MEAL TICKET. Food wok like no other

Papaya salad at every corner, pork noodles for breakfast and an unending supply of green curry? Bangkok, even in its stickiest season, seems the ideal place for a week’s holiday for someone who spends as much time contemplating food as I do. So I pack my stretchiest pants and Internet-culled list of food stalls, and we’re off.

Thailand’s varied culinary landscape — united by its reliance on the perfect balance of sweet, spicy, sour, bitter and salty tastes — is well represented, at Michelin-starred restaurants, hipster cafés and sky-high hotel bars, street carts and pop-up counters. Magically, even the food courts and malls serve fresh, flavourful food. And you almost never have to venture into the touristy streets of elephant-print pants and suspect massages.

The country’s four regions are home to distinct culinary styles, with influences as far-ranging as Japanese, Portuguese, Indian and Vietnamese. Bangkok sits in the centre of Thailand, in the Chao Phraya River delta, where the cuisine, nurtured by palace cooks and imperial traditions, has traditionally been more refined and elaborate, with gentler flavours and an abundance of expensive ingredients.

Though I’ve arrived with lists and links, we abandon them in favour of just walking around Bangkok. The Thai government recently booted food vendors from some of its most bustling streets, but carts and stalls still abound in side alleys and “designated areas”. They sell everything from fatty Hainanese-style chicken rice, noodles and pork satay, to deep-fried frog legs, stuffed buns, Thai-Muslim-style chicken biryani, bags of pre-cut fruit and fresh fruit juice. Street food is cheap — 10 baht (₹22 approximately) for a pork skewer and 30 for a bowl of noodles — while the Michelin-star restaurants can set you back by 7,000 baht per diner.

Flavours central: The Thai government recently booted food vendors from some of Bangkok’s the city’s most bustling streets, but carts and stalls still abound in side alleys and “designated areas”

One day at lunch, we get skewers of minced pork with sticky rice in a plastic bag, and spicy green curry with oddly chewy fish balls. Another day, it’s stir-fried meat with Thai basil, tom yum noodles, and raw papaya salad with that tart, delicate sauce. Everything is punctuated with the familiar flavours of lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves, basil and fish sauce.

If it’s raining, we duck indoors. Some old stalwarts are justly famous for specific dishes — Thipsamai for pad Thai, or Krua Apsorn for crab omelettes, while a new fleet of hip eateries is highlighting other traditional cooking styles and ingredients. At Err, a casual, colourful bar run by Bangkok chefs Duangporn “Bo” Songvisava and her husband, Dylan Jones, for instance, kitschy Thai movies play in the background as diners eat “street-style” food. We start with a platter of pickled things: Turnips, mustard greens, green mango, and an amazing single garlic clove pickled in honey till mellow. Pork skewers and chicken satay follow. Then comes the southern Thai-style pork belly and ribs braised in a clay pot with toddy palm sugar — peppery and tender.

We get lost in Bangkok’s Chinatown, which has housed Chinese-origin residents for over 200 years. Yaowarat Road is a hungry person’s dream. One or two bigger restaurants are selling shark fin and birds’ nest soups, but there’s no need to get into environmentally questionable areas because there’s so much else. Steamed prawns are shoved into plastic bags with a soupy mix of fish sauce, chillies, green onions, and lime. Enormous oysters are served with chopped omelette. All kinds of meats and sausages are being grilled over charcoal, while crabs and whelks await their fate in ice baths. The famous fish porridge doesn’t win us over — it’s bland, poached fish with boiled rice, most of the flavour coming from the accompanying fermented soybean sauce. We move away for char siu bao, garlicky curried crab, and mussels fried with yellow curry paste. On plastic stools, we share a bowl of rice noodles with slices of pork, bitter kale and egg, then end with a plate of gently-spiced roasted duck rice.

When we return to Chinatown the next day, it’s to investigate a bar we spotted on Google Maps. In an old Chinatown shophouse in a dodgy alleyway, raucous Tep Bar is the happiest find of our trip, with its xylophone band, well-informed barmen, and the little woven baskets that swing between the kitchen and the first floor, bearing snacks. The drinks are excellent and the bar fare is lovely: Sour som tam salad, rice crackers with chilli paste, pad Thai topped with a crab claw and so on. Crispy fried fish skin is not a hit, but luckily the taste is vanquished by king prawns wrapped in noodles and fried, with a chilli plum sauce, and grilled beef in pandan leaves.

On our way home, we see a street cart selling what look like tiny tacos, but turn out to be traditional Thai crêpes with sweet and savoury fillings. The vendor won’t let us buy just one or two, so we end up with six sweet ones — crisp and coconutty, with a custardy topping. Bangkok streets are full of little joys, and there’s still so much to eat — I haven’t even made it to half the places on my list — that I think I’ll just have to move here.

Naintara Maya Oberoi

Naintara Maya Oberoi is a food writer based in New Delhi;

Twitter:@naintaramaya

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