Close to Chote Chitr, near the Golden Mount and the Monk’s Bowl Village of Soi Ban Baat, is a phenomenal culinary success called Thip Samai. This year it celebrates 40 years in this location selling nothing but pad Thai, perhaps the most famous Thai dish of all.
Despite its popularity, and nods to marketing in the guise of logo’s T shirts and a modest website, Thip Samai retains its earthy originality. Furniture is functional stainless steel, the walls and old wooden stairs are painted pond-life green, liberally flecked with the sooty black of exhaust fumes blown in from the busy road.
Although you can now get Pad Thai at all times of day, it’s traditionally a dinner dish, and Thip Samai only opens from 5:30pm. Half an hour before, people are already queuing as a gang of workers fires up the charcoal burners and ferries stacks of equipment in readiness for the night’s shift. Ten minutes after opening, all 80 seats are filled.
Thip Samai has seven types of pad Thai, priced from 25 baht. The most basic is a stir-fry of noodles, egg, dried prawns and white radish in a sweetish sauce. The secret is to make it not too oily and not too sweet, so the underlying hint of sour saltiness from tamarind and fish sauce remains. More opulent versions include ‘Superb pad Thai', which includes fresh prawns and wrapped in a fried egg casing resembles a bouncy cushion, and “Luxury”, containing delicacies like crab and mango. Served on the side are fresh bamboo shoots, lime wedges, spring onions, herbs and peanuts, together with the pots of ground chili, sugar, soy sauce and chili mixed with vinegar that are found on every Thai dining table.
Pad Thai is one of Thailand’s great noodle dishes, and others of the family are the most widely found of all street foods. Noodles come in two standard types wheat and egg (ba mee) and rice (kway tiao) served dry (haeng) or in a broth of beef or chicken (nam). Depending on the seller, they’re topped with beef (neua), chicken (gai), pork (moo), duck (ped) or balls of fish (bk chin p/aa), pork or tofu (tao ho).
There are good traditional noodle stalls at the entrance to Soi Convent, off of Silom Road and at the beginning of Sukhumvit Soi 38, which is a popular open-air dining sot for people frequenting the bars around Thonglor. Among a wide range of foods at the latter are iced desserts (nam kaengsai). Crispy pork (muu krob) and a shop selling congee, a late-night or breakfast dish of slow- cooked rice gruel, usually containing pork and sometimes an egg, flavored with coriander leaves and spring onion.