Khao Hor Bai Bua Lung Chu/ข้าวห่อใบบัวลุงชู

Thanks to leads from both Kin Rob Krung 2 and my buddy J, I was recently pointed in the direction of Lung Chu, a shophouse restaurant selling a short-list of Chinese-style dishes. They do a variety of steamed buns, dumplings and noodles here, but the specialty is khao hor bai bua (ข้าวห่อใบบัว), rice and other bits steamed in a lotus leaf. I sincerely needed pointing in this direction, as I was never previously a fan of this dish, having found previous encounters with it heavy, sweet and oddly enough, somewhat waxy.

Lung Chu's version is still somewhat heavy (I think this is probably impossible to avoid), but this was tempered somewhat by the addition of a delicious vinegar- and crushed fresh chili-based dipping sauce. In addition to rice, the lotus leaf packet includes tender marinated pork, mushrooms, lotus seeds and a salted egg yolk, and is both well seasoned and fragrant. If you're sharing, it's the perfect savoury snack.

Lung Chu also serve some very nice salapao (ซาลาเปา), steamed buns (seen in background of pic above), although I suspect that they've simply sourced these from another vendor. They're light without being dry or paper-like, and the sweet bun (ใส้หวาน) in particular had a deliciously fragrant sweet bean filling.

Khao Hor Bai Bua Lung Chu 2818 Th Rama IV, Bangkok 02 240 1812 8am-midnight

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Yen Ta Fo Wat Khaek

Yen ta fo, noodles (typically rice, but sometimes wheat noodles) served in a slightly sweet broth with fish-based dumplings, is one of the most popular dishes in Bangkok. Stalls selling yen ta fo are just about everywhere, and over the years I've noticed that many of them claim a link with Wat Khaek - the somewhat derogatory name given to the Hindu temple at the corner of Th Silom and Th Pan. Yen ta fo is Chinese in origin (I suspect it has links - at least linguistically - to yong tau foo), but the name-dropping suggests that the dish may have been introduced to Thai diners from a shop or stall near this temple.

Origin speculation aside, today there's only a single yen ta fo restaurant near Wat Khaek. And although I don't know if it's the original of Bangkok-style yen ta fo restaurant, the aged interior and rustic bowls of noodles served here suggest that it's been around for quite a while.

The yen ta fo here is good, but not exceptional. The broth, which is made from chicken:

is balanced but bland, and needed more than a bit of fish sauce and dried chili to liven it up. There were lots of veggies and fishy dumplings, both supplemented with crispy salted squid and cubes of blood. This being a classic version of a classic Bangkok dish, I expected it to be much sweeter, and actually missed the tinge of sweet and the punch of garlic of a truly outstanding vendor like Yen Ta Fo JC.

Even more than the yen ta fo, I enjoyed khanom jeen kaeng kai:

chicken curry served over fresh rice noodles. The former was pleasantly salty and spicy and was supplemented with eggplants, basil leaves and fresh chilies.

Yen Ta Fo Wat Khaek also serve a few other characteristically Bangkok-style Thai/Chinese dishes such as khaa muu, stewed pork leg and popia sot, fresh spring rolls.

Yen Ta Fo Wat Khaek Th Pan, Bangkok 9am-4pm Mon-Sat

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Somsak Pu Op

I've finally got a bit of free time and have been investigating the restaurants and stalls recommended in a handful of Thai-language food guides I bought months ago. Most recently, Kin Rob Krung 2 ('Eating Around Bangkok 2') led me Somsak Pu Op, a streetside stall in Thonburi, across the Chao Phraya River from Bangkok.

Somsak specialises in pu op wun sen, crab 'baked' with wun sen (glass jelly noodles). In fact, they essentially only do this dish, if you don't count a variant using prawn, as well as a couple steamed shellfish dishes. On my visit, the crab was cashed, so we went with the prawns.

As is the norm with this dish, the seafood is put on a bed that includes a liberal chunk of pork fat, lots of garlic, black peppercorns and Szechuan pepper:

These ingredients are then 'baked' (the op in the name) in a lidded clay or heavy metal pan, with the noodles and a sprinkling of fresh herbs.

