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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JRART

Via Appetite.

Summertime

You know it's summer when they set up the floating som tam stalls on just about every river in northern Thailand.

Songkran, the Thai New Year, is around the corner, and because I'd rather not have dirty water thrown at me by a drunk teenager, tomorrow I'm escaping to the hopefully more sedate streets Chiang Tung/Kyaingtong/Keng Tung Myanmar. Am looking forward to this, as I haven't been back in several years and am particularly interested in investigating the eats of the various Tai groups there.

Laap country

Well, not exactly. If you want to get all technical, Phrae is generally regarded as the spiritual homeland of the northern-style version of laap. But neighbouring Nan has a pretty good laap scene as well, as I learned on a recent visit.

My first experience in Nan-style laap was at Pu Som, a dark restaurant decked out with Cowboys and Indians paraphernalia. Fittingly, the emphasis here is on meat, specifically beef.

Pu Som's laap khua neua, cooked beef laap (illustrated above), is predominately beefy, emphasising meat over spice or heat. It's also slightly wet in texture and just slightly bitter, due to the addition of beef bile. Like all versions of the dish, it's topped with deep-fried crispy garlic and a mix of chopped coriander and green onion.

The dish in the middle of the pic is nam phrik khaa, a dip made from shredded galangal that usually accompanies neua neung, a northern Thai dish of coarse cuts of beef steamed over herbs. Dry, pungently herbal and spicy, Pu Som's is one of the best versions of the dish I've encountered. I'd be more than happy with just this tiny bowl and a basket of sticky rice.

Just around the corner from Wat Phumin - my favourite temple in Thailand - is what is allegedly many Nan residents' favourite place for local-style laap, Laap Khue Wiang.

Here I ordered the pork version, laap muu khua:

The first thing I noticed  here was that the spice mixture is quite coarse, as were the cuts of meat, which include bits of crispy deep-fried intestines and liver, as well as lots of fatty skin. The dish was well-seasoned, with an emphasis on the spices, and was both crunchy and chewy.

In talking to the woman preparing the dish, I learned that, rather than simply employing different proteins, beef and pork laap are essentially quite different dishes. She explained that she uses an entirely different spice mixture for the pork version, one that uses a variety of spices including not only the usual suspects makhwaen and deeplee, but cinnamon and coriander seed, among others. I had a whiff and it had a complex, almost sweet scent. Unlike other vendors, she doesn't use blood in her pork laap as she doesn't like the dark colour it gives the dish. She then went on to explain that her beef version includes a very simple spice mixture that includes only makhwaen, deeplee and chili, and the dish is darkened with blood and bittered with bile.

Pu Som Th Mano, Nan 081 675 3795 11am-midnight

Laap Kheu Wiang 14/3 Th Robmueang Thittai, Nan 054 77 2092 9am-9pm

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Khao soi nam naa

I'm currently on the road in northern Thailand doing research for Lonely Planet's Thailand guide. I’d love to blog on the food up here as often as I did during my previous tour of duty back in 2009, but am really pressed for time and will most likely have to keep it to a handful of standout dishes and restaurants.

Alerted by EatingAsia as to the presence of a previously unknown noodle dish in Chiang Khong, I kept my eyes peeled while recently in the riverside town.

While most Thais associate khao soi with squiggly egg noodles and a curry broth, the residents of Chiang Khong have an altogether different idea of the dish. Referred to locally as khao soi nam naa, the dish combines rice noodles served with a clear pork broth, the whole lot topped with a dollop of a thick tomato and minced pork mixture. This dish has become so synonymous with khao soi in Chiang Khong that the other version is called khao soi kathi, 'khao soi with coconut milk'.

Following EatingAsia’s lead, I sought out a stall selling the dish in one of the town's side streets. Upon seeing it, I realised that I’d actually encountered khao soi nam naa (or something very similar to it) previously, in Mae Hong Son, Laos and Myanmar. In Mae Hong Son and Myanmar, I seem to recall that the noodles took the form of round toothsome strands possibly made from tapioca flour, but here the dish was served with a flat rice noodle. The minced pork itself was dry and almost crumbly, and was held together by the paste-like mixture of chili, tomatoes and other spices and herbs. The dish was salty even for my taste, but otherwise was balanced and tasty.

A couple streets over at a flashier restaurant, Pa Orn continues to make and sell khao soi nam naa as her mother did more than 40 years ago:

She claims that her mother, an ethnic Dai/Tai from Xishuanbanna, southern China, brought the recipe from her homeland,  suggesting in my mind a pan-Tai link for this dish.

Served in huge bowls, I really enjoyed Pa Orn's version of the dish, particularly because it was served with a side of some of my favourite veggies. Again, the minced pork was almost dry and crumbly, but was held together by a similar red sauce, which in this case was less tomatoey and salty, but spicier than the previous bowl. Like the previous one, the dish was served with a spicy/salty condiment that was very similar in form and taste to the thick red chili paste one finds at Korean restaurants.

