Editor Pick
Thai Grill - Downtown Chiang Mai
- March 19, 2006
- Rated 4 of 5 by
geebeegeoff from boulder creek, Connecticut
Dining in Thailand.
As a requisite to enjoying a visit to Thailand it helps if you like Thai food!
Perhaps the greatest enjoyment comes from eating ‘street food.’
At the Sompet Market near the Old City Wall I stopped at a roadside ‘basta’, where the owner had a small fish tank with fresh fish swimming, and pointed to the fish I wanted. The lady owner cleaned the fish, popped it on the grill, filled it with dill, and grilled it to perfection. She plated it together with French fries and a small green salad. A bottle of coke and a plate of fresh fruit (mango, pineapple, honey melon, watermelon, and banana) completed the menu and the whole meal was 120 bhat (less than $3. dollars).
In the walled Old City of Chiang Mai, in the heart of the all-night market, there is a food co-op. The co-op members rent the square from the city fathers and own the tables and chairs, with seating for well over 100 people. One cannot buy food at the stalls with cash. At the square entrance one obtains food tickets. I bought tickets for 200 baht and then went around selecting items from the stalls and the variety was amazing. Indian curries, Phad Thai stalls, seafood stalls, Chinese food, Japanese teriyaki and sushi served with saki, grilled meat brochettes with a choice of beef, pork or chicken, pancakes spread with honey and fruit, sweet sticky rice with mango, and drink stalls with sodas and beers. Cost 130 bhat.
We were fortunate in that we had some Thai friends who took us to Thai restaurants that tourists wouldn’t find, and there we had some exquisite meals.
In one restaurant we had a complete meal comprised entirely of dumplings. Savoury, spicy, and sweet and sour, served with fresh green salads to lighten the palate, and for dessert, dumplings filled with raisins, nuts, and honey. It was all washed down with large glasses of iced Thai tea. That meal was an absolute blow-out!
We also went with our friends to a restaurant in downtown Chiang Mai where there was a metal cooking dome with a high rim in the center of each table. The waiters came to the tables carrying enormous trays, laden with piles of white porcelain square dishes containing a large selection of protein and fresh vegetables.
The four of us each selected three or four dishes, strips of raw pork, beef, shrimp, liver, chunks of chicken, strips of fish, and a selection of raw vegetables. The waiter left our selection, together with a large glass jug of chicken soup stock, and we all placed the meats and seafood on the hot dome and vegetables into the broth heating in the dome rim.
The food was cooked to each person’s satisfaction and was deftly lifted off the hot dome, or from the bubbling broth, and packed away until we could eat no more. It all came to about $5. dollars per head, and the meal was absolutely delicious!
From journal The Thailand rafting trip