An Homage to Pad Thai

4:00pm, July 24th, 2008 - Bangkok, Thailand

On my last day in Thailand, and after a great plate of Pad Thai here in Bangkok, I feel the need to record my love for this simple dish. Kind of a swan song for Thailand and for one of my favorite foods. There is little hope for me to do justice to its virtues (many and profound), and to its allure and sex appeal here on the streets, but i'll try my best.

Pad Thai was my very first meal in Thailand as well as my last lunch in Bangkok today. Although I eat it at home once in a while, and its possible that one plate of Pad Thai can taste like any other plate of Pad Thai, the food here is different, has something special. Its a bit spicier, a bit more flavorful, very fresh, made to order, and full of life. The street vendors seem to dance with the Pad Thai in the wok and play with it like a puppet, up and down, backwards and forwards (see video at bottom). To see a plate of Pad Thai made here is to see a celebration of energy, food, culture and people. People say that the best Pad Thai is to be found on the streets.


It is a food for all hours. While a bit oily, it can be eaten as a breakfast portion directly after waking, fortifying you for the day. It can be eaten as a lunch, by itself for a light meal or with a spring roll for a hungry day. It isn't really my thing for dinner here, but at home its how I eat it most often. And of course its a great, cheap snack for every hour in between, from the late afternoon to the early early morning. I think I went 6 straight days here eating Pad Thai between 3am and 5am, and didn't once have a stomach ache to show for it. I wasn't really looking for much, but late at night often found a kind of essence of Pad Thai distilled down into its most basic element, shorn of most of the extra baggage.

It is a deceptively simple dish, composed as i've eaten it here of a couple main ingredients: the noddles, the veggies, an egg, the meat, and the sauces and garnishes. Yet its varieties are endless, and i've enjoyed eating it with all of different noodles you see below. I toy with spice, with dry chili flakes at the stall that crisply modulate the dish from 'safe and easy' to 'fireball intensity'. The same goes for the fried egg, which is something I didn't really like before I came here, but have come to love in partnership with the rest of the plate.

I think I could continue onward at this point, invoking crushed peanuts and their attractions, as well as dried shrimp and slices of lime, but you get the idea. I love this stuff.

Though I've done interesting things here, and seen a lot that was beautiful and much that was new, one thing I know i'll be talking about whenever I sit down for meals is 'that Pad Thai in Thailand'. I'll still be posting more from the last week I've spent on the beach in Railay, but while I have it here now, thanks for the memories Thailand.

For everyone's entertainment and my own recollection, here is a video I took of the Pad Thai being made for lunch today. My father asked me for the recipe the vendors used, and all I can say is: Get some noodles, some sprouts, some chicken, crack an egg and use some oil, and do it just like this...