Somsak does this in stages, cooking the prawns first:

before seasoning (with Maggi and a bit of water) and adding the noodles, followed by a final topping of green onions. The downside with this method is that the prawns tended to be a bit overcooked, and the noodles undercooked - ideally the latter should be slightly dry (even a bit crispy at the edges, if you ask me) and seasoned by the pork fat, garlic and pepper. This isn't the case here, but any any lack of seasoning is made up for by Somsak's delicious Thai seafood-style dipping sauce, which was intensely tart and spicy.

Probably not the most balanced version of the dish, but satisfyingly rich, and at 200B, relatively cheap.

Somsak Pu Op Cnr Soi 1, Th Lad Ya & Th Charoen Rat 5-11pm Tue-Sun

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Daeng Racha Hoy Thot

Located in a quiet side street in Bangkok's Chinatown, this family has allegedly been selling hoy thot, a type of crispy mussel omelet, for 80 years - the last 30 of these at the present location.

The hoy thot is pretty good: crispy, eggy and well seasoned, with fat, fresh mussels:

The or suan, oysters fried in a sticky batter, didn't quite live up to that of my favourite vendor, and was pretty oily, although the oysters were nice.

Daeng Racha Hoy Thot Soi Sukorn 1, Bangkok 8.30am-2.30pm

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Sam-Ang Kulap

The area around northern Bangkok's Victory Monument is home to several restaurants selling kuay tiaw ruea, 'boat noodles'. The restaurants are known for serving exceptionally cheap - at little as 5B - bowls of the dish,  and are the legacy of a tradition that previously saw the noodles prepared and sold from small wooden boats in a nearby canal. Today, the canal is fetid and mostly empty and all the shops have moved to land. The restaurants remain quite well known, but aren't particularly tidy or tasty, and their setting at the edge of a stinky canal isn't very inspiring.

Luckily, a couple blocks away on a slightly more pleasant stretch of the canal, is, Sam-Ang Kulap. Having served boat noodles for more than 40 years now, they claim to be among the first of five boats to have sold the dish in the area. According to a history of the restaurant that's printed on the wall, a that time a bowl cost 1B, and it wasn't until the late '70s that they began to sell the noodles from land. They remain in the same location today:

In 2011 a bowl of boat noodles will set you back 15B (US$0.50), but the despite the low price, the noodles here are solid, and in my opinion could serve as the archetype for a well done, balanced bowl of a boat noodles. The broth is rich, round and meaty with relatively little spice flavour or spiciness, and is supplemented with a few cuts of tender meat (beef or pork), blood, and/or meatballs. The bowls emerge from the boat-shaped prep station with amazing speed:

perhaps a legacy of the boat era.

Ask for a bowl of par-boiled phak bung (a crispy green vegetable sometimes called morning glory) and you have a delicious and balanced, Bangkok-style meal.

Sam-Ang Kulap Soi 18, Th Ratchawithi, Bangkok 8am-5pm

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Khao Khaa Muu Trok Sung

I'm pretty amazed when I scroll through this blog and see the pics of all the food I've eaten in Thailand. Quite frankly, I've eaten a lot of stuff. And just in case you're wondering, I do mean this in the boastful way that it sounds.

But I also mean it in the literal sense: I eat a lot.

As illustrated above, my recent visit to Khao Khaa Muu Trok Sung, a longstanding restaurant off Th Charoen Krung, was an example of the latter.

Despite my previous declaration, I haven't actually eaten much khao khaa muu, Chinese-style stewed pork leg, so I'm not the best judge of the dish. But I enjoyed the version sold here. The pork was fall-apart tender and well-seasoned. As is the case with this dish, it was accompanied by a vinegary dipping sauce studded with fresh chilies - a necessary divergence from all the fat and meat. I would have liked more of the crispy pickled veggies, but this was somewhat made up for by the tasty soup with bitter melon. The only real weak point was the muu krob, crispy pork, which seemed to have been poorly seasoned and clumsily deep-fried several hours previous.

And just in case this wasn't enough fat and cholesterol, just across Th Charoen Krung is a popular vendor of sticky rice for mango and/or durian sticky rice:

which of course, I visited.

Like I said, I've eaten a lot of stuff.

Khao Khaa Muu Trok Sung Trok Sung, Th Charoen Krung, Bangkok 10.30am-7pm Mon-Sat

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Pratu Chiang Mai

It may look like a scan of a strip of film, but the above image is actually composite image stitched together from 22 separate exposures taken at Chiang Mai's Pratu Chiang Mai night market (click here for a bigger version).

