Food products from Southeast Asia (SHrg105-516)

Actually, the first stop of our Southeast Asian vacation wasn't Laos. We had a five-hour layover in Bangkok before our flight to Vientiane, so we took the BTS Skytrain to the Phaya Thai station to get some breakfast. We made our way down from the platform and headed to the first cluster of good-smelling stands on the street. Here is where we began more than three weeks of mostly pointing at instead of ordering our meals.

Street Food
Most of the time, we had no idea the names of the dishes we were eating. In many cases, I looked them up later or after we returned home. I never did figure out the exact name of our breakfast that morning. It was a kind of pork meatball soup with some root vegetables, not potato, served with rice (left). We ended our trip with street food in Bangkok as well, except it was served from a mall instead of a stall. At MBK Center's Food Island, you buy a pre-paid card to be used at a variety of stands (even beer!); if you don't use all the money you put on the card, you can be refunded the remaining balance. We handed over our cards for Pad See Ew, a noodle dish perhaps second in popularity only to Pad Thai, and Kuaytaiw Pet, duck noodle soup (right).

Some of the best street foods were simply snacks we stumbled upon while wandering around. In Phnom Penh's Psah Toul Tompoung, or Russian market, we ordered some Num Ta Leng Sap, Khmer vegetarian pancakes served in broth (left). We stooped on a sidewalk near Westlake in Hanoi to nosh on Banh Gio, a traditional Vietnamese dumpling steamed and stuffed with minced pork and mushrooms (right). 

In some cases, the street snacks consisted of non-Asian flavors. In Luang Prabang, there is a whole row of stands serving sandwiches on fresh French baguettes. I had my chicken and avocado one with a pineapple shake; TJ tried an avocado shake, which was actually quite tasty (left). In Haiphong, as we were waiting for a ferry to Cat Ba Island, we lunched on Vietnam's famous version of the baguette sandwich, Banh Mi, with fried, fatty, and finger-licking pate (right).

In the Sukhumvit section of Bangkok, there's a famous street full of food stands known simply as Soi 38. Besides the variety, it's known for being tourist-friendly, with lots of signs and displays to help you order (left). We arrived way too early for the night market to be in full swing, but I was still able to complete my mission of trying Suki Haeng, a dry, non-broth version of Sukiyaki, or Japanese hot pot (right).

 

We found that many food vendors, including those who didn't speak English, were more than willing to help us order, even without the presence of pictures. It helped that most stands specialized in one type of dish, so you just had to make choices about sizes and ingredients. At this stand in the Banglamphu section of Bangkok, the yellow sign made it clear what you had to pick: small or large, white (rice) or yellow (egg) noodles, and cured pork or pork wontons (left). We shared a large Kuay Teow Nam with cured pork in yellow noodles, although afterward, when we saw the workers making them fresh, we regretted not getting the wontons. Our table, literally on the street, held the necessary accoutrements: chopsticks, lime, fish sauce, sugar, and hot pepper paste (right).

Unfortunately, not every vendor was as stand-up as this establishment. Some proprietors, aware of tourists' strong desire to try street food, take advantage of their dearth of knowledge and abundance of politeness with scams. At Dong Ba Market in Hue, friendly ladies will corral you behind their stalls, plying you with food that fills the table. At one point, I wasn't eating as fast as TJ, so the vendor poured one soup into another, so there would be room for yet another plate. To make it stop coming, you have to be quite forceful, and only then, of course, do you find out you are paying per skewer and per dish (yes, I had to pay for two soups put in one bowl) at quite inflated prices. This meal turned out to be one of the most expensive we had during our trip. But the cost was still less than most of our meals out, so I forgave myself for falling victim -- except for the lingering worry that one of those soups might've contained dog meat.

Traditional Dishes

The food was so cheap that we didn't feel like we had to limit ourselves to just street food. One step up from street-food stalls were streetside stir-fry stands. These slightly-more-established-ments actually have tables and chairs, some even indoors, but the "kitchen," or wok with a gas burner, is still outside. These places had a family-dining-room feel, right down to the homemade hot sauce (top left). Plus, there was the allure of being able to watch your food being cooked almost tableside (top right). In Cat Ba, you can even choose which protein to throw in the wok: squid, shrimp, or even horsehoe crab, which we didn't try (bottom).

 

Even at bona fide restaurants, we sometimes just opted for snacks. In particular, Southeast Asian salads made refreshing and cheap treats. We tried a very Spicy Cashew Salad in Vientiane (left) and Laap or Larb, a salad of minced meat and basil, in Luang Prabang (right).

Sometimes, we ate snacks just because we couldn't pass up a popular spot. We had already eaten dinner when we walked back from Wat Sok Pa Luang in Vientiane; nonetheless, we were drawn to the long line at KFC, or Khouvieng Fried Chicken, named after the road where it's located. While waiting in line, we could smell and see the chicken being cooked in huge vats of oil (left). With our thighs and fries (right), we didn't have cole slaw, but Green Papaya Salad, offered in various forms throughout Southeast Asia.

