As travel and food writers we have to eat out every day, sometimes two or three times a day. In Bangkok one of those meals will involve street food. That means we’ve eaten a lot of it! That doesn’t mean we don’t reach out to people like Jarrett Wrisley of Soul Food Mahanakorn for tips.
From Street Food to Soul Food
It’s only when we’re in write-up mode, when we’re busy working on magazine stories or a book, that we’ll stay in and Terence will cook, we’ll order home delivery, or we’ll buy street food from our fried pork lady down the street and eat in. Otherwise, in Bangkok, we’re always eating out.
Every meal we eat – whether it’s at a fine dining resto or a local street food stall – is researched and cross-referenced, which means that in addition to trusted our taste buds, experience and instincts, we also talk to some trusted sources. Why? Because a bad meal is a wasted meal, a meal we can’t write about.
So assuming that not every meal we eat is going to be worthy of inclusion in a book or story, it means we have to eat a hell of a lot of meals, perhaps two or three times the number we will ultimately need, to come up with a final selection for a guidebook or story.
That means in a city the size of Bangkok, we rarely get to eat at a place more than once. Yet we have eaten at Soul Food Mahanakorn four times. And if we could have, we would have eaten there more. If we hadn’t have been working on a book, we might have eaten there every week. It’s that good. Which is handy. Because that’s what food writer Jarrett Wrisley said one of his aims were when he opened Soul Food in Bangkok’s Thong Lor neighbourhood.
Jarrett said he wanted to create the kind of neighbourhood restaurant he likes to go to, that people can drop into every week if they want, a place that dishes up comfort food or soul food…
“… the street food of Asia’s most soulful city. Fried chicken, ribs, papaya salad, crispy fish, fried noodles, curries, dips, and little desserts…” Jarrett wrote in his column in The Atlantic. “I wanted to open a restaurant that serves good drinks, and great fried chicken and street snacks, with comfortable décor… (to) bring the sidewalk inside, and spruce it up a bit.”
And when he did open his restaurant, Jarrett staffed it with people who knew street food: “… my kitchen (staff) had, until three months ago, been cooking food on roadsides,” he wrote in his column. “My head chef had run a small shop serving duck larb (a northern Thai salad). My wok cook worked in a late-night khao tom shop, serving greasy Chinese stir-fries with soupy rice (often to the boldly inebriated).”
So who better than Jarrett to share some insight into eating street food in Bangkok?
Jarrett Wrisley of Soul Food on Street Food in Bangkok
Q. When and where did you first sample street food and what did you eat?
A. The first street food I ever ate, ever, was probably a kosher hot dog in New York, which I still think is pretty good street food, if you’re in the mood. The first street food I ate in Asia was yang rou chuan – little grilled mutton kebabs sprinkled with salt, msg, cumin and chili, in Beijing. I was a student there and those mutton kebabs were incredibly good on frigid winter nights after a few beers. And the vendor’s fire kept you warm while you waited, which was also a plus.
Q. What makes street food in Bangkok so special?
A. I think it’s the dramatic interplay of flavors, the smells, and the visual appeal – that theatre of busy kitchens just sitting there on the sidewalk. It’s the adventure that comes with exploring it all. First-timers always have this sense of surrendering their gut to these unfamiliar forces of spice and herbs and (maybe) dirt – you are truly in the hands of others. But after awhile, it’s special simply because it can be very good and it’s always inexpensive.
Q. How does street food dining compare to eating out in restaurants in Bangkok?
A. I’ve heard so many tourists say “street food is better than restaurant food in Bangkok”. This simplifies things too much. Street food places usually focus on one dish – or maybe 3 or 4 – and most of the food (with the exception of Isaan grilled meats and curry or khanom jeen shops) is of Thai-Chinese origin (noodles, stir-fries, etc).
If you want to get good central Thai cooking you’d better head to an old shophouse restaurant or a more gentrified place. Street food is great, but once you’ve had time to identify its various forms it is more narrow in scope than visitors might think. Our dining scene isn’t all about street food; it’s just a very important part of it. It’s Thai-style convenience food.