It's not perfect - if you look closely, there are some perspective issues that I'm not clever enough to resolve with Photoshop, not to mention 3/4 of a bicycle and some mysterious twins. But if all goes well, the panorama will be used to decorate one very long and presently blank wall at the new Portland, Oregon restaurant, Pok Pok Noi.

MasterChefs Chiang Mai

I recently spent a few days up in Chiang Mai eating and cooking with some pretty knowledgeable and and talented folks. There was Andy Ricker, chef/owner of Pok Pok, in Portland Oregon; JJ Goode, a writer based in New York City, with whom Andy and I will be embarking on an exciting and soon-to-be-announced project; and Sunny:

Sunny, a longtime friend of Andy's, is a native of Chiang Mai who grew up in a household that was always cooking, both professionally and domestically. Like many Thai cooks, he cooks without referring to recipes, and appears to have an encyclopedic knowledge of northern Thai cooking. I suspect that much of what is served at Pok Pok has most likely, directly or indirectly, been influenced by Sunny, and understandably so: while in Chiang Mai, I got to sample several examples of his handiwork, including a very refined salad of green mangoes, a northern-style stir-fry of longbeans and eggplant, and a yummy kaeng som, all of which were delicious.

But the most delicious and interesting dish - at least for me - was Sunny's northern-style pork laap:

I suspect that I risk overplaying northern-style laap on this blog, but I really do find it one of the most satisfying of Thai dishes. And despite its deceptively simple appearance, it's also one of the more nuanced and complicated Thai dishes I've encountered. And observing firsthand the fluency and confidence with which Sunny prepared it reminded me that, despite more than a decade in this country, I still know very little about Thai food.

A good laap starts with a good spice mixture, which Sunny's sister makes (in fact, it's the very one used at Pok Pok). But this time Sunny decided to made it himself, from scratch. Starting with a specific mixture of dried spices that included makhwaen, peppercorns and deeplee, he dry-fried them until fragrant, then, with JJ's help, pounded them paste along with galangal, dried chilies, shallots and garlic:

After this was finished, shallots and garlic were fried until crispy, and pork offal (specifically skin, heart and lower intestine) was boiled along with some lemongrass, shrimp paste and turmeric, until tender:

The next step involved mincing raw pork, blood and fresh herbs with a machete-like knife (illustrated at the top of this post). This was done for a long time - at least 20 minutes - despite the fact that we were already starting with ground pork. Obviously we needed a big strong man to do this, and since I was busy taking pics, we settled for Andy. Andy's both a talented cook and a modest guy, which is why I find it a bit strange that he insists on wearing his James Beard medal whenever he cooks:

After being fried in oil until fragrant:

the curry paste mixture was then blended with a bit of the broth left over from boiling the offal, seasoned with salt and stirred into the raw meat along with the sliced offal and the deep-fried crispy shallots and garlic. At this point - at least if you're making a real northern-style raw meat laap - the dish is done:

I ate some (actually, quite a bit) of the raw laap, and it was delicious, with a smooth texture (undoubtedly the result of all that chopping) and a rich flavour. Sunny then took the remaining meat, and working it in a saucepan with a bit more broth and some oil, made the more approachable laap suk or laap khua, 'cooked laap':

We then took both laaps, a cooler of sticky rice, a bucket of greens and some grilled chicken to some of the most appreciative diners I've ever encountered:

Eating at, photographing and writing about restaurants and stalls in Thailand has given me something of a warped perception of the country's food - one that in some ways contrasts with the food that Thai people cook and eat at home. It's always an eye-opening and rewarding opportunity to be able to eat the food of and learn from talented home cooks, and I wish I could do it more often.

Worth eating in Pai

The tiny town of Pai is one of northern Thailand's most popular destinations. And understandably so: it's laid-back, cheap and beautiful:

Unfortunately - at least if you travel to eat - there are very few places to get local food. There's some tasty Chinese food, innocuous and backpackerish Thai, and a couple OK places selling Israeli standards, but if you're interested in trying northern- or Mae Hong Son-style eats, you're pretty much limited to a handful of restaurants. Luckily, two of them are exceptional.

