Pad Thai
Those fried rice noodles don’t need to be introduced anymore… ironically it originated in China and is mostly loved by tourist and not so much by Thai. Pad Thai is a stir-fried rice noodle dish made of rice noodles, eggs, tofu, fish sauce, dried shrimp, garlic or shallots, red chili pepper and palm sugar, served with lime wedges and often peanuts. It often come with bean sprouts, garlic chives and sometimes banana leaves on the side
Noodle Soup (Kuey Teow)
Definitely the most popular dish as it comes in so many ways: pork, beef, chicken or seafood, then thick, big rice noodles or yellow noodles. To pick your ingredients you can point at things usually on display on the carts. 2 words you might want to remember: ‘Mai Nai’ meaning ‘no entrails’ since not everybody likes to find pieces of intestines in their soup.
Moo Ping
Similar to grilled chicken, Moo Ping is even easier to spot in the streets. Before you can smell is, you will see a vertical column of smoke rushing into the sky. That’s the Moo Ping guy. They used to grill those skewers on tiny barbecue and use a tiny bamboo fan until one guy started to use a recycle electric fan to create a powerful stream of air. Double benefit: the fire is always ventilated and the cook is not in the smoke anymore! Just remember that if you stand next to a Moo Ping cart for more than 5 minutes you will smell like a Moo Ping yourself for a good hour.
Papaya Salad
A timeless dish in Thailand found almost everywhere. Som tum comes in few variation with some extremes such as Som Tum Poo Pala (Papaya salad with fermented crab, super pungent) but the safest option is Som Tum Thai, which usually only uses papaya, tomatoes, green beans and a variable amount of chilies. Most of the time, if you don’t specify how spicy you want your Som Tum to be, the cook will look at you and guess how much chilies you can take. You are farang (foreigner) and can’t speak Thai? You’ll get 1 chili, if any! So, if you like it spicy (because that’s how it’s best) you can learn those words: Pet Mak (very spicy, but he will only half believe you anyway). Now if you worry about spice levels, say ‘Mai Pet’ (not spicy). Som Tum is often best with grilles catfish, grilled chicken or pork.
Thai Pancake
This is the number one snack or dessert and almost everyone loves it, whether it uses banana, chocolate, condensed milk , Nutella. Yes we know It’s actually called roti but it sells a lot better when it’s called Pancake so every carts now advertises these as Pancakes.
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