Thai Food
October 25, 2006
There is a question that pops up every so often, especially in a conversation with someone I just meet. “Do you like Thai food?” I distinctly remember one English lady asking me that question. My face must have shown the negative answer I was about to give because she looked at me with surprise. “Oh really, you don’t like it?” she said. “No”, I finally voiced my displeasure, “not a big fan”. “But we love it back home”, she replied and I tried to picture what kind of food the people “back home” ate if they thought Thai food was good.
Yesterday I was invited to a farewell dinner at a seafood restaurant. The place was big, the sort of “open restaurant” surrounded by fishponds. Big plastic buckets filled with crabs and shrimps stood at the entrance, the creatures trying to climb out, perhaps attempting a last dash for freedom.
I was quite hungry but somehow thinking about the food I was about to eat kind of diminished my appetite. The food arrived at some point, dish after dish served with typical slowness and many smiles by the Thai waiters. It was placed on the round movable disc at the center of the table, which I find very annoying as I try to reach the food before it’s gone and try not to seem too eager at the same time.
The food itself was just as I expected, if not spicy then salty or the other way around. The grilled shrimps were nice, that’s because there was nothing Thai about the whole dish, they were just plain grilled shrimps and no spices added, thank God for small mercies. The glass noodles fried together with some bird’s feet (duck or chicken I presume) clearly put me off and I switched my attention to some fried fish which looked just about as juicy as a piece of cardboard. I looked at it with regret thinking that the steamed version would have been a lot nicer and certainly more delicious. Tom-Yum (a spicy soup) arrived and I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t as spicy as it looked and take a few spoons. My mistake. I looked for the shrimp in all that mess of onion and roots and other…..stuff. The whole thing was bright orange and it tasted slightly of some sort of cough syrup. That’s good, I said to myself thinking that maybe it will keep an impending cold at bay. My stomach still hates me for that decision.
The best part of the whole dinner was a dish of fried vegetables and the fruit that was served at the end. Needless to say, at the end of the meal I was still hungry and fantasizing about a nice piece of grilled chicken and a baked potato.
When me and my friends were about to leave, the host announced that there was a slight misunderstanding and we were placed at the wrong table, the one where they served Thai food, instead of another table where the food was more westernized. And so, me and my foreign friends ate a typical Thai dinner while at the next table, a group of Thais were having the better version. Why should I be surprised? This is Thailand and anything can happen.
- August 20, 2006 -
We all have stories to tell. Sometimes we bring them forth and sometimes we keep them buried. Here are my stories. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. 
