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Dinner & Jazz

December 24th, 2008

Chang Puak Street Stalls

Chiang Mai, Thailand – I’m about to take off for Bangkok, but a few images from the street stalls just north of the Chang Puak gate in Chiang Mai. A great spot to hit before the North Gate Jazz Co-Op. More soon…

My last night in Chiang Mai, before heading off to Bangkok for Christmas, I planned to stop by ex-pat favorite The North Gate Jazz Co-Op with some friends, but first we needed a quick bite to eat so we swung by the night stalls that line the Th Mani Nopharat just north of The North Gate outside Pratu Chang Puak. Upon entering the row of stalls, one of my friends burst into laughter and pointed to the yellow sign. ”It says phad thai for thai people,” she said with a smile. ”Meaning not for farang,” I asked and she nodded in confirmation. When it comes to the real Thai flavor of phad thai, it’s not spicy as I thought it might be when I was living in Brooklyn, neither is it shrimp-y (I know plenty of Thais who prefer only a few of the dried shrimp), nor is it the tang of tamarind, though that’s how Yui, the teacher from A Lot of Thai cooking school, prefers it. The flavor that Thai people look for, as a Bangkok friend once explained to me as we searched unsuccessfully for his special duck egg phad thai vendor, is a certain smokiness from small batch wok frying.

After passing the phad thai vendor on the west side of the market, we walked along the row of stalls surveying the offerings. A few places had stacks of meaty pork legs stacked up for khiaw ka muu, the tender shredded meat and chewy skin of the pork leg served over rice, typically with pickled mustard greens and, if you’d like, a soft egg on the side. Of course, there were several places dishing out their own kuay tiaw, rice noodle soup, with thin noodles, thick noodles or egg noodles. One stall was selling bao jii, the steamed Chinese buns. Another Thai-style desserts, like an astringent ginger soup with soft tofu. Two of my friends settled on what turned out to be disappointing suki yaki, while a third friend and I got plates of the moist and delicious khiaw ka muu. I also decided to put in an order for the Thai taste phad thai for the table.

This phad thai was covered with a thready sheath of fried egg, instead of having bits of scrambled eggs mixed throughout like many do, and chopped scallions. Though I’ve had more than a few plates of phad thai at small singularly focused stalls over the past few months, I’d never really experienced the wok smoke flavor described by my Bangkok friend some months ago and had begun to wonder if perhaps my palate was was too indelicate to detect the flavor. In this plate of phad thai, there was no question: smokiness dominated.

We all took turns tasting and then began making the inevitable comparisons to our other phad thai spot around the bend on Th Arak. One friend, a teacher, 5-year resident and long proponent of the Arak place, found the smokiness overpowering and still preferred her old favorite. The other friend, a Thai national and cafe/guesthouse owner, stated that the Arak place, which she also likes, turned out a “mass-produced” dish, while confirming that this indeed was the real Thai flavor and the one that she preferred. The Arak place is so popular that it has to cook its noodles in batches of 8-10 in a large wok, which means it cannot achieve the wok smoke flavor because there are too many noodles in the wok at one time. And me? Well, my favorite is still the one I made in cooking school at A Lot of Thai, but, as the sign said, this phad thai wasn’t really meant for me anyway.