Or Tor Kor Market

Hor mork, steamed curries, for sale at Bangkok's Or Tor Kor Market Long known as the city's most upscale market, Or Tor Kor Market is also probably my favourite place to shop in Bangkok. This has nothing to do with its chi-chi reputation; I've been shopping here since I moved to Bangkok in the late 90's, and the market has a great selection of just about everything, from high-quality ingredients to a decent dish of curry. It's relatively close to my house, and after a thorough renovation about three years ago, is now cleaner, better organized and more well-lit than ever. I've mentioned the market quite a few times on these pages, but have never really done blog specifically about it. I'm hoping to follow this up with profiles of some of Bangkok's other significant markets in the coming weeks.

Or Tor Kor is mostly known for its giant--and often expensive--fruit, but you can pick up just about anything there, including veggies from this couple who've been selling at the market just as long as I can remember:

Two vendors selling vegetables at Bangkok's Or Tor Kor Market

Tourists in particular are drawn to Or Tor Kor's selection of insanely immense shellfish, but at a markedly less impressive stall, Mr Sanyaa has been selling freshwater fish, the majority from the northern province of Nakhorn Sawan, for more than 10 years. He's incredibly enthusiastic about his products, voluntarily lifting and explaining the pedigree of each, and claims to sell only freshly caught (not raised) fish, including this meaty plaa buek (giant Mekong catfish):

Plaa buek, giant Mekong catfish, for sale at Sanyaa, a longstanding stall selling freshwater fish at Bangkok's Or Tor Kor Market

If you're in no mood to cook, there's lots of prepared food you can take home delicious hor mok, steamed curries (shown at the top of this post) which, as shown above, tend to sell out pretty quickly, or a bag of curry to go from Mae Malee, an incredibly popular and longstanding curry stall just across the way:

The variety of curries for sale at Mae Malee, a longstanding stall at Bangkok's Or Tor Kor Market

If you can't wait until you make it home, there are lots of snacks too. Mr Tii has been making and selling his tasty khanom khrok, crispy coconut puddings, at Or Tor Kor for more than 25 years now:

Mr Tii making khanom khrok, crispy coconut puddings as he's done for more than 25 years at Or Tor Kor Market, Bangkok

He reckons the renovation has made the market better and has even improved his sales, as he's not located on the outermost edge any more. Mr Tii also claims that despite the rise in rent that came as a result of the renovation, most of the same vendors have remained and still sell their stuff at Or Tor Kor.

If you like Thai sweets, there are some delicious sticky rice treats:

Sticky rice treats at Khanomthai Kao Peenong, a family-owned sweets shop at Bangkok's Or Tor Kor Market

and khanom taan, cornbread-like cakes of steamed palm sugar at Khanomthai Kao Peenong, a family-owned Thai sweets vendor that dominates the centre of the market.

You can also stop by Or Tor Kor for lunch or dinner, although there are better places in town to sit down to a meal, and anyway, there are never enough seats during the lunchtime rush. One reliable stall is Rot Det, whose tremendous variety of curries, soups and stir-fries have been available at Or Tor Kor for 'only about 10 years' according to one worker:

Getting lunch at Raan Rot Det, a longstanding curry stall at Bangkok's Or Tor Kor Market

For a larger version of this image go here.

Steps away from Rot Det, I came across a stall I had never seen before, selling kung op woon sen, shrimp and glass noodles:

Kung op woon sen, shrimp and glass noodles, Or Tor Kor Market, Bangkok

I had never noticed it before because it was new; less than a week old, confessed the owner. After recently graduating from a professional cooking course at Kasetsart University, she and her husband (and baby) decided to open up a stall at the market. Her take was deliciously peppery, but as she used margarine instead of the more traditional pork fat (a result of her Western-style cooking education, she explained), it lacked the richness I normally associate with kung op woon sen.

Another reason to visit the market is the abundance of regional Thai food. There at least four stalls selling various products from Thailand's north, and at least three stalls selling southern Thai food, including Jiap's, whose Phuket-style naam yaa pak tai, a fish-based coconut curry that is by far the mildest of all her excruciatingly spicy dishes, is pretty good:

Jiap, a native of Phuket, serving up southern-style naam yaa, a fish curry over fresh rice noodles, from her stall at Bangkok's Or Tor Kor Market

The food of Thailand's northeast is represented by Sut Jai Kai Yaang, a stall (with an nearby, but noisy restaurant), that has served som tam and grilled chicken at Or Tor Kor for more than 30 years now:

Making som tam at Sut Jai Kai Yaang, a stall that has sold isaan food from Bangkok's Or Tor Kor Market for 30 years

They sell do-it-yourself som tam kits with everything you'd need (except the mortar and pestle--but those can also be bought nearby), something I'd never seen elsewhere.

