Thanks to my friend N (email tagline: 'story teller'), I was recently introduced to a pretty cool restaurant in yet another obscure part of Bangkok.
Pet Tun Jao Thaa is a tiny restaurant located opposite the Harbour Department (the Jao Thaa) on Thanon Songwat, the ancient riverside lane in Bangkok's Talat Noi neighbourhood.
The reason most people come here is for the eponymous duck, braised in Chinese spices and served with a spicy/sour dipping sauce. It's good (more on that in a minute), but I have to say that my favourite dish of the meal was quite possibly mee phat krachet, thin rice noodles fried with krachet, an indigenous herb-like vegetable (illustrated above). Supplemented with seafood and pork, the noodles were well seasoned - think garlic, lots of garlic, and chili - and very tasty, although I could have used a bit more krachet.
Instead of duck, we went for haan phalo, goose braised in Chinese spices:
The slices of goose breast are served on a platter along with cubes of blood and par-boiled kailan, and the whole lot is slathered with the braising liquid and lots of deep-fried garlic. The goose is tender and flavourful and the phalo is rich and has a meaty depth - a stark contrast to the sweet cinnamon-flavoured sauce that defines many versions of this dish.
Despite this being a duck restaurant, the only duck dish we ordered was kuaytiaw pet, duck noodles, which were quite frankly the least interesting dish of the meal:
They weren't bad, and the duck was tender and tasty, but as a whole the dish was underseasoned and simply not as wow as the other two.
Ped Tun Jao Thaa Opposite Harbour Department office, Soi Wanit 2, Bangkok 7am-5pm Mon-Sat
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