Laap Khom Huay Pu specialises in mostly meaty northern-style dishes such as laap khua and kaeng om (both pictured at the top of this post). The laap khua, northern-style fried laap, is probably my favourite version of the dish in Thailand, and successfully balances meaty, spicy and aromatic. The laap gets its dark colour from the addition of blood, and comes accompanied with a variety of fresh herbs, some spicy, some bitter, which change with the seasons. The kaeng om, a meat-and-offal-heavy soup, is almost curry-like in its thickness here, and is correspondingly rich and spicy, with tender bits of tendon, intestine, heart and liver.

Laap Khom Huay Pu 9am-6pm Rte 1095 (the restaurant is on the road to Mae Hong Son, about 1km north of town, on the first corner after the turn-off to Belle Villa and Baan Krating), Pai

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Khanom Jeen Nang Yong, an open-air place in 'downtown' Pai, sells khanom jeen, thin rice noodles served with various curry-like toppings:

Particularly worth seeking out here is the khanom jeen nam ngiaw, a northern-style noodle soup with pork bones and tomatoes as its base. Again, quite possibly my favourite take on the dish, the broth here is dark, rich and spicy, and is even tastier when accompanied with the restaurant's excellent pork rinds. There's no English sign here - simply look for the clay pots that are set out in front of the shop every afternoon.

Khanom Jeen Nang Yong Th Chaisongkhram (in the same building as Pai Adventure), Pai Lunch & dinner

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If you have access to silverware and plates, you could always pick up to-go local eats at the town's evening market - but at your own risk:

Pai's evening market - a short, eminently walkable strip of road just outside of the centre of town - is the most annoying example I've encountered of people showing an extreme reluctance to disembark from their motorcycles to buy things, even if this meant blocking entire stalls, cutting off pedestrians (namely, me) and emitting exhaust and noise.

At least some folks still choose to walk:

although they appear to be limited to a particular demographic.

Jay Noy

Jay Noy is the epitome of the northern-style food stall: informal, meat based and fully flavoured. The whole place is little more than a grill and one or two tables - most of its business is take-away - concealed in a parking lot/shed in the northern city of Lampang. Yet as is often the case in Thailand, a restaurant's atmosphere has an inverse relationship with the quality of its food, and Jay Noy is no exception to this rule.

Starting at 12 o'clock and moving clockwise, there was a rich curry-like stir-fry of mushrooms and bamboo (it's mushroom and bamboo season up here); kaeng som phak boong, a deliciously sour northern-style soup of pork bones and crunchy morning glory;  nam phrik taa daeng, a slightly watery but spicy version of the northern Thai dried chili dip staple; sticky rice; aeb moo, a grilled pork dish, and jin som, sour pork; and crunchy pickled veggies.

Everything I've eaten here is great, but the highlight is the meat, in particular the jin som ('sour meat' - the northern Thai name for naem) and the aeb:

The former (on the left) is fermented pork, that in this case, has been grilled in its banana leaf package. The latter is ground pork blended with egg and a curry paste, all of which are also wrapped in a banana leaf and grilled:

It's the northern Thai equivalent of the central Thai hor mok, a type of steamed curry, and the result is smooth, rich and meaty, and only a tiny bit spicy.

Arrive later in the day after the aeb and jin som have run out and Jay Noy does grilled meat, from pork ribs to cow teats.

And since you're in Lampang already, you may as well consider dessert at Khun Manee.

Jay Noy Th Suandawg, Lampang 11am-7pm

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Kuaytiaw Sukhothai

The northern Thai city of Sukhothai has its own signature noodle dish, kuaytiaw Sukhothai. There's nothing particularly northern about the dish, other than the copious use of pork, and it appears to be a slight a variation on Chinese-influenced central Thai noodle dishes. The dish is all about the pork, and is served with slices of roasted and/or boiled pork, pork rinds, slices of liver and often intestines. Other ingredients include thin slices of phak chee farang, sawtooth coriander, par-boiled and thinly-sliced green beans, a small mound of ground peanuts and a dollop of palm sugar. And unlike most noodle dishes in Thailand, you don't specify which noodles you'd like - Sukhothai-stye noodles are almost exclusively served with sen lek, thin rice noodles.

