About Thai Cuisine

The true gourmet traveler in a new destination demands to know one thing above all: “Where can I eat like a local?” In Bangkok, the simplest answer is “everywhere”, because Thais crave good food, and seemingly every inch of the city, both indoors and out, is dedicated to the pleasures of the palate. Modern Bangkok offers more choice than ever, although, mysteriously, in the increasingly common proper” air-conditioned restaurants, much of the glorious intensity of Thai cuisine is missing. With a few notable exceptions mainly around the capital’s more posh areas, Thai food has yet to translate very well to up-market surroundings.

The soul of Thai cooking is found on the street, in wheeled metal carts, wicker baskets and traditional food shops, called raan aharn. This is great news for food explorers because to discover the authentic”, the culinary Holy GraiI. You have to venture into the alleys and market places of ordinary life, and get a taste of Bangkok’s unvarnished heritage, which is still intact behind the city’s malls and office blocks.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of these outlets in the capital, and thousands of them really will be good. So any attempt to quantify them in terms of “the best” is doomed to fail. There are, however, hot spots with a good choice of stalls and many outlets with reputations, often built over generations, for outstanding individual recipes.