ThaiTable.com: Travel

Lers Ros Thai Restaurant in San Francisco Review

Lers Ros, a popular hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant in San Francisco, is so hot that the chef-owner, Tom Silarorn recently opened a new location, after just 3 years. The fact that the new restaurant is in the hip Hayes Valley, and only 5 minutes away from its original location, piqued my interest.

Lers Ros’s website is full of raving reviews. A number of restaurant critics, including Michael Bauer, the restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, were impressed with Ler Ros.

Read On! >>

Thai Cooking Class with Chef Kent at InterContinental Hua Hin

On 20th of August 2011, 250 chefs from around the world, over 45 countries, participated in World Chefs Tour Against Hunger. The proceed would feed African children via Bidvest World Chefs Tour Against Hunger Trust Fund. One of the chefs representing Thailand was Chef Kent (Arnon Masanglong) of InterContinental Hua Hin. We dropped by to check out his cooking class.

Going to Markets with Chef Kent

Believing in cooking only fresh and natural ingredients, Chef Kent took us hunting for the best ingredients at 2 markets, roadside fishermen's market and Chatchai Market.

The first market was in a fishing village, just north of Hua Hin, where the fishermen dropped off their catch of the day at a few seafood stands by the beach. The highlight was that the class was going to the fish market in a boat! We were very excited. Unfortunately, when we set out, there was some rain and light wind and the Intercontinental didn’t want to risk having the boat out at sea. When we got to the fishing village, it was pouring. I was so glad that we didn’t take the boat.

Read On! >>

Should I go to Thailand Now?

Visiting Thailand is always an adventure, but sometimes, due to rain, politics or economic crashes, you get opportunities to see situations that you might not have planned. If the event happens between when you buy your ticket and you arrive, or while you are there, there are ways to make it a rich experience.

Show up

Don’t just cancel your trip or go straight home. While you need to keep yourself safe, normally adverse events are very localized to where the event is happening. Thailand is a huge country with lots of great places to go and things to do.

Stay Current

Unfortunately, western media accounts of events in Thailand are generally extremely biased toward the sensationally wrong (CNN Headline News crawl: “Bangkok opened the flood gates.”) and often don't clearly explain what is actually happening in an actionable way. Whether it is a poor grasp of Thai politics, biased or overly "balanced" editing or a belief that the reality is too complicated for 500 words, western papers have never seemed apt to report the real machinations of Thai events or politics. The end result is simply that you need to go elsewhere for news.

Read On! >>

Anantara Hua Hin Cooking Class

Cooking classes in paradise: play, cook, eat and play some more...

Many hotels in Thailand offer a Thai cooking class on the premises which effectively consists of a chef demonstrating 3-4 dishes. Priding itself on providing “an authentic, indigenous experience,” with Thai food central to the experience, The Anantara Hua Hin presents their deep and strong commitment to the cuisine. The Anantara Hua Hin provides a beautiful dedicated gazebo with cooking stations and an experienced cooking instructor to teach you one-on-one as you learn through doing.

The Welcome

As soon as our car pulls into Anantara, Hua Hin, a popular coastal town 3 hours outside of Bangkok, I know I am in for a treat. Lush trees, bushes and flowers cover the ground. 20 foot high stone walls, massive bas-relief elephants and huge posts originally for holding elephants, line the drive. The drive opens to a combination of modern and traditional Thai style buildings, packed with Thai art and antiques. As we get out of the car, serenity pervades.

Chef Bongkosh picks us up and introduces herself as one of the chefs and the cooking instructor. Easy going, soft spoken and cheerful, the chef has taught over 2000 people, beginners to experienced chefs, to cook Thai food over 4 years. Prior to joining Anantara, she was a cooking instructor at Sofitel Centara, Hua Hin.

Read On! >>

Thai Puppet Dance

Soon to be on a well worn path or a lost art?

Bann Silapin, Klong Bang Luang (aka Artists' House -บ้านศิลปิน) is not yet on the tourist map, but their Thai puppet dance can very well pin this little sleepy community as a 'must visit'. In the middle of cosmopolitan Bangkok, the old way of life and art are finding its place in the community. The Thai puppet dance deserves more than just a new life but a center stage. Without support and recoginition, this dance team can disappear like another before them.

Hoon Lakorn Lek or Thai puppet dance is a combination of Khone (Thai masked dance) and puppet show. Three puppeteers are on full scale stage control a 3-foot tall puppet. The front puppeteer controls the head movement and puppet’s left hand. The person in the middle controls the feet. The back puppeteer controls the right arm. The puppeteers perform right along with the puppets. They dance and jump gracefully in unison with the character. Wearing black outfits and black masks, the puppeteers disappear into the background, only the characters float around playing an episode of Ramaya, a popular Indian epic. At The Artists’ House, this classic good-against-evil story glued me and the rest of the audience to their seats.

Artists' House

Along the original narrow Chao Praya River, which is currently called Klong Bang Luang (คลองบางหลวง), a 100-year-old house sits at the end of a narrow walkway along the water. The house serves as a refuge to artists, especially the Thai puppet dance performers. The Thai puppet dance was popularized by a well-known, international award recipient puppet company, Joe Louis.

Read On! >>

Kasma Loha-unchit's Thai Cooking School Review

Khun Kasma has taught Thai cooking for over 25 years and written 2 popular cookbooks, It Rains Fishes: Legends, Traditions, and the Joys of Thai Cooking and Dancing Shrimp: Favorite Thai Recipes for Seafood. Her cooking school, which she operates with her husband, Michael, is located in their house in Oakland, California. I had the opportunity to visit Khun Kasma's advanced class, which revealed why teaching style matters. In this class students cook, learn and laugh together.