In recent years, I've tended to visit Or Tor Kor primarily for its handsome branch of the Doi Kham or Royal Projects store, located directly east of the market. There you can get high-quality, Western-style produce grown in northern Thailand for ridiculously cheap. A recent visit revealed hard-to-find items such as sweet lemons, Italian parsley, rhubarb and smoked trout. At the west end of the market is another shop selling similar products from a different project; they have tiny bottles of wonderfully creamy goat milk and on occasion, a decent liver pate.

See the entire photoset of images from today's trip to Or Tor Kor Market here.

Or Tor Kor Market (Google Maps link)

Breakfast and a snack in Mae Hong Son

A Burmese soy bean-based breakfast dish, Mae Hong Son Besides some great lunch and dinner places in and around Mae Hong Son (one more of which I'll profile soon), there's also some interesting stuff to be had at breakfast and in the evenings. In the mornings, the city's market is by far the best place to fuel up:

Breakfast at Mae Hong Song's morning market

There you'll find several basic stalls selling everything from generic Thai breakfasts such as rice porridge to local Shan specialties such as khanom jeen naam ngiaw, fresh rice noodles served with a light pork broth. Amongst the same knot of vendors as the latter, you'll also find the dish pictured at the top of this post, an odd combination of a type of solidified soy bean paste and deep-fried tofu that the locals told me is a relatively new introduction from Burma. It's made by slicing hearty chunks of the bean 'pudding':

Slicing a soy bean-based breakfast at Mae Hong Son's morning market

and chunks of deep-fried tofu, and topping the whole lot with garlic oil, deep fried crispy garlic, tamarind juice, fish sauce, soy sauce, MSG, sesame seeds and dried chilies. A little odd, but actually not that bad. Things get really weird when the hot liquid soy bean stuff is poured over fresh rice noodles, resulting in a gooey, stringy mixture.

Every evening a market sets up directly in front of Wat Chong Kham:

Wat Jong Kham, Mae Hong Son

During the tourist season, there are several vendors selling everything from som tam to local sweets. We arrived during the off season when there's a lot less for sale, although you can still find a couple people selling khang pong, a Shan dish of fried papaya fritters, generously spiced with chili and dried turmeric:

Making khang pong, Shan-style papaya fritters, for sale in Mae Hong Son

As well as a few vendors selling the previously-mentioned khanom jeen and Shan-style khao soi.

Update: Flickr user meemalee claims that the tofu-like ingredient mentioned above is made from gram, not soybean flour. She provides a link to this Wikipedia entry, which provides all the details. Thanks, meemalee!

Baan Phleng

Naam phrik num, a 'dip' of roasted chilies, Baan Phleng, Mae Hong Son, Thailand Tucked into the far northwestern corner of Thailand, remote Mae Hong Son is known more for its windy roads and Burmese-style temples than its food, but there's actually some pretty interesting stuff to eat here. One of my favourite places in the city is Baan Phleng.

Baan Phleng, a restaurant in Mae Hong Son, Thailand

Baan Phleng does excellent northern Thai and local Shan (an ethnic group related to the Thais that largely live in neighbourning Burma) food, including several dishes you'd probably be hard-pressed to find just about anywhere else in Thailand. During the day, you simply walk up to the glass under the zinc fretwork and point to whatever looks tasty of the 15+ prepared dishes. In the evenings, seating moves across the street to a garden and dishes are available a la carte from an expansive menu that also includes helpful descriptions of the dishes (unfortunately only in Thai).

We started with a very northern Thai (and oft-mentioned on these pages) dish of naam phrik num (pictured above), probably the only truly Thai dish of the meal. The grilled chili paste was served with fresh and steamed veggies and two types of pork rinds. This was accompanied by baskets of sticky rice and several other sides, including a delicious yam or Thai-style salad of phak koot, tender fern shoots:

A salad of ferns, Baan Phleng, Mae Hong Son, Thailand

The shoots had been par-boiled but remained crispy, and the salad was held together with a simple Burmese-style curry paste and topped with heaps of crispy fried garlic, as well as roasted sesame seeds, a specialty of the Mae Hong Son area which is often made into oil.

