SPICEGASM.COM My travel tales and food hunting

We loved the run down joint so much that we decided to go back there again for lunch the next day. If you are curious where this place is, it is just at the corner of Soi 7, Ratchada. Soi means street in Thai.

When we arrived at the run down joint, we saw a stall with very long line of people. It is a stall selling Khao Man Gai. So seeing the line is long, the chicken rice must be good and famous. I decided to join the line and will order chicken rice for me and Zach. ( joining to cue up upon seeing a long line is a famous Singaporean traits by the way )

The chicken rice is really affordable. It cost 30 BHT for small and 35 BHT for big. I decided to order 2 big ones. One for me and one for Zach. The stall offers 2 types of chicken. Boiled white chicken and crispy fried chicken cutlets. I decided to get one each and can do so sharing testing with Zach. For 35 BHT, the chicken rice set comes with the fragrant chicken rice, chopped chicken leg ( you can specify to the owner which part you like best ), a complimentary soup and 3 types of dips. The dips consists of chili, fermented black beans and thick soya sauce. The chicken rice is also served with some slice cucumbers. So basically everything you need for a meal is here. The complimentary soup is really tasty as you can see a lot of chicken feet and necks in the soup.

Singapore is also famous for chicken rice. I’ve never made this dish myself as it takes a lot of effort and work to make this dish. I would say is quite hard and need a bit of cooking skills to make a decent chicken rice. I never bothered trying as chicken rice in Singapore just cost 2 SGD – 3 SGD. Is so convenient to just order from your neighborhood food court. Maybe one of these days I will gather up some courage to try to make this famous dish.

February 2010 I was in Bangkok visiting my good friend. My friend is from America and has been living in Bangkok for the past 4 years. He is also a great fan of good food and is very open minded for a Caucasian guy. So being the self proclaimed Asian food expert that I am, I took the responsibility of trying to show him the real deal of Thai food. This is not an easy task as he has been living there for 4 years. And he is not the type that only eats Western food 24/7. With him having an ex Thai girlfriend makes my job even harder. ( He is very single now and good looking. Rumors has it that he prefers Pinay. I will post his picture one of these days. So if you are a Filipina reading my blog, please come back often )

We had a good time eating Thai food while I was there. Most of the food that I wanted to intro to him, he already knew. I was surprised that he even LOVE this Thai dish name namprik. Is more of a dip rather than a dish. The Filipino would call it sausauan. The main ingredient of this dip is made of chili, fish sauce, lime and belacan ( something similar to bagoong but smell and taste stronger ). This namprik is good with fried fish, fried omelet and also raw vegetables like long beans, cabbage, cucumber and some funky leaves that I don’t even know it in English.

Is quite odd for Western folks to like namprik as the smell is pungently funky. I am sure you can relate the odd feeling when you see a Puti proclaiming for the love for bagoong. So I decided to bring him to a run down place that I spotted that is near to his condo. Since he has tasted most of the food that I wanted to recommend I assume that he never ate in this run down place before. My guess was spot on and I did not even have to convince him to go as this guy is game for anything when it comes to food.

The secret of finding good food in Thailand is to eat where the locals go. DO NOT go to a 5 star Hotel in Bangkok and eat Thai food. The taste is altered to suit the foreigner’s taste buds and the worst part of it, the PRICE. So back to this run down place that has many different stalls ( maybe up to 15 ) selling different types of food. You have the choice of noodle dishes ( Thai Nooden as the Thai would pronounced it ) and also rice dishes. They are also vendors selling dessert and fruits. The run down joint has a big common area with tables and chairs and surrounded by stalls. Well, basically it just looked like a food court without air conditioning.

So we walked around and decided to go with rice dishes as Zach spotted namprik. So I took the liberty of ordering for both of us. I ordered a fried catfish, egg omelet, raw vegetables, namprik ( normally this dip comes for free when you order those raw vegetables ). We also order another pork dish that is very spciy. It is minced pork with lots of spices in it and it taste so damn good. If you have been reading up to now, I think is time for me to post some pictures so that you don’t have to kill your brain cells by imagining how the food looks like.

Namprik with fried catfish, egg omelet and variety of fresh vegetables. Namprik is a dip where it goes really well with fried food and raw vegetables.

Spicy mince pork name Kuk King Moo. I’m not sure if the spelling or pronunciation is correct. I am just an expert in eating but not with the names.

I swear to God it was really like a grand feast. We always over did it when it comes to ordering food. By right for that lunch, namprik with raw vegetables and the fried cat fish with rice is good enough. But hey, we are in Bangkok and is such a waste of opportunity with we do not order more. After all we can go to the gym later which most of the time I fail to do. So our lunch cost us around 80 BHT. Is probably 110 Pesos if converted. It was lunch hour for the office people and the run down joint is packed. I can’t help to noticed that all the Thai office worker looks so happy when they are ordering their favorite food. The place does not only cater for office workers but we see also laborers and tuk tuk drivers ( Thai version of trike ). Most of them might not be wealthy but they just look so happy. Maybe this is due to the fact that good food is still very much affordable in Bangkok.