I have old-hand friends in Thailand whose first introduction to Thais and Thai culture was along the canals in Amsterdam. For me, though, it was along the canals of Venice, Beach that is, LA, CA, USA. There I discovered my first Thai restaurant back in 1984. If it seems hard for some of you kids born since then to realize that there was ever a time when there were no Thai restaurants in the US, then believe it. It’s true; I’ve got witnesses. Though I wasn’t long in LA, so won’t swear that that little place along Robertson Blvd. was the first, it was the same in the Bay Area the next year, where I stayed for several, one Thai restaurant amongst a sea of Chinese and Mexican and Italian, back when that was considered ‘ethnic’. I remember it like it was yesterday, a little family-run place along San Pablo Ave. just outside the Berkeley city limits in Oakland, BYOB. Those creamy curries were like heaven for someone raised on soul food, enlightened by Mexican, and surviving on Chinese, colors and flavors mixing and mingling on the palate and palette in a playful synesthesia of the gods. The smart money was on the continued success of Thai food in America, and sure enough, they multiplied like Mississippi mushrooms in cow shit, like Farang bars along Sukhumvit in Bangkok. It’s nice to be right. A quick Google search of ‘Thai Restaurants—Los Angeles’ at this juncture is still going strong after a hundred pages, and that says nothing of the multifarious locations around the country and the world. Nothing succeeds like success. If you don’t have any new ideas, then copy someone else’s. You can’t get any more Thai than that. It’s nice to be safe. It’s nice to be in Thailand. It’s warm.
The reality here at ground zero is a bit different of course. For one thing, those creamy curries are not necessarily the most representative food of Thailand, and indeed can be hard to find for a first-time tourist. For another thing, those curries should probably not properly be considered ‘Thai’ in the first place. If their scarcity in the northern and eastern provinces is the first clue to this, then their presence in Malaysia and close similarity to the ‘Padang’ (Sumatra) curries of Indonesia is the next, presumably adapted from Indian curries by the same people who adopted and adapted Indian culture and religion. The Malay language was full of Sanskrit loan-words long before it was full of Arabic ones, after all. But Thais are the ones who introduced wet curries to the US and the world, so such food will forever be ‘Thai.’
Perhaps most importantly, those curries are not especially healthy, despite the universal tendency of ‘health-food’ counters and eateries in the US to include some mock-Thai dishes to lend some mock-cachet and currency to their selection. In addition to the excessive use of oils, frequently palm oil of lubrication fame, and the unnecessary use of sugar, which the Malays fortunately tend to avoid, the ingredient that makes those curries creamy is coconut, in a form known as ‘ka-ti’ in Thailand, the water/milk recombined with the meat into a thick creamy paste. Well, this is some tasty sauce that goes down easy, but there’s only one problem- it stays there. That leftover curry in the fridge next day has a crust on top, a breakable crust. “What kind of oil are you using?” I scream at my wife. But it’s not the oil; it’s the ka-ti. Like nitroglycerine, ka-ti apparently freezes at about 55F/13C degrees. Unlike nitroglycerin, it’s bad for your heart. So say the posters on the wall of Thai hospitals. The posters in the US would probably say the same if the product were widely used there. My HIV friend says that coconut in any form is strictly proscribed for him.
The Thai food available in Thai restaurants overseas is central Thai food. Maybe the best representative of this style is tom yam goong or tom kha gai, right tasty dishes if you don’t mind pulling weeds out of your mouth while you eat. Except for lahp, which is starting to be found more in the US, almost no dishes come from the north or northeast, which are more influenced by Burma and Laos, respectively, than the Malaysian-inspired dishes of the south. Some popular dishes in US restaurants, like pat thai and kaow pat, are street food in Thailand, and quite different from the stylized US restaurant versions. The curries and soups, on the other hand, might be difficult to find in street stalls in Thailand. They are usually found only at stalls specializing in curries, and not usually tourist oriented, though those dishes may be simulated in fancy restaurants. Spring rolls are also nearly impossible to find. That’s Vietnam. Probably the single most popular street food in Thailand, noodle soup, also originally from Vietnam, would be hard to find in a US-based Thai restaurant.