There was lung jin, Shan for meatballs:

Shan-style meatballs, Baan Phleng, Mae Hong Son, Thailand

Although they were made from fish, they're chock fulla fresh herbs and taste a lot like sai ua, the well known northern Thai sausage. Another local dish was a tasty Shan-style yam or salad made from tofu:

A Shan-style salad of tofu, Baan Phleng, Mae Hong Son, Thailand

And to round off our almost entirely Burmese meal, we also had a bowl of kaeng hang ley:

Kaeng hang ley, Burmese-style curry, Baan Phleng, Mae Hong Son, Thailand

This curry dish is found all over northern Thailand, but is probably Burmese in origin (hang is almost certainly a corruption of hin, the Burmese word for curry). Hang ley usually uses thick cuts of muu saam chan ('three levels of pork'--ie a belly cut including skin, fat and meat), but they forgot the other two levels and the dish was mostly fat. It was still pretty good though, with a thick curry broth that was a lot like a rich American-style barbecue sauce mixed with slivers of fresh ginger.

Baan Phleng (sign says ‘Local Northern Thaifood’; Google Maps link) 108 Th Khunlum Praphat, Mae Hong Son 053 612 522 8am-8pm

Laap Khom Huay Puu

 Laap khua, 'fried laap', Laap Khom Huay Puu, Pai, Mae Hong Son, Thailand Laap, minced meat mixed with roasted rice, lime juice, fresh herbs and fresh chili, has its origins in northeast Thailand and Laos, and is a dish known well outside the region. Laap as it's served in northern Thailand is an entirely dish altogether and is virtually unknown outside of the region. The most popular type among locals, laap khom, literally 'bitter laap' combines minced raw meat, typically beef, mixed with a curry paste and bitter bile from the stomach of a cow. It's easy to see why laap khom isn't going to be the next molten chocolate cake. I tend to stick with the 'safe' version, laap khua, 'fried laap'. This version takes basically the same ingredients, but with the addition of some very unique dried spices and bit of offal, and sees them fried and topped with crispy deep-fried garlic and green onion. Both kinds of northern-style laap are served with a small dish of tiny cloves of garlic and fresh chilies, and a plate of fresh veggies and herbs, many of which are unknown outside of northern Thailand, and which possess bitter flavours.

The laap khua pictured above is from Laap Khom Huay Puu, a tiny restaurant just outside Pai, Mae Hong Son, that specialises in the dish.  Theirs is my personal favourite version. The pork laap, shown above, is rich with the flavour of two local dried herbs, makwaen and diiplii, which add a bitter/hot flavour not unlike Szechuan pepper. Karen at Rambling Spoon goes into more detail on these unique spices here. The pork version of the dish uses a somewhat dry chili paste containing a slightly different spectrum of herbs and spices than the more paste-like one used for the beef version. I'm not sure if the cow bile, dii wua, is added to the pork version as it is to the beef version. Served with a big basket of warm sticky rice and a plate of herbs, it's one of my favourite meals in Thailand.

Laap Khom Huay Puu makes a total of about four, all meat-based dishes, including a pretty good beef soup:

Beef soup at Laap Khom Huay Puu, Pai, Mae Hong Son, Thailand

The restaurant is located about two kilometres outside Pai along the way to Mae Hong Son.

Laap Khua Huay Puu (Google Maps link) Huay Puu, Pai, Mae Hong Son 053 699 126

Talaat Ton Phayom

Selling dried goods at Talaat Ton Phayom, Chiang Mai, Thailand This market, located behind Chiang Mai University, is probably the first Thai market I ever became familiar with. I was studying Thai at the university, and the market was a short walk from my apartment, also located lang mor ('behind the university'). I'd walk there to buy prepared food, and my first attempts at cooking Thai food were made with ingredients bought here. I still use the wok I bought there back in 1999. At the time I assumed Talaat Ton Phayom was like any typical market anywhere in Thailand. It wasn't until I learned more about Thai food and came back to the market later that I realized how local this market is. The vast majority of food sold there is specific to northern Thailand, and even as far as Chiang Mai markets go, this one is defiantly northern.

