These egg noodles (50 baht) — served with roast pork, crispy pork, and pork wontons, soup on the side — weren't exceptional themselves, but you have to love a street-food culture that doles out crabmeat as as freely as a garnish.
Streetside noodle restaurant
Sukhumvit 38 night market, Bangkok
Regular readers of this website know my fondness for sweets, street eats, and, when time is of the essence, eats you can eat on the street. Indeed, on many other food sites that accept reader comments, a "mango flower" stands in as my avatar.
Some desserts, however — such this unusually creamy-fleshed mango with coconut milk sticky rice (60 baht) — insist on a more leisurely approach. A reminder for me, if not for you.
Mango stall
Sukhumvit 38 night market, Bangkok
The banana flower isn't bouquet material.
If not for the newspaper, I would have walked right by.
"It might look like you're cutting through someone's back yard."
Simply finding the shop known as "Big Head Noodles" is quest in itself.
My bowl of soft-textured fruits and roots under shaved ice and syrup (20 baht) included pumpkin, taro (being sliced in the second photo), cantaloupe, and something that resembled finger bananas in everything but banana flavor.
Iced-dessert vendor
Unmarked lane extending south from Th. Nakhon Chai Si, near Th. Samsen and Si Yan Market, Bangkok
Red is the more typical cautionary color
Sugar and spice and guava that's sliced (15 baht). I'm pretty sure, anyway, that the fruit in question was guava; there's no doubt the granular seasoning had some shrimp-paste action going on.
Fruit-snacks vendor
Th. Nakhon Chai Si near Soi Si Yan 3, Bangkok
Several years earlier, in this same corner of Lumphini Park, I came across a hawker who sold ice cream without benefit of cup or cone. On this visit to Bangkok I wasn't so lucky; in already-brutal midmorning heat the playground was deserted, and food vendors were nowhere to be found.
Ice cream cone playground apparatus
Near the southwest corner of Lumphini Park, Bangkok
What's Thai for "siesta"? To be sure, when I'm exploring a remote corner of town, any town, there's seldom a safe, convenient spot to catch 40 winks. Generally I rehydrate and soldier on. My heretofore secret fallback — whose thousands of locations in Southeast Asia are stocked much more intriguingly than in the States: 7-Eleven. Gallery of puzzling potables to follow.
Beating the heat
Under an expressway overpass, Bangkok
Single-serving meat loaf.
Usually this is the only hard part.
They look a lot like longans, but they travel in bunches.
Mussel fry-ups aren't the only dishes on offer at this stall, just the ones with the fastest turnover.
When I bought this "Chinese herbal" beverage (20 baht), as the stall-owner described it, I expected that after-hours web research would pin down the main ingredient. I'll bet that's it, to the left of the only label, but I don't have a substantially clearer photo, and as of this writing the only English-language web mentions of "jub-lieng" are my own. Do any Eating In Translation readers have a clue?
Drinks vendor
Aw Taw Gaw market, stall 12/1, Bangkok
Too unrelentingly lemongrassy to be refreshing (25 baht).
Another drinks vendor, not far away
Aw Taw Gaw market, stall 10/9, Bangkok
The noodles, not shown here to best advantage, are the foundation for a wide range of Thai sauces.
My first thought when I saw this dish on display was that these must be vegetable and not animal.
Before this visit to Bangkok I'd resolved to find salak. I bought a husked bag of the fruit (20 baht) early on, even though elsewhere on the block and on the corner just north of Charoen Krung vendors were selling durians, green rambutans, yellow pomegranates, oranges, and starfruit, and even though these salak, both husked and unhusked, appeared runty.
Since the vendor didn't press a sample on me, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised that they lacked much of the "sour strawberry" flavor I loved in Siem Reap. I would've done better to wait until my visit to the expansive Aw Taw Gaw market over the weekend (more on this to come).
Salak cart
Th. Plaeng Naam (Th. Yaowarat-Th. Charoen Krung), Bangkok
Thank you!