Q. Should visitors to Bangkok just dive in and sample street food from the first stall they see?
A. Another common misconception is that “all street food is good food” in Bangkok. This is certainly not true. My biggest issue these days is that the quality and nature of street food is changing – from handmade noodles, soups, grilled meats and desserts to things like factory manufactured sausages and dim sum, pancakes, chewy boiled meatballs, and even Italian pasta with a splash of ketchup on on it (just started to see this one appear in the last few months).
Street food carts are like any other kind of restaurant – a few are great, most are good or merely passable, and some are terrible. To eat well, you need to educate yourself or take advice from other intrepid eaters in Bangkok or elsewhere.
Q. An insider tip for those tackling street food for the first time?
A. A busy stall doesn’t necessarily mean ‘great food served here!’ It could also mean that it’s outside of an office building and people don’t feel like walking far for lunch. What smells good usually is good. What looks old probably is old. Old people eat nicer food than young people. Beware of street food catering to students.
Q. The best neighbourhoods to look for good street food?
A. Get over to Chinatown, or Samyan, or Dusit, or any other older neighborhood in Bangkok where rents have stayed low and competition is fierce. There are certain neighborhoods where good street food flourishes. The touristed area of Sukhumvit road is not one of them, though there is good street food there, too, if you look.
Q. What are a few of your favourite street food dishes that visitors to Bangkok should look out for and where can they find them?
A. Chinatown is great for Cantonese-style roast duck and pork, and crispy pork belly (moo krob). I also love the busier khao tom shops (rice porridge and Chinese/Thai stir-fries) on the sois connecting Yaowarat road to Chaoren Krung. The egg noodles (ba mee) with crab and roast pork at Sawang on Rama 4 road, close to the Hua Lumphong railway station.
Fried chicken, wherever it looks good. Isaan-style sausages (sai krok Isaan) and grilled chicken with sticky rice and som tam at busy, friendly roadside restaurants; look for the grill, and people eating barbecue and sipping beers with ice. And moo bing… delicious barbecued fatty pork skewers.
Q. And are there any street food dishes people should stay clear of in Bangkok?
A. Any kind of processed, gristly meatball on a stick. And deep-fried hotdogs. Thai hotdogs are dreadful things. (Go to New York for that.)
Q. The best time to eat street food?
A. Don’t go too late. Street vendors cook their food for peak eating times. If you’re eating a noodle soup at 3pm, chances are it’s been reduced to a salty slurry by then. Same goes for mushy chicken rice or and pork shank rice (khao ka moo) and whatever else eaten at (way) off peak times. Eat it when it’s fresh (which is when everybody else goes to eat it).
Q. Any favourite online resources visitors to Bangkok can check out?
A. Austin Bush’s blog and Bangkokglutton.com are both good for tips on where to eat.
Q. One final tip?
A. Go with a local. Try lots of things. You’re not going to like it all. But it’s cheap, and by trying more you’ll make some interesting discoveries.
Soul Food Mahanakorn
56/10 Sukhumvit Soi 55/Thong Lor
BTS Thong Lor
02 714 7708, 6pm-1am
Jarrett has a wonderful blog he pens sporadically called Light Snacks Will Be Served (go visit and leave a comment to encourage him to blog more often). He also blogs at The Atlantic and is on Twitter: @WrisJarrett.
Jarrett closed Soul Food Mahanakorn during the pandemic.
Also see our tips to eating street food safely.
Soul Food K sounds like the place to be! Man if my wife and I eat out that much we would have some problems financially and weight wise. I really like “a bad meal is a wasted one” and I would totally agree.
