Thailand
Four tastes — hot, sour, salty, sweet — chased in a single mouthful, from a wok on a busy pavement.
The sound reaches you first — the thud of a pestle pounding chillies and lime into green papaya, the roar of a wok catching fire on a Bangkok pavement. Thai cooking chases four tastes at once, hot and sour and salty and sweet, and balances them in a single mouthful: a spoon of tom yum that hits sharp, then fragrant, then fierce, all in the same breath.
It's a cuisine of pungent, living things — fish sauce and lime, palm sugar, galangal, lemongrass and bird's-eye chilli pounded fresh in a stone mortar. Every region argues its corner: the fierce som tam and sticky rice of the north-east, the coconut-soft khao soi noodles of Chiang Mai, the blistering curries of the Muslim south. And the best of it is cooked on the street, plate after plate, for the price of a coffee back home. Order it properly spicy, sit down among the locals, and sweat happily.
- pad thai
- tom yum (hot & sour soup)
- som tam (green papaya salad)
- green curry (gaeng keow wan)
- khao soi (northern curry noodles)
- mango sticky rice
