a look of a man who is eager to get his hand on some DVDs but it is more of a man who is anxious to relief himself. He has the look of an American pilot eager to bomb Hiroshima, or a mom wanting to drop off her kids to the pool. To make matter worse, traffic was bad and we were inching to our destination. Finally Zach told me he will just run to a mini mall that he had seen in Hway Kwang night market. Both of us has never set foot in the mall as we are not shopaholics. We love the malls only when we have emergency like this. So we paid the cab driver and Zach ran as fast as he could to the mall. I kept walking and 7 minutes later I arrived the mall and proceeded to the toilet which is situated at the roof top of the mall.

The roof top of the mall is known as Hway Kwang Terrace and it is a place for people to chill out. There are many stalls selling food, karaoke rooms and also a mini arcade. There’s also a big screen projector and a live acoustic band singing Thai song at that time. I went to the toilet to wash my hands and suddenly one of the toilet door opened and Zach appeared, looking very much relief. The first thing he told me was this is a cool place and we should have a few bottles of beer so we can check out the place. I have the same thought and watching DVDs can take the back seat for today. We find out seat and start to snap some pictures and ordered our beer.

The food stalls are located on the left side as you walked up to Hway Kwang Terrace. Karaoke rooms are on the left. Rows of tables are in the center and up front is a small stage with one guitarist and a Thai girl singing the latest Thai pop songs. Next to the small stage is a big screen broadcasting England premier league soccer game. ( Thai are football crazies ).

Is 12.30am and the late night crowd kept coming. It was Thursday night and the crowd was pretty good. We were tempted to order the beer tower but we decided to just order bottle beer as we were quite full from late dinner.

We ordered San Miguel Light and I’ve never seen big bottles of San Miguel Light after so many years visiting the Philippines. I’ve seen big bottles of Red Horse but never big bottles like this. I decided to take pictures of the big bottle of San Miguel Light to show my Filipino friends. I even emphasized the “bigness” of the bottle by stacking 2 packs of cigarettes on top of each other.

Maybe there are big bottles in the Philippines but I just never came across. But it is still a cool picture though. I gotta say San Miguel Light is getting really famous all around the world. I’ve seen it in Hong Kong and China and now Thailand. I also noticed quite a few tables of Thai customers drinking SML instead of their beloved Chang and Singha. It means the Thai people has already accepted San Miguel Light. Is really a good beer I must say and one of my favorites.

A very much relax Zach and he would like to give a special thank you to the janitor who is making sure that the toilet of Hway Kwang Terrace are being kept clean daily. Kap Khun Kap.

Two hours into drinking beer and our mouth started to get itchy. We decided to order seafood salad. I love Thai salad as it uses a lot of lime juice, salted shrimp or crab and chili. Really appetizing and makes you want to eat more stuff. So we ordered one more dish.

Deep Fried Duck Bill. Is very common for the Thai people to decorate the food they serve as nice as possible. We have an orchid in our duck bill and is not even in a posh restaurant. This deep fried duck bill does not have many meat but is a good pulutan ( finger food ) when you are drinking beer. Is more of nibbling rather than chewing.

I enjoyed the “unexpected” outing very much that night. We would love to come back again with a few more friends and order that big ass beer tower. Most of the dishes cost around 40-200 BHT. The big bottle of San Miguel Light only cost 120 BHT. For Bangkok standard is very cheap and reasonable, Hway Kwang Terrace certainly get my vote for a good place to chillax.

I can’t help but to keep singing praises about the food scene in Thailand enough. Where I’m staying right now, walking to the main street is around 200 meters according to my guesstimation. Along that 200 meters walk, there are roughly around 20 food stalls that are open for business daily. I don’t really know why I never really try all of them. Maybe this is due to the fact that I’ve already set my mind to go eat in some other places while walking to the main road.

One day while walking to the main road, I suddenly have the urge to try this stall that I’ve been seeing for many times. Every time I passed by this stall, I can see a lot of  Thai people occupying the tables. I have no idea what they are selling but I have a rough idea that this stall is selling noodles but not sure what kind of noodles they were selling. So I think is about time that I eat in this little Thai noodle stall.

This is how the Thai noodle stall is being set up. I wish I could speak Thai and can do some short interview with the owner of the stall. I am curious to know how long they have been operating the business and also did they start off by selling their goodies with a small push cart and later managed to buy the building and convert the little side area of the building into a simple stall. I’ve seen many push cart vendors became successful over the years. Don’t underestimate the potential of push cart stall operators, they can probably make more money you and me combined.

I am so glad that my urge on that day was to give this Thai noodle stall a try. Found out that they are selling beef and pork noodle soup. I love this kind of stall that is selling limited item. It means they are specialist and most of the time you need to be good in what you offer to survive. I decided to order the beef noodle. It comes with a few slices of beef and beef balls as well. The soup is the thick version and almost like stew. Garnishing was with some chopped chives and some fried pork skin. For 25 BHT a bowl, it is definitely a steal.

I love how the Thai stall always provide you with all the dips and condiments set on the table. You can use it as much as you desire. It normally comprised of sugar, chopped chili soaked in fish sauce, chili powder and home made chili sauce.

I always feel very comfortable with this kind of food stall because, number 1, I know no matter how much I eat, I can still afford it. Surely it will not put a dent in my wallet. Knowing that this stall does not rely on fancy decoration to sell their products, I am assured of good quality and tasty food.