Well, here I am again, back in Bangkok, sitting on the same old wobbly plastic stool, outside the same old Chinatown food shop, eating the same old oyster omelet. But there’s nothing everyday about this particular dish. Nai Mong Hoi Thod may look like little more than a white-tiled hole in the wall, with a few tables and a fearsome charcoal wok that sizzles and sparks and roars. But appearances can be deceiving. Michelin has designated the restaurant as Bib Gourmand, and its famous omelet—golden, gooey, and studded with sweet-salty bivalves—is a dish of frazzled majesty. As scavenging cats wind between our legs and as tuk-tuks, scooters, and bicycles whiz through air so thick and hot you could scoop it with a spoon, I look at my dining companion, the chef, restaurateur, and writer David Thompson, and grin with sweaty glee. It really is good to be back.
Bangkok pulses and seethes, throbs and growls. It is both wildly cacophonous and magnificently languid, an ancient city in thrall to the modern. It might not be conventionally beautiful—the concrete is crumbling, the corrugated iron corroded, and the roads pockmarked with holes. Overhead are decades’ worth of utility wires, tangled into thick balls, like great nests of metallic noodles. But look closer, and you’ll find scenes of breathtaking loveliness: a tiny shrine draped with garlands; a fresh-fruit stall, almost fecund in its lushness; a verdant garden, secreted away behind high walls. Bangkok cares little about what you think, which makes me love it all the more.
Ghosts roam the streets, as real to most Thais as a vendor-cart som tum. “The city is a multifarious place,” says Thompson, author of the book Thai Food. The Thais see beautiful old wood houses Westerners love so much as places teeming with apparitions, which is why they have no problem knocking them down and building shiny new condos in their place, blessedly free from those damned spirits. “The Thais are simply not attached to the past,” Thompson adds as we finish our omelets.
Thompson is my guru, my guide, my Virgil. He’s lived here for years, speaks Thai fluently, and owns Nahm, a restaurant specializing in traditional regional dishes that has held a Michelin star for the past seven years. Traversing the country, he collected and preserved recipes that existed mainly via oral tradition. “In Thailand, food offers more than nourishment alone,” he says. “It is sustenance for the country and for the soul.” By now we’ve been joined by David’s partner, Tanongsak Yordwai, himself a chef, and are climbing the stairs to Yim Yim, another Chinatown staple. There we eat drunken chicken and salted fish and noodles cooked like pizza. “Food is the one true unifying force in Thailand,” Thompson continues, “and probably the most democratic thing about the country. You’d think the Thais would get cross about politics and corruption. The only time there are real riots are when the rice is too expensive. Do not get between the Thais and their lunch.”
Next we set out on a languorous boat trip down trash-choked klongs, where huge monitor lizards laze in the boughs of trees. Turmeric-hued temples sit next to gleaming modernist blocks and dilapidated old shacks, half sunk in the mire. The past is ignored, the present embraced. A lady in a narrow raft draws near and pulls alongside our boat. A pot of broth over a small gas flame bubbles beside her. We buy bowls of noodle soup—pure, clean, and bracingly spicy.