Talaat Ton Phayom,

The northerners' love of pork is very evident at Talaat Ton Phayom. There's heaps of sai ua, the famous herb-packed northern Thai sausage:

Sai ua, northern-style sausage, Talaat Ton Phayom, Chiang Mai, Thailand

as well as several vendors selling deep-fried pork rinds:

Deep-fried pork rinds for sale at Talaat Ton Phayom, Chiang Mai, Thailand

and of course, naam phrik num to dip them in:

Naam phrik num, a 'dip' of roasted chilies, Talaat Ton Phayom, Chiang Mai, Thailand

There's also less traditional protein, such as rot duan:

Rot duan, deep-fried worms, Talaat Ton Phayom, Chiang Mai

literally 'express train', worms that have been deep-fried.

The food in northern Thailand is more seasonal than elsewhere in the country, and during the rainy season you'll find lots of mushrooms:

Mushrooms and edible flowers for sale at Talaat Ton Phayom, Chiang Mai, Thailand

For a slide show of the entire set of images, go here.

Midnight Naam Phrik Num

Deep-fried meats at a restaurant in Chiang Maii, Thailand I've spent the last couple weeks upcountry, first in Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son, then on a long drive along the west bank of the Mekong River all the back to Bangkok. While in Chiang Mai I really wanted to stop by a place that I'd eaten at years before, a late-night joint selling a variety of deep-fried meats and northern-style naam phrik or chili-based 'dips'.

The place, which doesn't even open until about 11pm, is known among some as midnight naam phrik num, although I don't think it officially has a name. The image above doesn't even begin to describe it. The oil used to deep-fry virtually everything they serve is black and sludgelike--I reckon it hadn't been changed in several days, at least. The dining section of the restaurant alters between dark and intensely florescent-lit, and is the favourite haunt of a family selling flower garlands. Despite all this, the place is something of a Chiang Mai legend, and if you can temporarily put aside fears of carcinogens, avoid eye contact the horribly messy, oil-splattered 'kitchen', and prepare yourself for the gloomy atmosphere, the food here is actually pretty tasty.

Although the emphasis appears to be on deep-frying, the real deal here are the dips, of which there are two kinds: nam phrik num, made from grilled green chilies pounded up with grilled garlic and shallots:

Nam phrik num, a 'dip' of grilled green chilies.

and another called nam phrik taa daeng ('red-eye chili paste), made from dried red chilies. The former, pictured above, is one of the better versions I've had of this dish, and was spicy but balanced, with delicious tiny cloves of tender garlic. The latter employed a strong shrimp paste and had a sweet flavour, resulting in a flavour not unlike the dressing used to top the Malay/Indonesian dish rojak. Both dips are served with a small plate of par-boiled and pickled veggies for dipping, and your choice of meats. These range from sai ua, the famous northern Thai herb-filled sausage (grilled, mercifully), to vast chunks of deep-fried pork fat. No, that's not a typo. And yes, it's actually pretty good, especially with the nam phrik num. All the meats are deep-fried once, presumably in the previously-mentioned vat of sludge. When you order something, they deep-fry it again in a smaller and slightly less black pot of oil until hot and crispy. I also had an interesting dish of naaem, raw fermented pork sausage, combined with an egg, wrapped in a banana leaf and grilled.

The restaurant is located approximately two blocks south of the Imperial Mae Ping Hotel. If you ask about for the midnight naam phrik num you'll inevitably be pointed in the right direction.

Boo!

Buddha figures for sale at a market in Mae Hong Son, Thailand Buddha figures for sale at a market in Mae Hong Son, Thailand.

Have been on the road in northern Thailand and along Thailand's length of the Mekong River. Am finally home now and will post pics on both of these destinations very soon...

Crokmai Thai Lao

Lao-style papaya salad, Crokmai Thai Lao Yet another restaurant located way out in the wasteland of northern Bangkok, but after four recent visits, I reckon it's worth the drive. For starters, Crokmai Thai Lao has one of the most extensive menus of any isaan/Lao restaurant I've been to in Thailand. It has a full page dedicated to insects:

The insect menu at Crokmai Thai Lao

Another page of the menu is entirely dedicated to dishes using ant eggs. Crokmai Thai Lao must also be among the few isaan/Lao restaurants anywhere with a website: www.crokmaithailao.com.  Check it out; you can even see the entire menu, including many photos, scanned into the page, and of course the obligatory page of celebrities who've visited the restaurant. I've been told the guy in the red hat with the microphone always wears red hats. Very heady stuff. Rest assured though, it's not all fancy technology  and famous people--this place does some pretty good food.

