Bangkok bus station -- Thailand III

After less than a day in Bangkok, some of which was spent sleeping, I was ready to leave. Karen and I headed to the Northern Bus Station to catch an overnight bus to Chiang Mai in the north.

We found the bus station food court and decided to eat at one food stand with a menu with pictures. Ordering would be easy: I would just point.

But, as what happens more frequently than I would like, I was wrong I walked up to the food stall and pointed to the picture of what I wanted, but the girl behind the counter, of course, couldn't see. She walked out of her stall and around to the front where I was standing, saw what I wanted, and gave the order to the girl making the noodles. I thought my embarassment was over, but then came time to pay. I handed her a 100 baht note and she left her stall. I waited and then she appeared next to me with change. Apparently, from what I deduced from the man next to me ordering food, you exchange your money for food vouchers and give the vouchers to the food vendors. How was I supposed to know? But, the girls were nice and understanding, even if they thought I was a strange and stupid foreigner, and I had my bowl of noodles.

My bowl of noodle soup had rice noodles and minced pork in a clear broth. It was like the noodle soup that I always order for Sunday brunch at the Thai temple in Berkeley, except this time I was eating among Thai people waiting for their bus, not young, hippy-ish and hipster-ish Berkeley-ites. The noodles were cooked al dente and the soup was flavorful. Putting the bowl to my mouth and drinking the soup made me almost forget about the embarassment of ordering it.

Wat pad thai -- Thailand II

Somehow, Karen and I got wrangled into chartering a tuk-tuk to take us around Bangkok. We saw Buddha after Buddha, and wat after wat. By mid afternoon, I had seen enough Thai temples and Buddha statues to last me an eternity. I was also hungry.

As we walked though one of the temples, passing through rows of what looked like monks' housing where the walls were painted a turqoise blue and saffron robes hung to dry, we came across the ubiquitous food carts and Thai folks on their lunch break eating in the sahde of a large tree.

The carts had noodles, chicken, more meats on sticks. I wondered how what the food was and how much English these people would know, and opted for something we knew: pad thai.

The noodles were delicious, probably the best pad thai I'd ever eaten. The rice noodles were chewy but tender. The sauce wasn't too sweet. And the salty bits of dried shrimp and crispy fried pork fat were quite tasty additions that I'd never seen in any pad thai in the States.

As we sat eating our noodles outside under a tree surrounded by only Thai, I was reminded of growing up in LA and eating our meals in the driveway behind the house when the summer heat made it too oppressively warm to eat indoors and wondered if this was how my parents ate when they lived in Vietnam and China.

Sidewalk dining -- Thailand I

Karen and my first meal in Thailand tested how well we could remember and abide by the rules of eating in a developing foreign country to prevent any massive illness (i.e. diarrhoea) that would incapicitate one for the remainder of one's vacation: 1) don't drink the water; 2) avoid food that looks like it has been sitting out; 3) make sure food is hot; and 4) wash it, peel it, cook it, or forget it.

We wandered the streets and alleys near our guesthouse in Banglamphu, Bangkok's long-established traveller's ghetto. Food cart after food cart lined the streets, peddling noodles, curries, meats on sticks, fried things, and who knows what else. We took a lap around and settled on a largish-looking operation with three sidewalk tables, an awning protecting the food against the light drizzle that was beginning to fall, and pots and platters heaped with mounds of food.

I questioned how long the food had been displayed as such, but thought that it couldn't have been too long since it was still early in the morning and there were two other Thai-looking people eating there already, so it couldn't be too bad.

I had the green curry with chicken and a fried egg over steamed rice. I actually had wanted the catfish from the menu, but the woman working the place said, "Curry?" and pointed, I said, "Okay" and nodded, and, viola, there I was with a plate of green curry and a fried egg.

The curry was mildly spicy and I could taste the strong fragrance of basil. The little squash things were smushy but good, and the small bits of chicken were soft. I cut into the fried egg and the yolk ran into my rice. I was nervous. Should I eat runny egg yolk on my first day in Thailand? Was it worth the risk of getting stomach pains? Eh, I figured that I have a strong stomach, mixed that egg yolk with some rice, spooned it into my mouth, and it was good. It was even better with a little bit of curry mixed in.

We finished our meal with stomachs still intact. One food stall down, so many more to go.

* Oh, our meal also cost us 45 baht, which is roughly 1.05 USD. I'm gonna love this place.

Catch up

There have been too many meals that have gone unwritten about, so here I am, again, trying to play catch up of some of the more memorable ones. Rather than the usual list of food devoured, this catch-up entry will be of things I learned.