Over the days I was in Sukhothai, I hit three of the town's most famous places to get the dish.

Ta Pui, whose noodles are pictured at the top of this post, claims to be the original vendor of the dish. It's easily the least flashy restaurant (it used to be little more than a brick floor and tin roof - it now has a cement floor), and correspondingly serves what is probably the most balanced bowl.

Ta Pui Th Jarot Withithong, Sukhothai 7am-4pm

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Located across the street, Jayhae is easily the most popular vendor of the dish - just about Thai tourist who comes to Sukhothai stops at this place for lunch. Despite this, the noodles:

were probably my least favourite of the lot, although admittedly the differences between all of these places are very subtle. In this case I found Jayhae's bowl to be the sweetest and least porkiest. This restaurant also does phat Thai in the local style, which is similar to that served in Mae Sot.

Jayhae Th Jarot Withithong, Sukhothai 7am-4pm

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My personal favourite bowl was probably at Kuaytiaw Thai Sukhothai:

which was also the only place where I ordered the dish naam, with broth. The rich broth, generous pork rinds and seasoning made this the most full-flavoured bowl, and the one I'd most likely go back to next time I'm in town.

Kuaytiaw Thai Sukhothai Th Jarot Withithong, Sukhothai 9am-8pm

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Phitsanulok's Evening Market

Some pics from the evening market in Phitsanulok, one of the more vibrant and photogenic in the region. Click the button in the corner for full-screen mode.

Phitsanulok's Evening Market Th Akatossaroth 4-10pm

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Phat Thai Mae Sot

The northern Thai city of Mae Sot seems like an unlikely place to find a particular style of phat Thai - a dish I usually associate with central Thailand. But while in the city recently, I spotted three or so shops serving a somewhat unusual version of the dish.

The local twist here is the addition of pork (for those of you familiar with northern Thai food this won't come as a surprise). The dish is served with a small pile of crispy deep-fried pork rinds and topped with a few slices of barbecued pork. Real Thai-style phat Thai isn’t generally served with any meat (other than dried or fresh, shrimp), so I appreciate the addition of protein in what is normally a pretty substantial carb blast. It's also quite simply a good dish of phat Thai: the noodles themselves aren’t gloopy or heavy, although like every dish of phat Thai I’ve ever encountered, required additional seasoning with fish sauce and dried chili.

If you’ve never been, Mae Sot’s a pretty interesting food town. There’s a couple restaurants like this serving interesting mainstream-Thai-type fare, some northern Thai food, quite a few Muslim restaurants and lots of Burmese food, particularly at the town's morning market and for breakfast.

Phat Thai Mae Sot Th Prasat Withit, Mae Sot noon-9pm

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Khao Soi Prince

Back in 2008, Andy Ricker, chef/owner of Portland, Oregon restaurant Pok Pok, was kind enough to share with me his favourite khao soi restaurants in Chiang Mai, which later became the basis of a magazine article I did. During our 'research', we made a couple attempts to visit Khao Soi Prince, one of his top places and a restaurant I'd heard about but had never eaten at. Unfortunately Prince was closed for Ramadan, and  on subsequent solo visits to Chiang Mai, the restaurant was always closed for one reason or another.

Well it's unfortunate that it took me so long to get here, because even after my first and only visit last week, Khao Soi Prince is now one of my favourite places to get a bowl.

Named after the nearby Prince Royals College, Prince is a longstanding Muslim restaurant that also does biryani and some rich-looking curries. The khao soi kai, chicken khao soi, is a bit unusual  in that rather than the single chicken leg that most places use, Prince uses seemingly marinated chunks of breast meat, a bit of brown meat, and what appeared to be some very tender liver and/or blood. Despite its somewhat thin and watery appearance, the curry broth here is actually very rich and fragrant with the taste and smell of dried spices. And to top it off, they even use the good-quality pickled mustard greens topping.

And speaking of Andy, news just came in as I was about to post this that Ricker won Best Chef Northwest in the 2011 James Beard Foundation awards! Congrats, Andy - looking forward to celebrating over a bowl at Prince next week!