Crokmai means 'wooden mortar', the tool used to make som tam, so naturally there was a dish of the famous papaya salad (pictured above), made here Lao-style with plaa raa and salted crabs.  Sour and extremely spicy. There was kaeng poerh (I really have no idea how to transliterate this last word--it sounds a lot like someone spitting bad soup out):

Kaeng poerh, Crokmai Thai Lao

This soup combines a dark broth (the result, I believe, of the addition of bai yaanaang, a leaf), thin slices of crispy bamboo, mushrooms, pumpkin and my favourite bit, a pungent herb called cha om (the green leaves seen above). I've had this dish at restaurants and even at peoples' homes, and reckon this bowl is among the tastiest and most balanced I've had.

Another great dish was mok nor mai:

Mok nor mai, steamed bamboo and pork, Crokmai Thai Lao

bamboo stuffed (or combined?) with ground pork and a very coconutty curry paste mixture, wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed.  Almost creamy in texture, and despite the disparate ingredients, a wonderful combination.

Naam phrik plaa raa:

Naam phrik plaa raa, a 'dip' of fish, Crokmai Thai Lao

Good, but not outstanding. The naam phrik, a 'dip' of Lao-style fish sauce was tasty, but watery. I liked the combination of veggies  though, including steamed pumpkin and some edible flowers.

And every time I eat here I have to order plaa som thot:

Plaa som thot, deep-fried sour fish, Crokmai Thai Lao

Freshwater fish that has been fermented via some rice and deep-fried.  Sour, cripsy and meaty.

I recommend a visit, be it physically or virtually.

Crokmai Thai Lao (Google Maps link) 6/257 Muu 1 Soi Ladplakhao 24 (off Kaset-Navamin Highway) 02 570 6234 11am-11pm

Beach eats

An An eating som tam on Ko Samet What do you eat when you're on a Thai island with 11 former students? Food from the country's landlocked rural northeast, of course. Last weekend on Ko Samet this meant sticky rice, grilled chicken and many, many dishes of som tam (a salad of unripe papaya):

Som tam on Ko Samet

The food is sold from mobile vendors, also from the northeast, who prepare both the som tam and grilled chicken from mobile basket kitchens:

A som tam vendor on Ko Samet

At one point we ordered so much chicken that At had to lend a hand to the grilling process:

At lending a hand at grilling chicken, Ko Samet

It wasn't all northeastern food though. At a restaurant in Baan Phe we had a decent dish of puu phat phong karii, crab sauteed with egg and curry powder:

Crab sauteed with egg and curry powder, Ko Samet

and at a restaurant in Rayong, a nice yam of raw scallops:

A Thai-style salad of scallops, Rayong

There were some culinary lowpoints, however, such as An An's box of cream-filled Doraemon-shaped cookies:

An An with a cream-filled Doraemon cookie

Pics taken with my D100 (my beach camera) without any editing in Photoshop.

Yusup

Chicken kuruma and roti at Yusup I've mentioned Yusup, a Muslim restaurant on the northern outskirts of Bangkok, many, many times. The restaurant's rich curries, amazing biryani, and wonderfully sour soups have made it just about my favourite all-around restaurant in Bangkok. I'd love to see more people eat there, but the restaurant is located quite far outside central Bangkok and is something of an ordeal to find. Well, gone now are the days of excuses: armed with Google Maps, you should have no problem in locating Yusup.

I stopped by Yusup for lunch today with a companion and ordered several things, including the dish pictured above, kuruma with roti. I prefer their goat kuruma, but they were out of it so we had to settle for chicken:

Chicken kuruma at Yusup

Regardless of the protein, the curry is almost impossibly rich and thick, chock fulla dried spices and fresh herbs, and packing a sour bite akin to a vindaloo. My companion ordered kaeng karii kai, Muslim-style chicken curry, over rice:

Chicken curry over rice, Yusup

The curry is lightly spiced, probably not much more than tinned curry powder, and includes thick chunks of potato, tomato and onion. It's served with ajaat, a side of sliced cucumbers, chilies and shallots in a sweet/sour vinegar dressing.