Pa Orn also does some more standard northern Thai dishes, including a meaty khao kan jin, rice steamed with blood:

Pa Orn Soi 6, Chiang Khong 8am-4pm

Khao soi nam naa vendor Soi 8, Chiang Khong Breakfast & lunch

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Ped Tun Jao Thaa

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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Pa Aew

I'm currently updating two Bangkok guidebooks, something which gives me the opportunity to spend time in the parts of town I wouldn't normally visit.

Ko Ratanakosin, the artificial island from which Bangkok sprung, is one of the more atmospheric parts of town. Unfortunately, dominated by Buddhist temples and royal palaces, the area has relatively few restaurants. If you need culinary incentive to visit, there's always Pa Aew, a longstanding street stall near Wat Pho.

The older couple here do exactly the kind of rich, oily, spicy central Thai food I love. Just about everything here's fried, but fried with care. Unsurprisingly, the dishes are somewhat oily, but oily in a rich way and not necessarily greasy.

There's almost always kung thawt krathiam, large shrimp deep-fried with garlic (shown in the centre of the pic above), and quite a few other seafood-based dishes. On my most recent visit I had phat phrik khing, a thick curry-like stir-fry with a spicy/sweet chili paste, fish and long beans, and phat chaa look chin plaa, a stir fry of  herbs and fish dumplings:

Both were rich, spicy, oily and tasty. Highly recommended.

Pa Aew near cnr of Th Maha Rat & Th Pratu Nok Yung (in front of Krung Thai Bank), Bangkok 9am-6pm

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Khao mok @ Thewet

I thought I was done with khao mok (biryani), but recently while in the Thewet area I encountered a couple more places selling the dish.

Suwim is a proper shophouse restaurant that sells a very standard Bangkok-style take on khao mok kai (shown above): rice with very little dried spice flavour served with an exceedingly sweet dipping sauce.

Although inoffensive, it's not really worth seeking out.

Better yet, go around the corner to Ran Khao Mok Kai Lek, which although it's located on the street, serves a more interesting version:

The rice, which they claim to cook using an old recipe, is slightly moist, with a subtle dried spice flavour. I chose to go with deep-fried chicken, which was crispy and tasty, if a bit dry. If you visit at lunch, you can expect a line here; the tart chicken and beef soup are as popular as the khao mok.

Khao Mok Kai Suwim cnr Th Sam Sen & Th Krung Kasem Breakfast & lunch

Ran Khao Mok Kai Lek Th Krung Kasem Breakfast & lunch

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Muslim Restaurant

I first mentioned Muslim Restaurant back in 2006. I recall having enjoyed it at the time, but in the one or two times I'd been back since then, wasn't blown away by the food and eventually neglected the place altogether.

Recently a friend mentioned the restaurant, and I decided to give it another try. I was curious to see if things had changed and ordered quite a few dishes. There was khao mok phae, goat biryani (pictured above), the 'special' version of which served on Mondays and Fridays comes with a side of yogurt and an eggplant curry; sup haang wua, oxtail soup, which although not as tart as elsewhere, was meaty and oniony; a tasty chicken mataba; and a sweet but rich and complex kaeng matsaman kai, Massaman curry with chicken.

In addition to the above, they also do quite a few prepared curries, a couple deep-fried snacks (including good but greasy samosas), tea and coffee served with goat milk, and Indian/Middle-Eastern sweets. If this isn't enough, you can always order extra yellow rice, which for reasons unknown to me is called khao burii ('cigarette rice').

I'm glad I made it back, as I really enjoyed just about everything at Muslim Restaurant, particularly the biryani, which although not as perfect as the version served at nearby Naaz, is worth seeking out.

Muslim Restaurant 1354-56 Th Charoen Krung, Bangkok 02 234 1876 6.30am-5.30pm

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Aisa Rot Dee

Hot on the trail of a better khao mok (biryani), I recently dropped by Aisa Rot Dee, a longstanding restaurant in Bangkok's Banglamphu neighbourhood.  I'd eaten here a couple times previously and was never blown away by the quality of the food, but with khao mok on my mind, felt compelled to return.

Unfortunately, little has changed -- at least from my perspective.

Tucked off the eastern end of Th Tani, Aisa takes the form of a Thai-Muslim food court:

serving the spectrum of classic Thai-Muslim dishes: satay, kuaytiaw kaeng and mataba:

the beef version of which was tasty and well done, and came with an interesting sweet/sour dipping sauce that, unusually, included slivers of ginger.

The khao mok kai (illustrated at the top of this post), though, lacked the dried spice complexity and richness of a truly stellar version. I liked the sweet/vinegary dipping sauce, though.

Aisa Rot Dee Th Tani, Bangkok 9am-11pm

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