Jib Kee/จิ๊บกี่

DSC_8898 The area around Bangkok's Nang Loeng Market is home to lots of old-school restaurants that are ripe for investigation.

One of the oldest-school looking ones is Jib Kee, a restaurant that, for more than 50 years, has specialised in meaty Chinese-Thai dishes such as roast pork and duck:

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On my first visit I tried their muu krob (หมูกรอบ; shown at the top of this post), roast pork belly, and immediately suspected that it might be one of the best I've encountered in Bangkok. The skin is crispy, without being too much so; the fatty bits literally melt away in your mouth; and amazingly, the meat is moist, tender and even perhaps a bit rare - surely an indicator of restraint and skill on their part. The dish is served with a dipping sauce that combines sliced chillies, dark soy and I think, a bit of vinegar.

The remainder of the restaurant's dishes revolve around duck, and include a decent pet tun (เป็ดตุ๋น), a slightly peppery broth of duck:

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roast duck (เป็ดย่าง):

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served over bitter greens in a light five spice-based sauce; and duck intestines (ใส้แก้ว):

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the latter with little or no flavour of their own, but with a crunchy texture, and served in a slightly salty sauce that included fermented soybeans.

The duck dishes are probably above average, and I suspect they're what attract the high-ranking military generals who frequent the place every time I've been there (a sure-fire sign of a good restaurant in Thailand), but it's the pork belly that would draw me back here.

Here's a video from the Thai television programme, Aroy Rim Thaang ("Delicious Street Food") about Jib Kee:

Jib Kee Th Nakhon Sawan, Bangkok 02 281 1283 9am-3pm

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