Wanderlust: Expat Life & Style in Thailand Oct / Nov 2017: The Travel Issue | Page 18

THAI TABLE
TEMPTATIONS
In the Land of Smiles, you won’t want for a meal. Alastair Newport
offers up a Thai food primer for Bangkok beginners.
Y
ou come to Thailand and you notice it immediate-
ly — everywhere around you, teasing your sens-
es, drawing crowds, connecting you to the culture
and the land. You hear expats cite it as a deciding factor in
their decision to put down roots here and make it a per-
manent home.
The food. The food in Thailand is, to put it mildly (and
spicily), unforgettable.
The high standard of things to eat at every level —
sometimes for just a few baht along the street — is so
noticeable that finer restaurants have to pull out all the
stops to stand out from the uncountable street stalls and
roadside cafes. With the bar so high throughout Thai soci-
ety, even a plastic bowl of microwaved basil chicken and
rice is capable of sending novice diners into raptures of
foodie happiness.
Whether you’re here for the long term or just on vaca-
tion, some Thai recipes simply must be sampled to make
sure you don’t wander through the rest of your life igno-
rant of exactly how delicious Thai cuisine can really be.
PAD THAI
Pad thai is probably the first dish that springs to mind
when discussing Thailand’s cuisine. Is it cliché? Sure. But
the famous noodle recipe — with tofu, shrimp, egg, scal-
lions, bean sprouts, garlic, fish sauce, lime juice and a
sprinkle of crushed peanuts — is an excellent country
ambassador.
Cast into the limelight by the gov-
ernment of the day to promote
noodles as an alternative
to rice during WWII, pad
thai may not have
cured the coun-
try of the addic-
tion to its favor-
ite carb, but it
has become a
go-to comfort
food. Why?
Perhaps be-
cause it en-
capsulates
many of the
flavors of mod-
ern Thai food with-
out the usual aggres-
sive, chili-driven heat,
making it an ideal introduc-
tion to Thailand’s expansive menu.
18 WANDERLUST
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