Thai cooking balances four tastes in a single dish — sweet, sour, salty and hot — and adds a fifth, the deep savour of fermented fish sauce, nam pla. Nothing is served in courses: everything arrives together and is shared, with rice at the centre of the table.
The dishes everyone knows
- Pad thai — rice noodles fried with tamarind, egg, tofu or prawns, peanuts and lime; a dish promoted by the state in the 1940s and now a national emblem.
- Tom yum goong — a hot and sour prawn soup with lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaf and chilli.
- Som tam — green papaya pounded in a mortar with lime, fish sauce, chilli and dried shrimp; from Isan, and often fiercer than it looks.
- Green curry — gaeng keow wan, coconut milk, green chillies, basil; the sweetest of the curries and usually the hottest.
- Massaman — a mild curry with cardamom, cinnamon and peanuts, brought by Persian and Malay traders to the south.
- Khao soi — northern curry noodles with crisp noodles on top, pickled mustard greens and lime; the signature dish of Chiang Mai.
- Larb — minced meat with toasted ground rice, mint and lime, eaten with sticky rice by hand in the north-east.
Regional differences
The four regions cook differently enough that Thais talk about them as separate cuisines. The north is mild, uses sticky rice and takes pork and herbs from the hills. The north-east, Isan, is the hottest and the most sour, built on grilled meat, papaya salad and fermented fish. The centre is the balanced style that travelled abroad, with coconut milk and jasmine rice. The south is the fiercest of all, with turmeric, fresh chillies and Malay influence.
Eating on the street
The street stall is not a lesser version of a restaurant here — it is where most people eat, and the good ones cook one dish and nothing else for thirty years. Point at what someone else is having. Mai phet means „not spicy"; be warned that a Thai „a little spicy" is not a European one.
Sweets and drinks
- Mango sticky rice — khao niao mamuang, ripe mango with coconut-soaked glutinous rice, in season from March to June.
- Roti — a fried pancake with banana and condensed milk, sold from carts at night.
- Cha yen — iced tea, orange and very sweet with condensed milk.
- Fresh fruit — rambutan, mangosteen, longan, and durian, which is banned from hotels and the metro for its smell.
Practical notes
Thais eat with a fork and spoon: the fork pushes food onto the spoon, which goes into the mouth. Chopsticks are for noodle soups. Sticky rice in the north-east is rolled into a ball with the fingers. Vegetarians should learn „jay", the word for the strict Buddhist vegan diet — asking for „no meat" often still leaves the fish sauce in.