The Format of the Advanced Class

After the meet and greet and a snack, the class settled down at a kitchen table discussing menu for the evening. An appetizer, two main courses, one soup and a dessert were to be put on the table. Khun Kasma went over the recipes in details, describing what needed to be done and sprinkling Thai food history in between.

As soon as the last recipe was discussed, students started to put their chairs away. Everybody got really busy, pulling thing out of cabinets, pots, pans and bowls, like it was their own house. Each team of 2-3 people worked from their notes and recipes, discussing and solving problems. After several weeks of cooking beginning and intermediate, advanced class students had become good friends and knew each other really well.

Read On! >>

Bo.lan Restaurant Review

At Bo.lan, the chefs will pleasurably force you to focus on the moment by nailing you in your seat, pulling you into the dinner with your tongue, and flying you from one height and experience to the next. Knowing even a little Thai food history, you quickly recognize that your trip goes not only from flavor extreme to another, but north to south, street to palace, ancient historic food to childhood to now. If you visit Bangkok, you must eat at Bo.lan.

What stands Bo.lan apart from most other Thai restaurants is the care and attention they put into all they do. Their recipes and menus are selected, developed and tested after deep research. Their flavors shine because they make everything, like curry paste, from scratch. Many of their ingredients are adventuresome and unique.

Bo.Lan was started by Bo Songvisava and Dylan Jones, partners in life and in kitchen with a deep love of Thai food and food history. Trained in Western cuisine, Bo became interested in Thai cooking during her stay in the UK. Dylan had already knew how to cook Thai food before he met Bo. To further his knowledge in Thai cooking, he took up Thai lessons so that he could research Thai food.

Read On! >>

Looking for Great Dim Sum in Bangkok

The Best Dim Sum Can Be Found in Bangkok? And at a Convention Center?

Looking for a new and better dim sum place is one of my favorite pastimes. From Boston to New York City to San Francisco, I have found some decent dim sum places but none was in a such unexpected place as The Hong Kong Fisherman at IMPACT Convention Center, Nontaburi Province, just outside of Bangkok. Most dim sum restaurants are in large cities within an easy reach of a Chinese community. Hong Kong Fisherman is inside a convention center which is on the outskirts of Bangkok. How good can a place be with two strikes against it?

When you walk inside the restaurant you see tables and benches in the shapes of small boats floating on cobalt blue tile (water). Later I was told that the decor represents the Hong Kong harbor. In the center, there was a large post that represented the mast. We were seated on land for our dim sum because the boats were too small for our party.

Read On! >>

Kow Tom Polo Restaurant: A Good Find Across from Lumpini Park

After a far too late in the evening walk through Lumpini Park in Bangkok, we were starving, but all we saw was a 25 seat, crowded, dingy corner Thai restaurant with a horrid name. The name of the restaurant ‘Kow Tom’ means rice soup, which is served for breakfast and late night snack, but never lunch and definitely not dinner. Were it not for the mass of university students and an older farang, we would never have looked twice. But we were dying of hunger and curious.

In Thailand, it's common to ask a server what's good at a restaurant, so as sat down, our server recommend a few dishes, none of which were rice soup. We ordered all his suggestions. The tod mun goong (shrimp patties) were being fried on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. A fried fish came with nampla prig sauce. The nampla prig sauce was made with fish sauce, sugar, green onion, shallots, cilantro, hot chili and shredded green mango. The green mango gave it sour and nutty taste. I also ordered stir fried pak gachade (water vegetable) and a soup. The tofu and ground pork soup was just right even though it’s a simple soup. Everything turned out to be excellent.

I chatted with our server before we left. The restaurant started 14 years ago offering rice soup, then gradually transitioned into the dishes that they offer today. Now, they no longer offering rice soup, but the name ‘rice soup’ stuck and they couldn’t change it. He said that it’s a family business, pointing to different people in the restaurant as his aunts and uncle.

Read On! >>

Top 10 Things To Remember When Visiting Thailand

When travelling in any foreign country there are always things that are always a little different from home. Thailand's top 10 things to remember range from the mundane to ways to avoid inadvertently offending people to ways to stay healthy.

Bring your own toilet paper! Many public restrooms do not provide toilet paper, while some places offer them for a small fee. The best bet is at private establishments like shopping malls, hotels and upscale restaurants.
Cross streets at footbridges. Unlike in the west, cars, motorcycles and trucks believe that they have right of ways at all times. Pedestrians do not.
The head is considered sacred. Don’t touch a grown person’s head, especially someone who is older than you. However, you can rub kids’ and babies’ heads. Don’t stand over sitting people. Sit down or step away from them.
At the other end of your body, feet are considered low, impolite and offensive. Don’t use your foot to point as if it’s your finger. When sitting, point your feet away from people and sacred objects.
Take your shoes off before you go inside temples and homes. When you step into a building, step over the threshold, not on it. Bring shoes that are comfortable but not expensive since shoes do get mixed up and lost.
Stay away from illegal drugs. While, like most countries, possession of illegal drugs is a crime, many people have spent their life in Thai prisons for possession of drugs. Never accept a package from anyone to take in or out of Thailand.
Dress modestly, especially when visiting palaces and temples. Women are advised to dress with a skirt, at least knee length. Long trousers would be polite for men. However, many places provide wraps for women at the door. This rule doesn’t apply to kids.
Females are not allowed to touch the monks. When monks take offerings from women and girls, there is always a medium in between such as an alm or a piece of cloth. When you are traveling on public transportation, choose a seat away from them if you are female.
Simply avoid discussing the royal family in public. Thai people love their royal family. What is insightful, funny or ironic to you, may not be to those hearing you.
Drink bottled water, not tap water. The reason why is related to the top rule.

Read On! >>