Revisiting Thailand's Tasty Hideouts, From the Streets of Bangkok to Amphawa's River Banks

18.07.2024 - 23:41 / cntraveler.com

Well, here I am again, back in Bangkok, sitting on the same old wobbly plastic stool, outside the same old Chinatown food shop, eating the same old oyster omelet. But there's nothing everyday about this particular dish. Nai Mong Hoi Thod may look like little more than a white-tiled hole in the wall, with a few tables and a fearsome charcoal wok that sizzles and sparks and roars. But appearances can be deceiving. Michelin has designated the restaurant as Bib Gourmand, and its famous omelet—golden, gooey, and studded with sweet-salty bivalves—is a dish of frazzled majesty. As scavenging cats wind between our legs and as tuk-tuks, scooters, and bicycles whiz through air so thick and hot you could scoop it with a spoon, I look at my dining companion, the chef, restaurateur, and writer David Thompson, and grin with sweaty glee. It really is good to be back.

A seafood feast at Chalsamran

A palm tree in Bangkok

Bangkok pulses and seethes, throbs and growls. It is both wildly cacophonous and magnificently languid, an ancient city in thrall to the modern. It might not be conventionally beautiful—the concrete is crumbling, the corrugated iron corroded, and the roads pockmarked with holes. Overhead are decades' worth of utility wires, tangled into thick balls, like great nests of metallic noodles. But look closer, and you'll find scenes of breathtaking loveliness: a tiny shrine draped with garlands; a fresh-fruit stall, almost fecund in its lushness; a verdant garden, secreted away behind high walls. Bangkok cares little about what you think, which makes me love it all the more.

Ghosts roam the streets, as real to most Thais as a vendor-cart som tum. “The city is a multifarious place,” says Thompson, author of the book Thai Food. The Thais see beautiful old wood houses Westerners love so much as places teeming with apparitions, which is why they have no problem knocking them down and building shiny new condos in their place, blessedly free from those damned spirits. “The Thais are simply not attached to the past,” Thompson adds as we finish our omelets.

The open kitchen at Bangkok’s Charmgang

Atit Wimonchaijit, the owner of restaurant Chalsamran in Amphawa

Thompson is my guru, my guide, my Virgil. He's lived here for years, speaks Thai fluently, and owns Nahm, a restaurant specializing in traditional regional dishes that has held a Michelin star for the past seven years. Traversing the country, he collected and preserved recipes that existed mainly via oral tradition. “In Thailand, food offers more than nourishment alone,” he says. “It is sustenance for the country and for the soul.” By now we've been joined by David's partner, Tanongsak Yordwai, himself a chef, and are climbing the stairs to Yim Yim, another