Together we picked at mataba nuea:

Beef mataba, Yusup

A roti stuffed with beef, a few basic veggies and egg, also served with ajaat.

And for dessert? You guessed it--more roti:

Sweet roti at Yusup

this time drizzled with sweetened condensed milk and liberally sprinkled with sugar.

Yusup Phochana (Google Maps link) Kaset-Navamin Highway 05 136 2864, 09 923 8099 Open every day, 11am-2pm

How to get there: The restaurant is located in northern Bangkok along the Kaset-Navamin highway (also known as sen tat mai). If you’re coming from Mor Chit BTS along Th Phaholyothin, turn right at the Kaset Intersection onto the Kaset-Navamin highway. Go past the first stop light and the restaurant is on the left side just after a very large sign with the Swiss flag (as well as several Thai-language signs advertising the restaurant). If you get lost, go ahead and try one of the mobile numbers above, but I’m pretty sure these people don’t speak English.

Finally...

After all this time, it looks like Thailand is set to get to be what appears to be a premium, domestically-made, and if the Gods are kind, drinkable beer: Federbräu. Brewed somewhat surreptitiously by ThaiBev (the brewers of Beer Chang) in Ayuthaya, the beer is a Blond Lager and contains 4.7% alcohol. Interestingly, many of the sites and blogs, not to mention the beer label itself, seem to make a point of mentioning that Federbräu is brewed following the famous Reinheitsgebot, ensuring its purity. But on a tour of a Singha Brewery a few years ago, the German-educated brewmaster ensured me that despite how it sometimes tastes, Singha also contains only water, barley, hops and yeast. Well, Singha had its chance, and iff they can get it right with Federbräu, I'll be switching loyalties very soon.

Now if somebody would only do a blonde ale...

From absolutely Bangkok.com via Thailand's Lost Boy

A work in progress

Anybody who reads this blog has undoubtedly noticed that I tend to spend a lot of time in Bangkok's Chinatown. Other than being a bizarre and boisterous part of town with great food and interesting stuff to see, I've also been taking pics there with the intention of putting on an exhibition at Bangkok's Kathmandu Photo Gallery early next year. After countless visits, I've sat down with the results and have rounded them down to 22 images that I like (at least for now). I haven't been shooting with a specific 'theme' in mind, but have been partially inspired by Khun Manit's (the owner of Kathmandu, and a well known Thai photographer) comments that the early images I showed him seemed to depict the relationship that the residents of Chinatown have with their space--typically their lack of it and the way the deal with this. Some of the pics below are an effort to explore this theme, while others are simply interesting images. It's a big blog entry, I know, but I'd appreciate if any of you could sit down for a few minutes, take look at the images and give me some feedback, in particular, which images you reckon I shouldn't include, and why.

Krua Apsorn

Yellow curry with lotus stalks, Krua Apsorn In 2006 Krua Apsorn was chosen as one of the Bangkok Post's Best Restaurants (see clip here). Apparently members of the Thai royal family like to get their eat on here, and I've noticed that David Thompson likes to recommend the second branch of the restaurant, located by the National Library, to visiting chefs and friends. Not surprisingly, the place is generally quite crowded and reservations are even recommended (!), but on the rainy Friday night we visited, Krua Apsorn was virtually empty.

We started with yellow curry with lotus stems and prawns (pictured above). I really enjoyed this dish. Having recently been in southern Thailand, which is where yellow curry comes from, I have had it lots lately, but think I prefer this version. Unlike in the south, where the dish is insanely spicy (and often even more insanely sour), this version had a balance of flavours. Another favourable difference is that the lotus stem was still crispy, unlike the typically soggy veggies in the more traditional version.

A laap of mushrooms:

Mushroom laap, Krua Apsorn, Bangkok

was pleasantly sour and rich with the earthy, smokey flavour of khaao khua, roasted ground rice.