Khao Soi Prince 105-109 Th Kaew Nawarat, Chiang Mai 053 242 446 8am-3.30pm

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Worth eating in Chiang Rai

Initially, I wasn't too impressed by the restaurant spread in the northern city of Chiang Rai. But after several visits and an equal amount of days spent there, I eventually dug up a handful of good places to eat. So in addition to previously-mentioned restaurants Paa Suk and Lung Eed Locol Food, and the excellent coffee and Swedish pastries at BaanChvitMai, if you find yourself hungry and in Chiang Rai, I encourage you to consider the following:

Nam Ngiaw Pa Nuan:

which, in addition to a rich and delicious version of the eponymous northern Thai noodle dish, do an excellent som tam ponlamai (som tam made with mixed fruit) and a few tasty-looking Vietnamese dishes.

Nam Ngiaw Pa Nuan Th Sanpanard, Chiang Rai 9am-5pm

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Pa Yai,

a Muslim restaurant outside of the city centre, does what were possibly the tastiest roti I've encountered in a very long time: puffy, light and crispy, with virtually no oily sogginess. Pa Yai also does a deliciously rich and fragrant beef curry and a slightly watery kaeng karee kai, Muslim-style chicken curry. Definitely worth the trip.

Roti Pa Yai Th Aladin, Chiang Rai 053 718 446 6-10am & 3-10pm

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Phu-Lae:

is a longstanding restaurant that serves local-style food to Thai tourists. Not everything is great, and in general the restaurant serves a rather gentrified version of northern Thai food, but I like their kaeng hang lay (illustrated above), which is served with a generous amount of ginger and pickled garlic - both spicy, acidic foils to an otherwise rich and oily dish.

Phu-Lae 673/1 Th Thanalai, Chiang Rai Lunch & dinner

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And finally, I really enjoyed Chiang Rai's evening market:

which had some really tasty-looking northern-style eats. Unfortunately it was to-go only and I had neither plates nor silverware...

Cnr Th Uttarakit & Th Suk Sathit 5-9pm

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Kat Luang

Kengtung has one of the more interesting markets in the region. Unfortunately I didn't spend as much time here as I'd have liked because I was here during New Years and was terrified of getting my camera wet.

But it only took a brief visit to see that, despite being located in Myanmar, Kengtung's Kat Luang is similar - if slightly more exotic - to its counterparts in rural northern Thailand.

From the basics:

including dried turmeric, dried chilies and disks of dried soybeans - all essentials of Mae Hong Son-style Thai food - to the prepared:

which included many similar nam phrik (chili-based dips) and aeb (grilled banana leaf packages of meat), there were many culinary similarities between the food of the various Tai groups in Kengtung and that of the residents of northern Thailand.

A particularly fitting example of this was the general porkiness of the selections, as the pork rinds and bottles of lard above illustrate. The sausages, located in the middle, are known as sai ua in northern Thailand and sai long phik in Shan. But the bundles to the right, dork khae, a type of indigenous flower, stuffed with minced pork and herbs and deep fried, were something I'd never seen before.

There were lots of noodles:

Including khao sen:

thin rice noodles served with a tomato and pork broth - also big in Mae Hong Son.

But the most popular variety were flat, wide rice noodles served with meatballs:

the latter tenderised by a vigorous and extremely unsanitary pounding with two sticks:

The market is so utterly Tai, there wasn't a bowl of mohinga to be seen.

Link love addendum

Almost immediately after posting yesterday, I became aware of a few more sites I thought worth sharing: A blog about burgers in Bangkok; an inspiring yet entirely non food-related quote by Ira Glass about pursuing creative endeavours; A New York Times piece about the dangers of eating raw fish products in Thailand; A possible link between Thailand's fish sauce consumption and low IQ scores from Global Post; and a PRI piece about street food in Bangkok featuring, well, me.

Link love

Just a quick note to share a couple blogs I've recently come across that focus on Thai cooking. She Simmers, written by a Thai woman based in Chicago, is far slicker than this blog will ever look (it even has its own t-shirts!) and has some good posts on the basic elements of Thai cookery. The intimidatingly-titled ThaiFoodMaster - the FoodMaster being a foreigner who's lived in Thailand 20+ years and speaks Thai - has helpful step-by-step illustrations for most of its recipes, and videos for a handful of others. And if you're interested in Burmese food, be sure to check out hsa*ba.

