Street Food Hopping In Bangkok

A little interesting story: Trust me, I am all for eating food from random roadside stalls because I believe they can be incredibly underrated hidden gems. But my first experience with pad kee mao from one of those stalls was quite frankly, horrid. All I could taste was salt and chilli. However, when my Thai friend told me that her favourite local food was (surprise, surprise) drunken noodles, I thought I had to give it at least another chance. And I was glad I did. This pad kee mao had great wok hei, and its chewy kway teow noodles were still moist and bursting with savoury basil goodness. It came with a good serving of seafood too. Carried a good amount of heat and best enjoyed with a cold can of Chang beer.

Oh, and this was dinner for 2. It was a valiant effort, and we very nearly finished it.

Chatuchak Market seems to be synonymous with the famous Coconut Ice cream, and that's because the heat here is unreal. Many stalls claim to be the authentic seller, but I usually go to the one with the largest crowd.
Standards aren't consistent here; it was a hit for me last time but this time, the coconut flavour wasn't as strong. Still, I appreciate the sheltered and cooling respite, no matter how brief, before we attack the shops again. >:)

Heard that they were coming to Singapore, but since I saw their branch at Platinum Mall, I thought, why not?
These were flaky and soft (more similar to the Indonesia pia than the Balestier Tau sar pia which I actually prefer) but the fillings were solid. I loved the Thai tea flavour (thankfully not as sweet as the real cha yen in liquid form) but the yam was the unanimous favourite!

To our dismay, the whole stretch of street food stalls infront of Central World was completely gone!! Eating at our favourite seafood place among one of them has become like a ritual for us, and I was looking forward to enjoying a good meal even before we landed. We were sad, desperate and hungry but things seemed to be looking up for us when we saw this lone remaining street food place that served our favourite salt-grilled fish. Unfortunately, taste wise it was not nearly as good as our favourite's but their clams! Wow. Eaten in a scrumptious spicy oily chilli sauce, it was full of the delicious holy basil flavour. I had great fun eating it right from their shells, paired with sticky rice which served well to mop up the delicious sauce.

Yesssss, the dish that we have been planning to eat on previous trips but never got a chance to.
Many would say that their tomyum soup is the star, and I agree that their rendition was the perfect balance of sweet, creamy, sour and spicy but I still prefer clear tomyum soup because I find it more refreshing.
But props have to be given for their insanely chewy and bouncy thin noodles. They also very generously offer free refills, which we happily said yes to!
Love that this area was also home to many other street food stalls which we could stroll by after our meal to digest (and eat more...)

We didn't even know what we had ordered- all we did was to point at a scrumptious looking picture pasted on the walls beside our table.

This side dish was more pricey than the total of both our bowls of tomyum noodles (180 baht- not cheap for a Thailand roadside stall) but it was clear why when we sank our teeth into these delightful morsels- a generous amount of shredded real crabmeat fried to crispy, light perfection. It came with a sweet lemon dip but I was happier scooping the usual chilli vinegar that can be commonly found in the condiments tray in many Thai places.
This caught the attention of the owner, and apparently her seal of approval. She came back with another container of greenish, spicier looking dip.

"This... better," she said with her limited English but with a limitlessly powerful conviction that I knew I had hit a local jackpot. I hurriedly dipped the crabmeat into the magic sauce... and she was right. The coriander dip was fresh and best of all, carried a good amount of heat. I inhaled what was left of our sidedish in a matter of seconds.

As we paid, she smiled and mustered a few more English words as best as she can, "See you... again."
We didn't see her again on this trip because there was too much good food BKK had to offer and all we had was 5 short days, but we are already looking forward to coming back on our next one.