Another somewhat unusual dish was pork fried with a curry paste made with a particular type of chili called phrik karieng and milk (as opposed to coconut milk):

Pork fried with curry paste, Krua Apsorn, Bangkok

I particularly liked the simple but delicious stir-fry of gourd greens (fak maew) and a type of local flower (dawk khajawn):

A stir-fry of gourd greens and a local flower, Krua Apsorn, Bangkok

And finally, one of the restaurant's specialties, a round omelet with crab meat:

Omelet with crab, Krua Apsorn, Bangkok

Because of the Thai name, I expected this to have a lighter and fluffier texture. It was good, but a bit heavy on the egg and light on the crab.

In all, we had a very good, though not amazing, meal. I'd definitely come again though, as the expansive and slightly unusual menu suggests that there's lots of interesting stuff in store. For another view of Krua Apsorn, check out this review at previously unknown Thai foodblogger and cookbook author, Oh Sirin.

Krua Apsorn (Google Maps link) Th Dinsor 02 6854351 10.30am-10pm, closed Sunday

Banglamphu & around, April 25, 2008

A newsstand at Tha Chang, Bangkok A newsstand at Tha Chang, Bangkok

Along Thanon Maharat, Bangkok

Along Thanon Maharat, Bangkok

A monk on the Chao Phraya Express Boat, Bangkok

A monk on the Chao Phraya Express Boat, Bangkok

Thanon Maharat, Bangkok

Thanon Maharat, Bangkok

Streetside chess, Thanon Maharat, Bangkok

Streetside chess, Thanon Maharat, Bangkok

Hairdresser, Khao San Road, Bangkok\

Hairdresser, Khao San Road, Bangkok

Hawking souvenirs to tourists, Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok

Hawking souvenirs to tourists, Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok

Crazy tuk-tuk, Khao San Road, Bangkok

Crazy tuk-tuk, Khao San Road, Bangkok

Nay Lek (Uan)

Kuay jap at Naay Uan, a stall in Bangkok's Chinatown Arguably Bangkok's most popular hawker stall, Naay Uan's recipe for success must lie in its simplicity. His kuay jap, a basic but delicious soup of of pork offal, thick rice noodles and broth draws literally hundreds of hungry diners to Chinatown every night:

Hungry diners at Naay Uan, a stall in Bangkok's Chinatown

(For a larger version of this image go here.)

But that broth... Naay Uan's kuay jap broth is probably the most pepper-intense dish I've ever consumed. The guy must pour bags of ground white pepper into his broth, leaving the diner with a mildly burning, spicy sensation. For me this is the highlight, but I think most people come for the meat, which includes your choice of pork heart, stomach, tongue or crispy deep-fried pork.

Cnr Soi 11 & Th Yaowarat (Google Maps link) 02 224 3450 7pm-late

Lung Lek

Making noodles in Ayuthaya Have you ever rented a car and driven to another province for a bowl of noodles? That's exactly what me, Hock and Andy did this weekend. Andy is the owner of Pok Pok, a popular Thai restaurant in Portland, Oregon, and is on something of a noodle research expedition across Asia. I offered to contribute to this scholarship by taking him to Lung Lek, a noodle shop in Ayuthaya. Hock was kind enough to drive, his expensive mobile phone providing both navigational support and musical entertainment.

Lung Lek ('Uncle Lek') claims to have been making his unique 'boat-style' noodles (kuaytiaw ruea) for 30 years now. I reckon he's just about got it down. I really the beef version:

Beef noodles in Ayuthaya

Unfortunately our first bowls were pretty mild, as seeing that we were not Thai, Lung Lek dumbed the flavours down, assuming we wouldn't be able to take the heat. Re-ordering brought us the bowl shown above. This type of noodle dish is called naam tok ('waterfall') and usually includes a swirl of fresh blood, but Lung Lek adds a tablespoon of the liquid used to marinade his beef. Like other boat noodles, his broth is laden with dried spices, and has a dark colour. Unlike others, Lung Lek's noodles aren't sweet, and his broth is much richer.

Lung Lek's nearly half-century investment has proven worthwhile, in my opinion. Now if he'd only put the ladle down for a day or two and consider improving the aesthetics of his restaurant (little more than rickety tables on a dirt floor under a ratty tarp). If he wishes to maintain some of the more rustic elements of the current restaurant he could could make the simple transition towards French Country, however I'd suggest something a bit more radical like the Queen Anne-inspired whimsy of Raul Villares Gayan's Nouveau series.

Lung Lek

Th Chee Kun (across from Wat Ratburana), Ayuthaya

9am-4pm