 

Salads and fried chicken are traditional Laotian cuisine, and as we headed to other countries, we often ordered the local specialities. A set menu in Hoi An allowed us to sample White Rose, a set of shrimp dumplings, and Cao Lau, a chewy rice noodle and pork dish, with a wonton vegetable pizza as an appetizer (left). At Quan An Ngon in Hanoi, the menu was so long that I forget all of what we ordered, but I do remember the squid-paste patties and an eel salad (right). The waitress tried to steer us toward another salad, probably thinking our palates couldn't handle the eel salad, but it was distinctly delicious.

In Thailand, we tried true versions of dishes I had already eaten (and in one case had tried to make). In Rambuttri Village in Bangkok, TJ finally got Pad Thai while I sized up the Green Curry with pork (left). Later, I would get to taste red and yellow curries, too. I tried a curry that I had previously been unfamiliar with, Massaman Curry, at a restaurant near Khao San Road in Bangkok (right).

Barbeque Joints
The United States doesn't have a monopoly on good, old-fashioned grilled meat as a traditional meal. Many Southeast Asian restaurants dedicate themselves to barbeque. On a street across from the Old Market in Siem Reap, quite a few places tout a variety of charred flesh; at the one we went to, we got a selection of shrimp, chicken, and beef. The proprietor even showed us how to mix a traditional dipping sauce of lime, peanuts, hot peppers, and Prahok, or fermented fish paste. The end result is quite pungent but somehow works well with the tenderized and marinated meat.

In Vientiane, TJ conferred with a young man equally reluctant yet eager to speak English about the goods on his grill (left). The main meat was goat, and a small grill platter came with it and some sausage (right). All grill platters came with peppers, herbs, and greens to help eat the greasy meat, for both flavor-adding and finger-cleaning purposes.

 

High-End Restaurants
In other places, we went so far as to "splurge" on high-end meals at fusion or charitable restaurants. At Tamarind, a cooking school and restaurant in Luang Prabang, the very reasonably priced set dinner included, among other dishes, a sampler platter of Jeow, or dipping sauces, served with authentic sticky rice, not just rice that sticks together (left). It also included pumpkin stir-fried with ginger, chicken cooked in lemongrass, and fish steamed in banana leaves (right).

Fish steamed in banana leaves, also known as Amok, is the national dish of Cambodia. We tried a seafood version of Amok at Sandan, another school of sorts, along with a squid stir-fry dish (left). The Sihanoukville restaurant is one of a series of schools in the area that train underprivileged youth to work in the hospitality industry, as both cooks and servers. The organization is doing good work, as the service and the food -- including a prawn, pork, and coconut dip as well as a papaya and squid salad (right) -- were spot on.

 

In Thailand, the ubiquitous green papaya salad is called Som Tum. Diamond Cliff restaurant on the resort island of Koh Lanta has adapted it to Western, particularly American, tastes by offering a fried version. In it, the papaya slices are battered and deep fried, then the rest of the ingredients are mixed together as a dipping sauce (left). Another Koh Lanta restaurant, Drunken Sailors, also tried to improve upon a local favorite, Tom Yum Goong, through frying. In this case, the lime and shrimp soup becomes a flavorful version of fried rice (right).

 

Western Repasts
The fusion foods were great, but with three weeks in the region, we sometimes needed an absolute break from Southeast Asian flavors, so we fell back on some Western favorites. But we remained risk-takers by opting for raw items such as sushi (I know, I know, sushi is Asian, not Western) at MBK Center's Fifth Food Avenue in Bangkok (top left) as well as beef tartare and carpacchio at Le Malraux in Siem Reap (top right). And for some reason, Mexican food has caught on in Phnom Penh, so TJ's birthday meal was burritos and tacos at Taqueria Corona (bottom).

You have probably seen in many of the pictures that we took advantage of the ability to drink in public, another Western tradition. Most of the time, we drank the local beers (discussed in another post), but we couldn't resist trying some non-lager brews. In Phnom Penh, we tried OatS, a stout, and CentenniALE, a pale ale, as part of the 2-for-1 happy hour special at Himawari Microbrewery, in the hotel of the same name (left). They were much more satisfying than the Golden and Stout varieties we quickly downed amid the contrived and creepy Oktoberfest decor of Munich Beer Restaurant, which lured us in only because of its location near our hotel in Phnom Penh.

When the local beers grew unappealing, as the food sometimes did, I would go for cocktails, even though they weren't as cost-effective. The raspberry daiquiri at Khinlom Chom Saphan, along the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, was much more refreshing than the overly-sugary versions from some unnamed U.S. chain restaurants (top left). At Aqua Bar in Koh Lanta, I had another berry cocktail, served more like a martini, while TJ has some of the local whisky on the rocks (top right). But in the end, I always came back to Asian flavors, even in my cocktails. The "Tamarin Sauce" at Asana, a bar in Siem Reap that offers bartending classes, included lemongrass and other "paddy herbs," which seemed like a perfect toast to our trip (bottom).