A few people have sensibly noted that I may have been slightly crazy by visiting a load of high end restaurants (nahm, Sra Bua, Bo.lan, Soul Food Mahanakhon) when I went to Bangkok as Bangkok has incredible and cheap street food.
Well that is true. But the other way to look at it is that you can eat everything. High end, low end, street, dive, stall, cart and pot luck and then tuck into something fancy at the end of the day.
That is what I did but what it meant is that in one week in Bangkok I put on 7kg or about a stone. It doesn’t feel so clever now but it sure was tasty. I am also really not enjoying the twice a day exercise sessions it has mandated on my return to Hong Kong.
Anyway, quite frankly you can get good street or cheap food everywhere in Bangkok but the places which stood out for me were:
- Krua Apsorn cafe/ restaurant (pics above); and
- the myriad stalls in Chinatown (pics below).
Krua Apsorn is a cheaps eats curry place in every guide book and features reviews from the New York Times/ Guardian/ Lonely Planet et al on its menu. It may have been “found” but the quality is still remarkable.
Chinatown is well, one of the world’s many Chinatowns. But this one is stuffed full of hundreds of stalls selling better food than any other one I’ve been to.
- Price – basically free
- Street food and cheap food located everywhere
Oh boy, now THAT is the Bangkok that I remember. All that wonderful street side curry – hot enough to sear your eyeballs, and yet still the tastes and careful balance shine through. And the omelettes – the joyful seafood omelettes. And then there are those salads, all pounded into a wonderfully crunchy flavourful morass in wooden pestle and mortars.
You are, of course, right. The food in BK is not just streetfood, there is plenty of great high end stuff as well. But it’s the former that contains the heart and soul of Thai cooking. Wonderfully tasty heart and soul, I might add.