Don’t worry, we have the weight issues! – well, I do anyway; Terence doesn’t put it on as easily – and we don’t eat out as much when we’re not working on a story and book. Yeah, that “bad meal is a wasted meal” can be a burden though. We’re always under pressure to find perfect meals we can write about and when we can’t write about them we feel frustrated for having made a bad choice. That’s a little crazy, isn’t it? :(
Strange, that’s exactly how we are. I’d never write on the blog about a bad place we ate at so we get really frustrated if we eat out and it isn’t good. We’ve never been to Bangkok but I’d love to try out all the street food there. Whenever we go to Istanbul, all we do is walk around, eating! :)
Julia
love your philosophy about making every meal count! i think its a good thing to apply to life in general. and LOVE street food. going with a local is such a good tip.
Thanks! We’re with you on that philosophy – everything we do should count :) Yeah, we think Jarrett has provided some terrific tips, and that’s an especially good one. Thanks for dropping by guys!
Hi Julia – good to hear! Well, nobody really wants to read bad reviews, do they? And, frankly, if a place stinks, we don’t want to give them good publicity. Do let us know if you’re heading to Bangkok, and we’ll be happy to provide more tips. We do the same when we’re in Istanbul! Have you seen our stories on Istanbul! (Click on Istanbul, right col. under Categories.) Thanks for dropping by!
Speaking as someone who lives in a country where street food is something best approached through an alcoholic fog, I’m fascinated. From talking to Jodi of Legal Nomads, Shannon of A Little Adrift, Wes of Johnny Vagabond, the GotPassport team and others, fascination has edged nearer obsession. *How* much money for *how* much food? And it’s actually really *good* too? (Cheap food that is also high quality food = an alien concept to a Brit, if I’m representative).
But it’s also reassuring to learn that picking street food is an art form, too. And it sounds thrilling: a gastronomic adventure, food for the senses as well as the palate….
When you say “street food”, are you generally talking about fixed-location stalls, or do your favourite street food vendors tend to move about, making mapping them an exercise in frustration? (Or do they have a route, a “beat”?)
Ha! Ha! Street food’s the same in Australia – either hot dogs, hamburgers & chiko rolls sold from trucks or hippy food at markets (often bastardized versions of Middle Eastern food: flavourless falafel, ‘wraps’ etc. Although it may well be a more sophisticated in Sydney and Melbourne these days.
Yes, street food is absolutely delicious in Thailand, and when it’s not amazing, it’s still good. It’s rarely bad, except on Khao San Rd & touristy spots on the islands etc. We’ve been going to a little eat street, Soi 38 off Sukhumvit Rd, for years, and there are a couple of stands we like, including a pork satay stand. Depending on who is on the stand the pork satay can be sublime, or – if one of the younger lads are on – they baste it in too much water, and they’re just okay, but they’re never bad.
For Asia, our definition of Street Food is anything not sold inside a restaurant, so it could be a footpath stall (fixed or mobile), market stand, or even the increasingly hip food vans in Bangkok. There’s even one that does Korean Tacos – very Austin!
We lived on Sukhumvit Soi 16 for 4 months, which is a fantastic foodie street, very much catering to locals, so there are the permanent stalls typified by our friend Noi’s, open all day, 6-7 days a week, same spot, loads of tables, spotlessly clean, and everything packed away neatly, left there and locked up for the next day. Then there are the vendors with the carts who just come for a couple of hours to sell something specific then move on to different locations. Yes, it would be super-hard to map out, but I think someone has tried to do it; can’t remember her name, I think Jarrett Wrisley of Soul Food mentioned her. I’ll have to investigate. But, hey, this is all going to be in another post. I’m giving it all away!
Hey, thanks for dropping by! You *must* get to Bangkok/Thailand – you’re going to love it. The street food obsession is a wonderful one to have, as Jodi, Shannon, Wes, etc, would probably testify.
This is such a great initiative! Here’s a post we wrote on street food in Beijing- great stuff to be found in the hutongs if you know where to look!
http://diary.thepurplepassport.com/beijing/restaurants-beijing-cities/hungry-hungry-hutong-sampling-beijing%E2%80%99s-back-alley-eats
I love street food. It’s delicious and cheap and love the advice: “Do as the locals do”. Totally right!