Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Do you know how many Japanese there are in Melbourne?

About 5,000.

Do you know how many Japanese there are in Bangkok?

About 50,000.

Does this mean that, in probablity terms, there are ten times the likelihood of finding better ramen in Bangkok? Probably. I don’t know. What I do know though, and there I go again with post spoilers, that Yamagoya Ramen on Thong Lor does a pretty damn good tonkotsu ramen and definitely a place to check out while you’re in town.

Look at the pictures, people!

So back in the days of gallavanting Bangkok earlier in June this year, I said to a few of my Japanophile foodie friends/relatives (luckily, I have quite a few)  ‘please take me to a really good ramen shop.’

The amazing coincidence was that three of them rang and wanted to take us to Yamagoya Ramen on the same day. Loving ramen as much as I do, I would have totally been willing to eat ramen for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But unfortunately that was the day after our visit to Nahm. Though went to Yamagoya for lunch, we did. But only just one meal (insert sighs of disappointment here).

Yamagoya Ramen Thong Lor is one of the six branches of a ramen chain operation in Bangkok. It is situated not very far from Japan Village – a concentration of all things Japanese in Bangkok. We got there just before noon on purpose because the place gets quite busy and, according to my fussy uncle, the first broth of day is best. Read the rest of this entry »

I once met David Thompson at his Thai Street Food book launch in Melbourne a year or so ago. He spoke to me in heavily accented Thai upon finding out that I’m Thai and autographed my copy in heavily misspelled Thai.

David Thompson is a very sweet man. And I absolutely adore his books.

Our Nahm adventure began with a few mishaps of Bangkok’s horrendous traffic during my last holiday in Thailand a few of weeks ago (which explains my absence from this blog). Our rat pack included my childhood friend, Pat, my permanent dining companion and husband, Josh and me. Having heard lots of lovely things about Nahm from various Twitterfolk and Pat who has been to Nahm previously herself, we were very excited and could hardly wait.

(Complimentary amuse bouche – ma hor – pineapple topped with sweet pork, chicken and prawn paste)

Nahm’s menu was set out in different courses of canape, salad, relish, soup, curry, stir-fry, steam & grilled and dessert – typical Thai style. For those who dine alone or are new to Thai food, a set menu (B1,700+etc.) presents a tempting option as you are able to choose from each course to get a range of tastes. We decided against the set menu as it means you’re only able to choose, for example, one curry to share between the three of us and my mathematical gut feeling is such that ordering whatever we want, and however much we want, from the menu would surely be cheaper than the three menu sets. I was right. We had seven good-sized dishes plus their sides between the three of us and came off 2000 baht cheaper than three set menus.

(Southern grilled mussels)

Our first taste of Nahm started with the complimentary amuse bouche, ma hor (‘galloping horses’), bites of pineapple slices topped with mince pork, prawn and chicken and peanut in a thick, sweetly caramelised mixture. The sweet pineapple – which should have been tart – made it a little bit too sweet for my liking.

Our appetisers on the other hand proved to have a lot more of the wow factor. The southern-style grilled mussels arrived with the backdrop of green banana leaf and a pile of cucumber. They were plump and perfectly grilled with not a hint of rubberiness. The waiter keenly explained that the mussels came from a province in the South of Thailand that I could have sworn was landlocked but nevertheless I was happy that our local mussels have come a long way. The mussels were basted with coconut milk and spices often seen paired with Thai-style satay with a note of lemongrass. They were mild, smoky and all around lovely. Read the rest of this entry »

(Pad Thai from a Bangkok street)

This is a bit of a left over of ‘What I Ate in Thailand‘ series.

We Thais love our noodles. Although we never really invented any of our own noodle dishes, we have managed to bastardise a few. And they are really genuinely good. One of the ones that Thais will proudly claim as their own is the pad thai (above). It’s not really. It’s still bastardised Chinese dish but with some distinct lovely Thai touches.

(a pad thai is usually served with fresh banana flower, lime, beansprouts and garlic chives)

A pad thai needs to have relatively bitey noodles (so soak these rice sticks in warm water for longer, don’t boil them) with a good complex sauce made of fish sauce, tamarind, palm sugar and other goodies. I have a pad thai recipe on this blog somewhere but I’m quite embarrassed by its half-arseness.

While we’re on the scale of Thai-ness, this is a yum – or a salad. The word yum really doesn’t translate into salad quite nicely but it is indeed yummy. This noodle salad is made by blanching seafood, fish sticks, Vietnamese sausages, a pack of instant noodles (yep), a bit of vegetables and some herb (in this case Chinese celery leaves) and pile on the really hot dressing made of chilli, fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and naturally a heap spoon of MSG. I have had some really good yum mamaa (instant noodle salad) but this one was truly awful. But you can’t really tell from the picture, can you? Read the rest of this entry »

I swear the god of blogging and cooking has been against me – all sorts of computer issues like you wouldn’t believe. Either I am just really really lazy. The facts remain: I spent two weeks in Thailand. I spent last weekend in Sydney and I’m due to spend a week in Vanuatu during Easter. I have much to blog through. Guess what? I still haven’t finished all Japan stuff. And that was our honeymoon. Let’s just soldier on, shall we?.

Anyway, the above picture is the Thai-style chicken rice (khao man gai), which is basically rice cooked in chicken fat, chicken stock, garlic and ginger (and maybe some times pandan leaves). It gets served with boiled chicken, chicken blood cubes, giblet, liver, etc. I generally just stay away from the innards because they get cooked until they are tough. Menolikey.

My crazy mother, on the other hand, has no such qualm. And she loves the sauce which is made up of pounded chilli, ginger, garlic, yellow bean sauce and various other seasonings. The dish also gets served with a little bowl of chicken broth on the side.

This is the Thai-style wonton noodles. As you might actually notice, a lot of these dishes have strong Chinese influence. So here we have egg noodles, blanched bok choy and some yummy wontons. These were good. And they were 30 baht. About a dollar. Read the rest of this entry »