Then there’s the dark side. Northern Thailand has its own food, most famous of which is probably kaow soi, though more typical would be nam ngieow, a hot murky tomato-based concoction served over khanom jeen or rice noodles, and which people here in Chiang Rai go ape-shit over. Actually kaow soi in Laos or Xishuangbanna is closer to nam ngieow than it is to the standard kaow soi islam to be found here, a kati-based concoction brought from Burma. Then there’s gaeng awm, something like lahp that apparently got lost and then rescued a few days later, older but wilder. They also go ape-shit over som tam, which is shredded unripe papaya salad mixed with peanuts, tomatoes, crab, hot peppers, and only God knows what else. He ain’t tellin’. If you’re eating papayas to help promote bowel movements, this’ll get you there in a hurry. Naturally it’s eaten with sticky rice to help repair the damage. Does raw papaya sound strange? Thais also typically eat their mangoes green. Go figure. By the time they get ripe, supermarkets are discounting the price and I’m stocking up. Some varieties are actually quite tasty green, but I can’t help feel they’re missing the boat on this one, ripe mango being one of the finer flavors in the world. So, if you like green mangoes, hot spicy raw papaya salad, and gut-slashing spicy noodles, then northern Thailand might be just the ticket for you, especially if you like Mexican food already. Mexicans in LA are some of the best customers for Thai food in the not-so-fancy restaurants.
Let me clarify something for you people overseas or too down-country or up-scale to know or care. Sticky rice is not rice that somebody decided to ‘stickify’ for reasons culinary or esthetic. Sticky rice is properly called ‘glutinous rice’, because of its higher gluten, or protein, content. This makes it a staple food among the protein-poor country folk, who may eat it with little or nothing besides chili paste. It calms the stomach excellently, though you may pay for that with subsequent constipation. They don’t call it ‘sticky’ for nothing. At least is has some nutritional benefit. ‘Polished’ white rice has little or none. Nevertheless, the main problems plaguing Thai food are simply the indiscriminate use of salt, sugar, and hot peppers. If the food’s too hot or salty, Thais will add sugar. The inverse is also true. If the food is too sweet, then they’ll add salt or peppers. This totally misses the point, which is that the minimum of any these would be preferable, especially for health considerations. Thais tend to maximize for ‘intensity’ of flavor. Anybody who puts sugar in noodle soup needs a psychiatric examination, in my opinion, but there it is, every time. Sometimes the soup seems but a base for the combination of condiments within it. I’m finished eating while some Thais are still taste-tasting and stirring. Nearly every dish has sugar in it, and nearly every elder in Thailand has diabetes. Fortunately this is the type that comes and goes from one medical exam to the next. Huh? That’s the rap. When an American dies there is usually a single cause of death, of course. When a Thai dies, there are usually four, I’ve noticed. One of them is typically diabetes.
The over-dependency of Thai food on superficial condiments and less reliance on freshness and originality is what keeps it from becoming one of the world’s great cuisines. Though much is made of balancing the ‘five food groups,’ judging from the results, you might assume that these would be peppers, sugar, salt, and oil. And oh yeah, rice. A master chef could change all that, and indeed, some of the less-authentic ‘Thai’ dishes in the US are indeed tastier, and almost certainly healthier, than the home-grown varieties. My solution is to eat it with brown rice, which is becoming increasingly available, and eat it at home, reducing all measurements of oil, sugar, and spice by half. Not only do you increase the nutritional value, but now you can actually taste the flavors, since your tongue doesn’t have to run for cover. I swear by it. And oh yeah, beware of curries sitting out all day in stalls. Thais think that a ‘pie-safe’ will keep food safe. It’s paradise for bacteria. Curries are best mid-day. You’ve been forewarned.
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