Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Chiang Mai - The culinary highlight of Thailand





The problem in Chiang Mai is not what to eat - but when to stop eating. The food here is so good and cheap that you will find yourself gravitating towards the restaurants at every opportunity. If you are not careful whenever you cannot think of something to do you will end up eating - and who could blame you..




 There are fantastic restaurants all around the city so it is difficult to recommend just one.

 The best are clustered around the Thae Pae Gate, especially the road leading to the night bazaar  (also be careful around the Thae Pae Gate at night, there are alot of prostitutes). One's that we returned to again and again are the Daret Guesthouse and Thanom Restaurant. Each with outdoor seating, views of woks sizzling in the kitchen and hordes of travellers.

The menu will probably offer western and Thai dishes. Thais have smaller apetite's then westerners so the portions are much smaller. This is carried over to the western dishes and I found the one time I tried steak and chips the portions needed to be magnified they were so small. So my advice is to stick with the Thai dishes - after all what is the point in being in Thailand otherwise.

So what are you going to have? The standard accompaniment is sticky rice with comes in a scoop with every meal. Khao Soi is a speciality in the north and consists of crispy egg noodles with beef in a cocunut soup. Be careful of the chillies - the green ones are hotter then the red, and the small ones deadlier then the large. Also if your mouth burns don't drink water it only exacerbates the situation but take a mouthful of rice. This method of cooling down was shown to me when I accidently ate the wrong chillies and was hopping around with a burning mouth. The waiters and cooks found this very funny - I wonder why?


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