Hotels are pretty cheap here in Bangkok. Even a pretty nice 3-star hotel tends to run around $50 USD per night. Once or twice a month, my wife and I like to take a staycation to get away from our neighborhood and spend an evening exploring a different part of the city that we don't often get to.
This past week we set off to stay on and explore Yaowarat Road, Bangkok's Chinatown neighborhood.
****
****
Before reading the post, check out the video I made!
I recently set up a YouTube channel for my side blog, The World of Street Food (theworldofstreetfood.com). You can subscribe to the channel here if you are interested:
https://www.youtube.com/@theworldofstreetfood
****
Yaowarat, Bangkok's chaotic Chinatown neighborhood is a sensory overload. The largest Chinatown in the world is home to a vibrant community of more than 100,000 people of Thai-Chinese heritage and tons of amazing fusion food that is hard to find anywhere else in the world.
This neighborhood is known as one of the best food spots in all of Bangkok (itself recognized as one of the best food cities in the world). While most of the culinary activity happens at night when the sun goes down and the vendors set up their late-night shops and stalls along the busy street, there's plenty to find during the daytime as well.
It was a warm afternoon when we arrived, and the taxi dropped us off at the wrong place - about a kilometer from the hotel. Since it's such a fun and atmospheric area, we decided to walk. We stopped in for some slushy herbal drinks on the way.
This shop has been open for over 100 years. It's a traditional Chinese herbal drink factory, but they've modernized in recent years and now make iced versions.
I had a slushy chrysanthemum tea, which was a fantastic way to cool off.
Our main goal for this staycation was to collect content for The World of Street Food (at least that's what we told ourselves to give us an excuse to eat a lot of great Thai-Chinese food).
After checking in at the hotel, we headed out to Kuay Jab Nai Ek.
Kuay Jap Nai Ek is famous for... you guess it, kuay jap!
Kuay jap, or rolled noodle soup, is one of this neighborhood's most iconic dishes.
The dish begins with a really special clear broth made from pork bones and lots and lots of black pepper. This gives it a really rich pork flavor and a very unique strong peppery taste.
The broth is filled with kuay jab's iconic rolled noodles: wide, flat rice noodles rolled up into tubes. The noodles are soft and a bit chewy with a really nice mild flavor that allows the strong taste of the peppery soup to be the star of the show.
The soup was also served with delicious pieces of crisp fried pork belly, boiled pork balls, and stewed slices of pork meat, and was topped with fried garlic, green onion, and fresh cilantro.
As a side dish we ordered another of the shop's specialties - pork spareribs with Chinese herbs.
The pork had been stewed for so long that the meat fell off the bone and melted away at the first bite. These were some of the best ribs I've ever had!
Finally, we ordered a plate of Nai Ek's famous moo krob, or crispy pork belly.
A large serving of crispy pork belly was served with kale and a thick sweet and savory brown gravy.
I love moo krob (although it's not so healthy, so I don't get to eat it very often), but it's easy to make wrong. Sometimes the pork belly is too fatty, which I don't think tastes good.
This moo krob was excellent. The pork belly, though fatty, was not overly so, and the skin was an amazing golden-brown with a perfect crunchy texture. I'm not exaggerating when I saw that this could very well be the best moo krob I've ever had!
We walked on, exploring the sois and side streets that make up Chinatown. If a dish called our name, we stopped to try it.
Jui Guay is a Thai-Chinese street food dish of Teochew origin. In Bangkok, this dish can be found along Yaowarat Road in the city's Chinatown neighborhood.
The name, which means something like "rice water cakes" are made from small round steamed rice flour cakes topped with stewed preserved radish and other ingredients.
The rice cakes on their own don't have much flavor, but they provide the base and a nice chewy texture that is topped with all of the rich and flavorful ingredients that make this dish come alive.
In addition to the crunchy preserved radish, the jui guay that you can find on Yaowarat Road is also topped with green onion, lots of stir-fried garlic, sliced hot red chilies, white pepper, and chili sauce. It's slightly spicy, but not unbearably so, and all of the flavors are absolutely incredible.
We took a rest in the afternoon. If you really want to see all that Chinatown has to offer, it's best to come after the sun goes down. I had never been to Chinatown at night before, and boy, was I in for an experience!
From sunset until very late at night (probably around 2 in the morning), one lane on either side of Yaowarat Road is closed off for pedestrians.
Vendors, hawkers, and food stalls set up alongside the road selling all sorts of noodles, late-night snacks, and Chinese dishes.
First, we wanted to try some of Chinatown's famous grilled bread.
It might sound a little basic, but it's so good!
Thick pieces of fresh, sweet, white bread are grilled over charcoal to give them a crispy crust. The bread is then stuffed with delicious fillings like butter and sugar, sweet milk, or chocolate. We bought a box to take back to the hotel for breakfast the next day. After all, they really aren't that different from donuts!