Memorial Day Barbeque
Potatoes in potato salad can absorb an ungodly amount of salt. Vodka and rum mixed with red wine and fresh fruit makes a potent and tasty cocktail that goes surprisingly well with burgers. Colin likes his burgers absolutely unadorned, Ben recognizes the beauty of a hamburger patty lightly packed, I can only handle half of one of Eleanor’s ice cream sandwiches, Jon has spectacular charcoal gloves, and squeezing thirty people into a patio space twelve feet by ten feet is a difficult, and messy, maneuver, especially with two hot grills in the mix.

Mormon Country
In Mormon country, you can’t get a decent beer, even if you’re eating at a couple of the best breweries in the entire state of Utah. Budweiser there contains only 3% alcohol, and you have to be a member of the club (their term for bar) in order to enter--so, no membership, no entrance, no drink.

East Bay Suburb
Orinda is great for a backyard barbeque, where a meal of decadently delicious ribs, grilled oysters, and mac-n-cheese is enjoyed sitting in the backyard sun, as it rains across the Bay. The hard-to-judge-how-old bartender at Casa Orinda doesn’t appreciate the business of some young hoodlums like me, Scott, and his friends. Although, they don’t care over at the Round Up, where some tough-looking men take shuffleboard very seriously.

Nopa
Apparently, the area north of the panhandle has been ridiculously deemed Nopa by who knows who. Also, where Divisadero and Hayes intersect, which is where that new restaurant Nopa stakes its claim, can also be referred to as Nopa (although I think that’s more west of the panhandle than north, or maybe it’s a little north-east of Western Addition).

Divisadero, the New Valencia Street
Divisadero is becoming the new yuppie Mission. With Blue Jay Café, Little Star Pizza, Madrone, and Nopa, among other places, where a youngish, hip-ish crowd with not so many bicycles and not so many hoodies are hanging out, there might be a new scummy hot spot.

More Tacos
The 36 count package of corn tortillas is a much more manageable size than the 50 count one.

Mayflower
My Cantonese skills are only good enough to wrangle me a table and a pot of tea at Mayflower. It’s either that I have poor language skills or that our waiter was incompetent, since two wrong dishes were brought to our table. Also, “fried scallops” on the menu really means sautéed scallops.

In-N-Out
Not only can you get an animal-style burger at In-N-Out, you can also order animal-style fries. French fries covered with thousand island sauce, cheese, and grilled onions have never more appetizing as when eating them on a grassy knoll by the bay on a field trip from work.

French onion

Reason #54 why I want to marry Eleanor: she makes a fantastic French onion soup. It’s phenomenal, hands-down the best I’ve had, and I’ve had onion soup in Paris.

The recipe she followed was from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon cookbook, making slight alterations. She used lamb stock instead of beef (she made her own from freshly butchered lamb bones). She omitted the vinegar. She piled on the crostini.

As Colin and I were watching her cook and helping out where we could, we all agreed that a good French onion soup is hard to come by. There can sometimes be too much cheese, which then melts into the soup making it too heavy or turning into a goupy glob if not eaten quickly enough. The broth can be too salty. The onions can be not sweet enough. There are so many elements that can be done poorly, so that what should be a wonderfully sweet, rich soup with interesting textures melding together into a tureen of tastiness turns into a brown liquid of lukewarm brine with onion chunks and a spongey piece of bread.

But Eleanor’s soup was none of that. We waited and watched in anticipation as the little pots of soup topped with crostini topped with cheese were browning their cheesy lids. When they were done, I stuck my nose as close as I could to my steamy pot and closed my eyes to inhale the fragrance of melting cheese and sweet onion.

I had my own little pale blue pot, as Eleanor and Colin shared a larger black one. We dug in and mmm’ed our way through those first bites. The broth was rich and sweet, while not being too heavy. It was clean while being able to hold up the intense flavors of slowly sautéed onions and lamb stock that had undoubtedly simmered on the stovetop for hours. The onions no longer looked nor tasted like customary onions; they were a deep brown color with a consistency of being almost pureed and an unbelievably sweet taste. There was the right amount of cheese as well. Those first bites of cheesy crouton strung cheese from the bowl to my mouth. And, as I worked my way to the bottom of the bowl, making sure to portion out cheese, bread, and soup as to not have too much of any one at the end, the cheese started to thicken and turn into globs, but they were manageable globs that didn’t need to pushed to the side of the bowl to be left uneaten.

After eating spoonful after spoonful of soup, we were slowly winding our way to the end. It was a lot of soup and crostini and cheese, but I was determined to finish. Colin started to look as if he was going to give up but Eleanor urged him on, “Don’t let the soup defeat you!” We chugged through, and I hit bottom, seeing the white of the pot. That soup was my Everest and that white bottom my summit. I did it. I finished that little pot full of glorious French onion soup, leaned back in my chair with my hand on my belly, and was happily stuffed with onion soup.