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  Sukhothai, Thailand
Wednesday, December 14, 2005

For the special foodie request, here it is: a whole entry dedicated to the delicious, disgusting, peculiar, and delectable food experiences of our traveling. If you don't feel like hearing long-winded blabber about chili peppers and noodles, you can skip this entry.

In general, the overall quality of our eating experience has been surprisingly good. It has been a rare time to sit down at the table and be served something inedible (actually only once - but we'll get to that later). Most of the food has been pretty tasty, and a lot of it VERY tasty. Unexpectedly, this applies to both the native food and incarnations of western cooking. I've been served much worse plates of spaghetti bolognaise in France than I have in Vietnam. As far as table service goes, there is an interesting approach to serving food at many of the places we have been here in South East Asia. Instead of bringing a meal out in order (appetizer, main course, etc), or at the same time, they bring it our whenever it is ready. This means you may get your french fries at the end of the meal, as if they were dessert. Kristy may get her meal, and finish it, before Matt gets his. Coffee may come with the continental breakfast, but it isn't served until all the eggs and bacon have been eaten. Oh well. At least when it comes, the waitress usually brings it with a big smile. But as our days on the road accumulate, eating has changed it's meaning a bit. We aren't as picky about where we eat, or as desperate to try the local specialty.

01 Market

Often we pick a restaurant just because it's close by, or because it's cheap. Traveling this long means having to search out a restaurant and pick a dish three times a day, everyday, for months. It gets tiring. More and more, instead of hoping we find the most delicious dish in town, we wish we had a kitchen in our room, where we could whip up a dish of pasta or a grilled cheese sandwich. Regardless, eating has been, and continues to be, a highlight of our trip. I'm sure, months from now, when we're back at home eating our mac and cheese, we'll think back to our trip, and start to drool.

Markets

Markets have been an interesting experience, although because we have not had a kitchen for most of our time, a visit means browsing rather than shopping. First there are the vegetables, of all colors and many completely unknown. Then there are the fish and sea creatures, usually alive in a few inches of water, gasping as they eye their potential devourers. Sometimes they are dead, split open for all the passerbys to admire their brightly shining insides. Then, there is the meat. Mounds of it, usually with the skin and fur still attached. Blood red, buzzing with flies, and being hacked apart by the butcher's cleaver. To see a local meat market is to be stunned you do not salmonella, trichinosis, or some other hideous disease. Sometimes there are items that are curiosities, such as the piece of meat I saw the other day that appeared to have porcupine quills. Or the itty-bitty little baby chickens and ducks that are skewered and grilled over coals.

02 Garlic and Chilies

Do you eat the bones? Or just nibble on tiny little drum sticks? Of course there are the insects, fried and piled in baskets for sale by the bag full. From little maggots all the way up to big beetles that are larger than the baby ducks in the next stall, so big their legs are tied together in little bundles by pieces of thread.

The Staples

As we have traveled, certain dishes have become staples, ordered often if not always when available. For Matt, the first staple is Green Curry with Chicken. Green Curry is available all over South East Asia, though not so much in Vietnam, and comes in all sorts of variations. It always has a base of coconut milk, a ginger-garlic-chili flavor base and various other flavors including lime leaves & lemon grass. Sometimes there are lots of veggies, sometimes not. At the Atlanta Hotel in Bangkok, where I ate the best version of it, it came with two kinds of eggplant, a large eggplant cut into pieces, and small bite size eggplant that had an unusual bitter flavor. I tried to order it on another occasion at the Atlanta, but they wouldn't make it because they didn't have any fresh coconut and the chef would not accept any substitute. I get green curry with chicken because I like to spit in the eye of the bird flu fear mongers, and also because I think the flavour best compliments the green curry, although you can order with pork or beef as well.

My second staple is noodle soup. I think this is my favorite food of all our travels so far.

03 Shrimp

It seems to be the national dish of this whole area, and I don't think there is a spot we've been on our whole time in South East Asia where we couldn't have walked for 15 minutes and found a noodle soup vendor. The vendor is usually on the street and has a stand with a large glass case displaying the noodles and meat and vegetables, and a large simmering pot of broth. The broth and meat can vary, sometimes beef (as in the famous breakfast dish, Pho Bo, in Vietnam), sometimes pork, sometimes duck, though I haven't yet seen chicken. The stand will be surrounded with little tables with plastic stools. When you order a bowl, the vendor will grab a handful of noodles (usually small thin rice noodles, though sometimes you can choose the wider rice noodles) and plunge them into the broth in a small handled basket. After a few seconds, the noodles go into your bowl, followed by a ladelful of broth. On top, are placed a few selected pieces of the meat, then a handful of herbs and some bean sprouts. Then maybe some crushed peanuts, a splash of vinegar, and scattering of crushed chilies, and a squeeze of lime. At the table you can augment the soup as you like, maybe with some more chilies or vinegar, or sugar or some more lime. The soup is served with chop sticks and a small spoon. You tackle the noodles and meat with the chops sticks then sip the broth with a spoon. Slurping doesn't seem to be polite here though, as it was in Japan.(Warning - there is a dark side to the noodle soup story - the instant noodle switch-a-roo.