Mung Korn Khao, or "White Dragon" Noodles, is a famous old shop in Bangkok's Chinatown. It doesn't have a physical building or address, but instead sets up a cart at the corner of the alley each evening after the sun goes down.
The noodles arrived quickly. The portion was small (a common comment I found when reading online reviews), but the noodles were really good, and the amount of crab meat in the serving was pretty generous.
The noodles had a wonderful rich oily savoriness that went really well with the juicy and sweet crab meat. The bowl was also topped with crispy fried garlic and chopped green onions for extra aromatic flavor.
Is it weird to order the same dish twice in one day? Because that's what we did!
After eating the crab noodles, we made our way on to Kuay Jab Ouan Pochana, another kuay jab restaurant, this one the recipient of Michelin's Bib Gourmand award since 2018.
I enjoyed my second bowl of kuay jab, but I actually think I preferred the first one. The dish I had from Nai Ek had more meat in it, and the crispy pork was thicker and crispier.
I did like that Ouan Pochana included a boiled egg, which gave the soup some extra richness, and I also liked the addition of red chili.
I was already getting full at this point, but there was still more to discover. One thing that everyone must try when visiting Yaowarat Road at night is the seafood, considered to be some of the best in the city.
Dining at Fikeaw is truly a sensory experience. Tables and chairs are set out on the side of the road and food is served from the open-air kitchen. Smoke fills the air as tuk-tuks and taxis zip past beneath the neon lights of Chinatown's gold shops, hotels, and restaurants.
There are two outdoor kitchens. One chef works the grill while the other mans the wok. Since all of the seating is outside along the street, you'll get a good look at the chefs while they prepare your food. It adds to the experience.
You never order just one dish at a Thai seafood restaurant. Especially if you come with a friend or a small group, it's typical to order several dishes to share family-style.
We started with a serving of stir-fried morning glory. This "red fire" morning glory was the most flavorful I've ever had! It was cooked in a wok with lots of oil, oyster sauce, fried garlic, red chili, and tons of other aromatics. Cooking it over extremely high heat in the fiery wok imparted the dish with a strong, rich, smoky flavor that I absolutely loved. I've never had morning glory like this before.
Next, a very standard dish that I'm a sucker for any time it's offered: khao pad kung, or shrimp fried rice. There's nothing super special about this dish, but every seafood feast should at least come with a serving of Thai-style fried rice.
The main course was mixed seafood served with fried garlic, black pepper, and cilantro. The dish came with thick pieces of squid, chewy and flavorful octopus, and large, juicy shrimp piled high with a mountain of aromatics.
The shrimp were my favorite.
Finally, we shared an order of Thailand's most popular national dish: tom yum talay, or seafood tom yum soup.
Tom yum is a sweet, spicy, and sour soup filled with rich herbs, mushrooms, and tons of fresh seafood (fish, shrimp, octopus, and squid).
The next morning, we went out looking for some breakfast.
Fish noodles for breakfast may seem like a strange choice, but at this storied old Chinatown restaurant, they are a Bangkok classic.
Early in the morning, Aung Peng Chung Noodles opens up their shop in a tiny alleyway.
It doesn't look like much, but it has a certain old-fashioned charm, and the food speaks for itself.
Breakfast began with a bowl of yentafo (fermented soybean paste) broth stuffed full of golden egg noodles and this restaurant's famous fish balls.
Yentafo is a type of pink soup broth made from fermented soybean paste. The sweet, sour, and savory broth is one of Thailand's iconic flavors, and is the base of one of the country's most famous and beloved soups.
In addition to the fish balls, this bowl of noodles was also filled with chopped Chinese kale, crispy taro galls, fried garlic, and more. It was a delicious aromatic soup that I really enjoyed.
We had some time before checkout, so we paid a visit to Wat Mangkorn, the most important Chinese Buddhist temple in Thailand. While the vast majority of Thailand practices Theravada Buddhism, the Thai-Chinese community leans towards Mahayana Buddhism. It's always a bit chaotic here, but especially in the weeks leading up to Chinese New Year.
Hundreds of people, many dressed in all white, were visiting to pray, make offerings, receive blessings, and purchase good luck amulets and charms for the new year.
I love visiting here because it's so different from the other temples in Thailand, although it was a little too crowded for me and I didn't want to stay too long.
We finished our staycation with lunch at an old-fashioned barbecue duck restaurant.
The duck was served with Chinese kale, pickled ginger, and a sweet brown dipping sauce.
I had so much fun on our food adventure in Chinatown. It feels so different from the rest of Bangkok that it's almost like visiting an entirely different country
I wouldn't be hungry again for a long time!
No comments:
Post a Comment