Re: Thai Food
What are your favorite dishes of Thai food and description of ingredients?
What do you recommend to order at a Thai restuarant?
Thank you ever so much!

Here's a link to Thttp://www.sawadee.com/thailand/food/index.htmhai food

One of my favorite Thai dishes that I order in Thailand is Glass Noodle Salad..Yum, yum, yum..Clear noodles with pork, prawns, chili peppers, celery, tomato's, etc..Served cold..Of course Tom Yum Goong (delicious soup with lemongrass, prawns and mushrooms)..And everything else, I love Thai food...

Just one tip - spicy iin Thailand means mouth wateringly hot. I amd Indian and hence think my spice tolerance is hined however in restaurants if the waiter says not spicy is generally fine and anything the menu connotes as spicy is too much for me. Thai curries are great - the red is spicier than the green. Can be made with veg or non veg ingredients. I really like the sticky rice also.

Thai food is one of my favorites! Order the tom yum (spicy lemongrass soup w/ prawns), pomelo salad (this cold salad goes very well with the spicy dishes), green chicken curry, steamed fish in garlic lime sauce, garlic chicken (kai yang). yum!!!

hi from boston--

i like lemon chicken--chicken breast (boneless) with a lemon sauce

chicken and cashew nuts
beef and pea pods or other veggies

many things are similar to chinese food, but with more chilis and cilantro and lemon grass added in

go to some thai restaurant sites and download their menus...

you will find loads to eat that you will like....

in bkk you can also eat internationally so you won't have a problem

be careful where you eat however

Tom Ka Gai (coconut milk soup with chicken), both red and green curries, phad Thai (a noodle dish) and a great appetiser whose name I can't remember, where you roll up dried shrimp, peanuts, lime, chilis, and coconut plus a sauce in a leaf and eat it.

Want to try lots of dishes? Try a Thai buffet, or, my prefernece, a lunch "buffet" at the Grand Hyatt Erawan in Bangkok where you can order as many dishes as you like from a menu for a fixed price.

I find the flavors of Thai and Chinese dishes to be quite different. In paprticular, Thai food uses lots of coconut milk in curries and soups which is not traditional in Chinese dishes. Also, the herbs and spices are used in different combinations.

OK, I just have to jump in here because no one has yet mentioned one of my favorites....green papaya salad.
This is not made from the sweet, soft orangey colored fruit you might eat for breakfast in the Caribbean. The green papayas are crunchy, almost like a vegetable, shredded and mixed with fresh herbs, prawns and tossed with spicy dressing. Very unusual and very good.

If you run across any desserts made with sago, do give them a try. Sago is tapioca beads and they are often mixed with coconut milk and melon or other fruits such as lychees, to make a soupy type dessert that in this description sounds pretty weird, but trust me...it is heaven on earth.

Bob, I think the reason you find Thai food to be similar to Chinese food, is that all the dishes you mentioned, (lemon chicken, etc.) ARE Chinese dishes. Many Thai restaurants offer Chinese food in addition to their own traditional recipes. But as Kathie mentioned, they do use very different things to season the food. There is no lemongrass, lime, fish sauce, curry leaves, etc in Chinese food. Conversely you would never find 5 spice powder, soy sauce, black bean sauce or rice wine in a Thai kitchen.

when in doubt, or just wanting a standby, i always order Pad Thai--vermicelli w/ bean sprouts, dried shrimps, crushed peanuts, and fried egg strips, sometimes also shrimp or chicken, tossed in a light fish sauce and drizzled w/ lime juice.

close second, Pad See Euw (pardon my spelling): thick flat rice noodles tossed in a soy-based sauce w/ broccoli, other vegetables and chunks or chicken, shrimp or other meat. similar to chow fun at chinese restaurants in the states but less oily and more flavorful.

Kathie, your menu is my menu -- you've mentioned all my favorites, and I can never remember the name of that appetizer either. I also like Mee Krob, especially when it's sweet and sticky.

Oh, goodie! A thread on food! My favorite topic!

I second Sameera on the hotness of Thai food. It is generally hotter than "hot" dishes from anywhere else - don't mean to start a controversy here!

I once had a Thai roommate and the first soup she made for us, she told me that it was "extremely mild". I took one gulp of that soup and went through the roof, my roommate, on the other hand, was calmly ladling more hot sauce into her bowl!

Sunset Magazine had an article many years ago on the how hot different chili peppers are on the Scoville (?) scale. Sorry, can't remember the exact name of the scale. Anyhow, one Thai pepper outdistanced the runnerup by several hundred or thousand degrees! Or however they measure the heat of chili peppers.

So, be careful! Thai restaurants in American tend to "water down" the heat in their dishes, in my opinion.

Great food, Thai food, but as has been expertly pointed out here, nothing close to Chinese food. More like SE Asian food, in general.

easytraveler

Well I am a Tom Yam Gung addict! I love deep fried fish with Garlic, there are a vaste range of dishes. Whenever though I take business visitors to lunch I always take them to a place with a buffet of Thai food and order small dishes from a wide range, this helps them see what they like.

Hi

Thai food is great After 3 trips to Thailand we go to the local Thai restaurant on a regular basis. I agree with the others in this forum that Tom Yum Goong is a must when you have a Thai meal. Tom Ka Gai can also be great if it is made right. I enjoy the Thai curries and my favorites are Masaman curry but the red/green curries are also nice.

One thing we got lots of in Thailand that we don't get at the local place is the seafood dishes. We had lots of great dishes made of fish, prawns, crab etc when we were in Thailand.

I have posted some more info about Thai food and some pictures in my trip report from Thailand on my homepage www.gardkarlsen.com

Regards
Gard
Stavanger, Norway

Gard,

<i>After 3 trips to Thailand we go to the local Thai restaurant on a regular basis.</i>

Which ones?

Forgot to post a useful site:

Thaitable.com

Be sure to practice the basic vocabulary given! Make sure you get the singsong tones right! Have fun!

easytraveler

Crab fried rice, the best I've ever had while in Bangkok. Light, fluffy and dry, packed with crab meat. Wow! Also Thai roast chicken, fried duck eggs with pork meatballs in a sweet sour chili sauce and for dessert mango and sticky rice with coconut milk.

As Easytraveler says, take care if you want to order in Thai, a slight tone difference can result in much laughter and embarresment! Those of us who go to eat with Thais are the lucky ones, we get the best food!!

Hi

To MikeBuckley: In Stavanger we prefer to go to the Thai Isan resturant.

Regards
Gard
www.gardkarlsen.com

I tend too eat eather street food or bk/kfc.. as far as thai food goes I am usually fed isan food by my lady frainds..

pardon my spelling i know it's always bad but it's going to get worse. I have my thai lady frand next too me for some help here.

pad thai is one of my favoates

hui taut. stir fried oyster.. egg. been spouts.. well thats what it looks like..

pat si yu.. (fried noodles)

koi tio. spicy noodle soup

chicken and cashew..

deep fried grasshoppers don't taste bad with a carlberg beer..

I most likely am worng.. but isn't most of the food served in the high end places royal thai cuisine. which is more like chinnes food.. since it's supposedly made for the royals lighter pallet.. as apposed too deep fried hell fire food the commmen thai folk eats.