Travel Like Bourdain
Thailand
The city that convinced Bourdain street food was the highest form of cooking.
The Forgotten Atlas — Field Report
The city that convinced Bourdain street food was the highest form of cooking.
Anthony Bourdain came to Bangkok early and came back often. The city confirmed something he already suspected: that the finest food in the world is not in restaurants with white tablecloths. It is made by a woman who has been cooking one dish at one cart on one street corner for thirty years, who learned it from her mother, who learned it from hers, who has refined the single preparation of that single dish to a level of perfection that no restaurant kitchen — with its menus and its turnover and its need to please everyone — can match. Bangkok has hundreds of these women. The city is their restaurant.
The best meal I ever had was at a plastic table on a Bangkok street, eating noodles that cost one dollar, watching traffic go by. Nothing has come close since.
Anthony Bourdain
Walk. Follow your nose. Look for the queue. The queue is the only reliable indicator of quality in Bangkok street food — if local people are standing in it, the food is worth standing in it for. The principle Bourdain articulated applies absolutely here: eat where there is no English menu, point at what the person next to you ordered, and trust the process. Pad kra pao at a cart near the Democracy Monument at midnight. Tom yum from a street stall near Yaowarat at 2am. Boat noodles at the weekend market. Mango sticky rice from the cart that has been in the same spot since before you were born.
Bangkok rewards the visitor who gets past the initial assault of heat and traffic and noise. Wat Pho, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, is one of the finest temple complexes in Southeast Asia and contains a massage school where students practice on visitors for four dollars an hour. The Grand Palace is tourist-heavy but genuinely extraordinary. The Chao Phraya river by long-tail boat connects neighbourhoods that are otherwise slow to reach. The weekend Chatuchak Market is the largest market in Asia and requires a full day and comfortable shoes.
Stay in the Silom or Riverside area for easy access to everything. Get a SIM card at the airport. Download Grab. Eat everything.
The best street food neighbourhood in the city. Come after dark when the street stalls set up along the main road. The seafood, the roast duck, the dim sum — all extraordinary.
The backpacker district but also the neighbourhood with the best access to the old city temples. Thammasat University gives it energy beyond the tourists.
The business district by day, one of the best eating districts by night. The Silom Complex food court is a revelation.
Where younger Bangkok eats and drinks. Excellent coffee, creative restaurants, the most interesting neighbourhood in the city for walking.
A street food chef with a Michelin star. The crab omelette and the drunken noodles here are the most famous street food dishes in Bangkok. Book ahead or queue from early morning.
No English menu, no tourist concessions, extraordinary northern Thai food. The khao soi here is the benchmark.
Small bowls of intensely flavoured noodle soup. Order many. The cost per bowl is almost nothing.
The premium fresh market. The prepared food stalls here serve the finest quality Thai produce in the city. Excellent for breakfast.
The tourist version but genuinely worthwhile. The temples and the skyline seen from the river at night is the definitive Bangkok view.
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