Bangkok is an excellent food city.
As any travel guide or Bravolebrity will tell you, its not about the pasta, but it IS about the street food. When in doubt, on a budget, or buzzed on Khosan Road, you can almost (see below) never go wrong with street food. At around 6:00 or 7:00pm, vendors crowd the streets offering everything from grilled meat skewers and mango sticky rice to dried scorpion and durian ice cream. It is awesome and it is delicious.
However, if sit down meals are more your style…
Some Faves
Eathai
We wanted the street food experience, without worrying about tapping into our Cipro within first 4 hours of Megatrip. This cafeteria style restaurant in the basement of the Central Embassy is essentially a Thai version of Eataly, minus the creepy, Croc wearing, celeb chef owner. With a ton of options for different regional cuisines, we quickly ate our way through a 20 hour flight induced jet lag with chicken pad thai, pork pad woo sen, grilled cuttlefish, steamed dumplings and savory pancakes for under $15. Not ideal for the beach bod, but to quote queen Cardi B “Let me fat in peace”.
Supanniga
Typically, we research restaurants to the degree of excessively internet stalking a too-attractive-to-be-true Tinder match before a first date. Finding Supanniga was not one of those times. After 45 minutes of walking up and down the main stretch of the hipster Thong Lor neighborhood in desperate need of air conditioning, caffeine, and Chang, we stumbled upon this Michelin approved spot. The chicken curry was spicy, the pad thai was crabby, the beef appetizer was jerky and the mini cakes were fried fishy. Quality food and atmosphere was perfect remedy to forget the stress of aimlessly and hungrily searching for a place to eat dinner.
Damnoen Saduak Floating Market
Know what’s even better than street meat? Canal meat. There is something oddly satisfying about pulling up to a boat, in your boat to order a barbecue pork skewer with chicken fried rice before speeding through a maze of palm trees, exotic birds and temples. It may take close to 2 hours to get here outside of Bangkok, you may spill sweet chili sauce on your light blue shorts and you’re food may be garnished with motor fumes, but a little risk is worth the reward.
Yet, sometimes…
The Struggle Is Real
As with any Southeast Asian country, food safety is always a concern. Before handing over 20 bhat for the first street spring rolls you see, make sure the cart isn’t adjacent to a dumpster full of ping pong balls….
It’s also very easy to get Thai food fatigue. One can only eat so many stir fried meals before going into a MSG induced coma. That said, Bangkok has every international cuisine imaginable, so it’s easy to take a Thai-me out and eat Siam-thing different. Awful Dad joke, but we ate french fries with a side of spicy prawn flavored Lays for dinner last night (see what we mean).
Overall
Bangkok is one of the few cities domestic and abroad where we haven’t sought out doner kababs or Dominos at the end of the night, which in Sara and David terms means, the food was dooopppeee.
Great descriptions of the food choices! Makes me want to have some good Thai food (or at least the greasy fried stuff).