How to: Tackle Street Food in Bangkok

Engaging in the street food scene is an essential part of the Thailand experience! It’s a tasty, fast, low-cost and convenient way of eating while exploring. Thai people have no particular type of dish that’s served for a specific time of day. We love to eat and in between meals we like to snack and who can blame us? Everywhere you go you’re hit with a delightful aroma of something being freshly made.

In this blog we are going to discuss How To: Tackle Street Food. Let’s take a quick look at the different types of street food vendors you’re bound to come across and some of the dishes we think you must try.

The Noodles Vendor

Noodles come in various forms and us Thais will make delicious noodle soup with it all. My favourite go to dish would be thick white Rice Noodles in a Tom Yum broth. Customise your dish by selecting your choice of noodle (Rice noodles, Egg noodles) and different types of broths it's served with.

Broths to choose from include, nam sai which is the clear soup, kuey teaw ruea or nam tok, which can also be known as boat noodles (the darker broth made with pig’s blood), or nam khon which is the darker soup but minus the blood. Then there’s the tom yum sai or tom yum khon (creamier broth). With the broth you have the choice of sen lek (thin rice noodles like you would find in Pad Thai), sen yai (thick white rice noodles), ba-mi (egg noodles) and sen-mi or woon sen (vermicelli glass noodles). The combinations are endless, however a common mix would be nam sai with sen lek. Remember you can get the noodles without the broth so this would be called “haeng” which means dry, or with the broth on the side. I personally like mine mixed together. You can often find fried won tons or pork scratchings to complement your noodle soup and together it goes down a treat.

The Chicken & Rice Vendor

I think ordering your noodles is probably the most complex of street foods as it is going to get. Everything else is more or less straightforward as most stalls will sell specific types of foods like “Khao Man Gai” which is the white boiled chicken paired with coconut and ginger infused rice that comes with sliced cucumbers and a special sauce. You can also try the “Khao Man Gai Tord“ ,which is the fried chicken and rice. Equally delicious.

The BBQ Grill Vendor

Wandering along the sois of Bangkok you will undoubtably come across some BBQ bites, most common being “Moo Bing“ pork on skewers, best when served with sticky rice and additional Chinese donuts (bah tong koh) for breakfast!

The Fresh Fruit Vendor

If Thailand has plenty of anything it’s fresh fruits. You will most likely always come across a fruit vendor, selling fresh cut fruits already prepped in plastic bags and a bamboo skewer ready for your watering mouth. Common fruits among these stands are usually Green Mangoes which can be a bit crunchy depending on how ripe it is, Farang (green apples), Dragon Fruit (the white flesh fruit with black seeds) which has a watermelon texture and is often tasteless but looks interesting and pretty, Jack Fruit the weird smelling yellow fruit (not Durian, it’s the other one that looks like durian on the outside), you will also find sliced Papaya, Pineapples and Watermelon. For other Thai fruits such as Lychees, Rambutan, Mangosteens, Longans and the sweet Yellow Mangoes (the ones you eat with coconut sticky rice) you’re better off buying them in bunches from the market. Thai people often eat their fruits with a sachet of mixed salt, sugar & chilli to cut the flavour. The vendor will usually drop a small sachet in for you and you can either eat it or throw it away.

The Thai Salad Vendor

My favourite of food vendor is the Yam Thai salad vendor. Here you will find various Thai salads from your typical Som Tam, to cucumber salad, sweetcorn or mango salad. Personally I love all types of Thai spicy salad and I like to tell my lady to go easy on the sugar but heavy on the lime and chillies! Give it a go and feel your taste buds explode from the fiery chilli, garlicky, zesty goodness.

There you have a short list of typical Thai street food vendors you will most likely come across when on the streets of Bangkok. They’re located all over the city and are a tasty way to enjoy the city, food and culture all at once.

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