04 Noodle Soup

This happens usually in an airport restaurant or penny-pinching guest house. Instead of a wonderful fresh bowl of noodles you are served a bowl of hot water with barely cooked ramen noodles with a scattering of raw onion, leather tough beef strips, and a dash of powdered "flavor").

Kristy's staple is banana pancakes, usually for breakfast, but not always. There has been one incredible version of this, and a lot of good and interesting versions. The amazing example was at the Atlanta Hotel in Bangkok (home of the great green curry). Everyday that we were staying there we split an order of these pancakes. Crispy exterior, fluffy inside, just like a perfect American style flapjack. But the fruit inside was the killer, not just banana, but something else, maybe papaya? And finally topped with a delicious combination of lime and honey (which we have heard is already being imitated by friends at home). Other renditions have been traditional pancakes with sliced bananas lining the plate, and French style crepes forming pockets stuffed with banana and other fruit. When we get home I'll be excited to try these versions but topped with some of Kristy's Dad's homemade maple syrup.

Best / Worst

And to wrap it all up, here are the lists (everyone loves lists): Best and Worst Eating on the Road. Note that noodle Soup is not included on the list because it is almost always terrific and eaten so often.

BEST MEALS

1) Green Curry with Chicken @ The Atlanta Hotel, Bangkok (about $1.50)

What more needs to be said?

2) River Fish flavored with Dill and Tumeric @ 69 Restaurant, Hanoi

Dill in Vietnamese food? Very unexpected and wonderful.

05 Matt Soup

The fish was very lightly flavored and was folded into a rice paper sheet with some vegetables and rice noodles. The rice paper sheets we have encountered here have always been provided dry, instead of moist like at home. The soften in your hand because of the food inside.

3) Banana Pancake @ The Atlanta Hotel, Bangkok (about $1.00)

As described above.

4) Grilled Scallops/Fried Fish @ The Mango Room, Hoi An, Vietnam (about $6.00 each)

This was the great restuarant we described in one of our posts in Hoi An.

4) Japanese Pizza @ Some Traditional Restaurant, Kyoto, Japan (about $4.00)

We decribed this one as well in our Kyoto post. There is a photo there as well.

5) Lunch Buffet @ The Metropole Hotel, Hanoi (about $12.00 p/p - with glass of wine)

Pictures and description were in a Hanoi post.


WORST MEALS

1) Chicken and Vegetables in Rice Paper @ Some restaurant, Hue, Vietnam (about $5.00)

This was the one inedible meal I had. I was expecting some grilled chicken with some veggies that I could wrap myself,as I had in other parts of Vietnam. Instead, I was served basically a hobo pack of rice paper, filled with chicken bone and gristle and limp vegetables, tasting like some half hearted greasy-spoon version of chicken stew.

2) Tropical Fried Rice @ Another Restaurant, Hue, Vietnam (about $6.00)

We had this meal the very next day, at a restaurant right down the street from the #1 bad meal place. Like the first bad meal, we had warning signs: the waiters we wearing bow ties, there were large tour groups seated around us, and there was going to be a performance of "local dance" later in the evening. The tropical fired rice ended up being a dish of white rice, PLAIN WHITE BOILED RICE, with some grated orange substance on the top, which I guess they thought made it "tropical". But the factor that earns these meals the honor of "worst meals" was not just that they tasted awful, but they were expensive as well. In a country where you can get a delicious bowl of noodles for 15 cents, that is the worst insult.

These two eating experiences led us to our first Law of Travel Eating: If the waiters are wearing bow ties, avoid like the plague. I would also say to avoid places that serve big tour groups, but we have had decent meals at some of those places, and also to avoid places with local dance, but we had a terrific Thai dinner at one of those places. So while those factors make us wary, they are not strong enough to be laws.

So that's it for this eating installment. Maybe when we leave SE Asia and spend some time in other countries there will be another installment.

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