Food in Bangkok

Food is good in Bangkok, great actually, but there are still a few differences from what we are accustomed to. Going out to eat is a little like cooking yourself in that you have to go before you are critically hungry, because the time between sitting down to eating can be long. There are several reasons for this. To begin with, menus do not necessarily list what they have, but what they can go out get without too much trouble. There are little markets everywhere, so rather than buying a fish in the morning, they may wait until someone actually orders a fish. Which brings us to the next reason, food is fresh in Bangkok, it is not cooked until it is ordered. I have worked in restaurants in Hawaii, and yes, sometimes they just take your dinner out of a Rubbermaid container in the refrigerator, dump it in a bowl and microwave it, that is why service is sometimes so darn fast. In Bangkok they actually cook the food when you order it. Today our lunch took so long to arrive that we were pretty sure they had to go hire a cook. The final reason is the “Farang Rule.” Nobody likes to go into an empty restaurant, especially in a strange town, therefore if a tourist sees another tourist in a restaurant, they assume it is ok and will go in. The longer the restaurant can keep a Farang in view of the street, the more likely more will come in, thus Farangs beget Farangs, which begets more business. So when traveling, it is important to keep in mind that the other tourists don’t necessarily know more than you do.

An interesting item to note in Thailand is that unless they are eating noodle soup, the Thais don’t use chopsticks, they eat with a spoon and a fork. The spoon is to put food in the mouth and the fork is to push food on to the spoon. Once you have eaten Thai food this way a time of two, you just want to say, “I sure would like to get my hands around the neck of the person who convinced Americans that they should eat Thai food with chopsticks.”