Party eats

I arrived in Kengtung (also known as Kyaing Tong and Chieng Tung), Myanmar, just in time for the lunar New Year. I wasn't able to avoid getting soaked, but I did meet some interesting people and got to eat some interesting festival foods.

If visiting Kengtung from Thailand, it's obligatory to be accompanied by a guide, and I was fortunate enough to end up with Sai Leng, a native of Kentgung.

Like vast majority of the inhabitants of Kentung, Sai Leng is ethnic Tai (Tai Nuea, to be exact). His village, located just outside Kengtung, could easily be mistaken for a Dai community in the Xishuangbanna region of southern China:

His neighbours are predominately Shan and Tai Nuea, and as is the case with all Tai peoples, food plays a significant part in their traditions and celebrations. Eating at a neighbour's house on the first day of the New Year celebrations, we had some very local-style drinking food (illustrated at the top of this post): starting at 12 o'clock and moving clockwise, there was deep-fried pork; homemade potato chips seasoned with salt and chili, similar to what I've eaten in Yunan; pickled phak kum, a local veggie, served with lots of chili and garlic; pork fried with pickled phak kum and more garlic; a steamed cake of ground peanuts with a delicious chili-oil dip; and in the centre, threads of pork fried with ginger and garlic, similar to the Mae Hong Son dish nuea tam.

While we snacked, the same family was also busy preparing aeb khao, sweets of sticky rice flour, sugarcane sugar, coconut and nuts, strongly associated with Shan New Year:

The next morning, after they've been steamed, the sweets are given to monks:

When the snacks were depleted, we moved onto lao khao phueak, the local name for rice whiskey, with more neighbours:

We sat drinking and chatting in a mixture of Thai, English and Shan. The latter, although related to Thai and having many cognates, I found essentially unintelligible. Or maybe it was the lao khao phueak? Either way, when the booze was gone, we then made the next logical step: to the side of the road:

After this... Well, to be honest, Sai Leng's impromptu concert and my dancing soaking wet on the side of the road are pretty much the last things I remember. I woke up in my hotel room at about 10pm having apparently bought some expensive souvenirs on my way home, and in desperate need of something to eat. I headed over to the town centre, where near a stage erected for the festival, at least eight vendors were selling yet another local festival food, khao som:

the dish of rice, meat and blood steamed in a banana leaf known as khao kan jin in northern Thailand.

Meaty and oily - quite possibly the Shan equivalent of the post-hangover burger.

If you're thinking of visiting Kengtung and need a guide, Sai Leng speaks English well and has a deep knowledge of Shan/Tai culture. He can be contacted at +95 94903 1470 and sairoctor.htunleng@gmail.com.

Lung Eed Locol Food

Am just back from Kentung, and no, I wasn't able to avoid getting drenched. But before I get into that, here's one of the more interesting places to eat in Chiang Rai.

Laap kai, chicken laap, is a common Isaan (northeastern Thai) dish, but as far as I can tell, is a rarity in northern Thailand. It wasn't until 2008 and with the guidance of an article in a Thai-language food magazine that I encountered the dish. Since then, Lung Eed, a restaurant serving laap kai and a handful of other interesting northern-style dishes, has been my go-to place in Chiang Rai.

Lung Eed's laap kai is unique in several ways. Firstly, I'm not sure exactly how they prepare it - the meat has light, tender, almost tofu-like texture that's somewhere between fried and steamed. This is in direct contrast to the copious crunchy deep-fried crispy shallots and intestines. The dish has a very subtle dried spice flavour and very little, if any, chili heat. The whole thing involves maybe five ingredients tops, but is one of those dishes that's so simple, I imagine that it'd be intimidatingly difficult to replicate.

The laap kai is also available raw (!), and they also do a fish version. And all of their laap are served with a basket of unique fresh herbs including paddy herb, young mango leaves and some sort of previously unknown peppery leaf.

They also do a tasty hor neung plaa, a northern Thai dish of freshwater fish combined with a spice paste, wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed. It was served with the standard spice paste for this dish - heavy on the turmeric and lemongrass - but not having eaten it in a long time, I was surprised at how almost southern Thai in flavour it was.

Lung Eed do a tasty fish head soup and a couple other snacky-type things, and that's about it.

Lung Eed Locol Food Th Watpranorn, Chiang Rai 11.45am-9pm Mon-Sat

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