Here come another som tum meal. I love Som Tum, this Thai style green papaya salad with all the flavors you can imagine, salty, sweet, sour, spicy and umami! This is a new place I have tried recently, 'Ban Somtum'
Ban means house
Somtum is green papaya salad
The Green papaya salad house it is!
As the name may already tells you a bit about the place, what it is, what the main dishes they serve and all, there are more to it and I'm here to share it with you.
Ban Somtum got a few location through out Bangkok. When it comes to chain restaurant, well, I'm not that much of a fan but at least it tells you about the taste and quality.
We went to the one that's on the way from Bangkok to our house in Nakhon Pathom. Just right off the main road. It's quite spacious and big spaces for parking. The service, we can already tell that it's real great as it was sprinkling a little when we arrived, there's already a few hostesses waiting there with umbrellas picking us up from the car door. That was the first wow.
The place is quite unique with all their wooden decorations. The food is another whole different story as they have quite a few unique dishes that I have actually never seen elsewhere.
Tum Luang Phra Bang
Tum means (papaya) salad
Luang Phra Bang is a city in Laos
Tum laos for example.. So you might already know what green papaya salad looks like especially if you have been following my food blog for a while. This one dish is way different from all those. The papaya salad instead of shredded, they got a thin big slices instead! Instead of fermented fish sauce we all may ew (but we all Thai like it very much as if gives that 'umami' kind of flavors), they have shrimp paste to give that unique flavors instead.
I think that's kind of creative and it's always fun to try new things.
Other than that, they serve quite a few types of Som tum that we could find elsewhere but still, they have they own taste, great tastes! We quite like it all of their 3 Som Tum types we ordered.
Grilled pork & chicken
Dang! The Som Tum meal could never be complete without a grill meat on the side (Sticky rice too!), so we got 2 this time. 1 plate of grilled pork jaws and 1 plate of grilled chicken. They make it dang delicious! How? It's crispy from the outside or at least dry enough but quite juicy from the inside.
Me personally love that grilled pork jaw and you can see they really pick great meat to serve. Look at how beautiful the fat sneaking on all pieces perfectly give it even juicier feeling.
Both dishes have the same dipping sauce. A tamarind sweet, sour and spicy. This, honestly goes so well with all kind of grilled stuff. You must try!
There are a basket of fresh veggies to clean the palettes as well. Real fresh! Love it!
Ban Somtum is for sure one of those quality Som Tum chain that I really wouldn't mind re-visit again and again especially, what we had the other day is just a small variety of what they have on the whole menu. I would sure love to try their other inventions. I'm sure it will be just as great!