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The Condom-Clad Tiger: Part 2

There's a real hullabaloo over my post about the condom-decorated figure of Tiger Woods at Cabbages & Condoms restaurant in Bangkok.

The story is circulating through sports and news blogs in the United States and also around the world, apparently. At least they're writing about it in Australia and India. Some reports are skewing the facts. They say that I created the figure. Not true. I just took the photo and wrote the story.

And shame on those bloggers and news sources that are lifting details from my post, including direct quotes, and using these and my photo without crediting my blog. It's disgustingly unprofessional to pass off another person's work as one's own.

As a follow-up to the first story, here are a few more photos of condom figures at Cabbages & Condoms, including another look at Tiger. And one where you can see me.

I'd like to give the recipe for the restaurant's famous condom salad, but I can't, because it's copyrighted.  It's in  "Cabbages & Condoms: The Beautiful Thai Cook Book," which you can buy there for about $10.

This is an excellent book, by the way, and includes other, less titillating, restaurant specialties such as pla sam lee daed deaw, which is fried whole fish with green mango sauce; gung obb mapraow on (steamed shrimp in a whole young coconut) and kai hor bai toey (deep fried chicken wrapped in pandanus leaves).

Sensing a need to tie in with  its image, the restaurant gave the chicken another name in its brochure: "chicken in herb leaf bikini." 

The cookbook is totally proper. Its editorial advisory board included Mechai Viravaidya, who is known in Thailand as the Condom King.

It was he who founded the Population and Community Development Association in order to promote family planning. That was in 1974, when the topic was too awkward for most Thais to discuss.  

The PDA recruited villagers to talk up birth control in their communities and distribute condoms.  Viravaidya was so linked to this campaign that his first name, Mechai, became Thai slang for condom.

A flagship of the campaign, the PDA-supported Cabbages & Condoms is a large place with an outdoor beer garden. It now has branches in other parts of Thailand.

The name was chosen to  reflect Viravaidya's belief that birth control should be as affordable and available as vegetables in the marketplace.

Walking down the lane where C&C is located (Soi 12 off Sukhumvit Road),  I used to pass a no-scalpel vasectomy clinic. I didn't spot the clinic this trip, but the Darling massage parlor is still doing business there. 

And in my travel purse are two souvenirs of my latest meals at C&C.  You can guess what they are.

Bangkok's Ten Bests, 2010

Every trip to Bangkok turns up more great Thai food, more places in which to eat it and a list of must-dos for the next trip, whenever that may be.

These are highlights of a rushed few days in February that included a mad dash through Chinatown on the morning of the first day of the Year of the Tiger.

Red lanterns bobbed overhead, and food stalls jammed both sides of the main drag, offering everything from eel to heavenly fresh coconut ice cream (see below).

Not everyone ate the rich dishes on display. One of the smallest celebrants (right) was content with just a bottle of milk. 

Why was I in such a hurry?  Because I had to meet fellow travelers for lunch, which turned out not to be Chinese (darn), and then catch a boat to my hotel down (or was it up?) the Chao Phrya river.

But New Year's Day was lucky after all. Dinner that night yielded two "bests" for my top 10 list, which starts with one of them.  

1. Best Dish: Pomelo salad with shrimp at Naj. This version of a common salad was so light and refreshing that I would have been happy to eat nothing else. 

The segments of the pomelo fell apart into juicy crisp flakes that mingled with crisp fried shallots and crunchy deep-fried coconut meat for a panorama of textures.

The sweet, spicy dressing  (red chile, fish sauce, coconut milk, sugar) did them justice. And so did the presentation. The salad bowl was a pomelo shell expertly carved in keeping with the precepts of royal Thai  cuisine.

Naj Exquisite Thai Cuisine, 42 Convent Road, Silom, Bangkok 10500, Thailand. Tel: (662) 632-2811.

2. Spiciest Dish: Sea bass with green papaya and bamboo shoots in spicy and tangy herbal soup at Thanying. Years ago, I ate a curry in Chiang Mai that was so unbearably hot I thought my body would dissolve.

Not until I ate at Thanying did I have such an experience again. The waiter had steered me away from very spicy dishes to this "medium" seabass concoction.  As my lips threatened to peel away, I regretted having chosen the dish simply because it was different from the usual red and green curries. Even worse, there was hardly any fish in the venomous yellow sauce.

Thanying, No. 10 Thanon Pramuan, between Silom 17 and 19, Bangrak, Bangkok 10500, Thailand. Tel: (66) 02-236-4361.

3. Coolest Dish: Coconut ice cream in Chinatown. On New Year's Day, street stalls sold freshly made coconut ice cream scooped into halved coconut shells, with fresh young coconut meat around the ice cream and peanuts on top. Simple and better than sublime.

4. Best Drink: A Tom Yam Tini at Naj. This wasn't hot and spicy shrimp soup (tom yam goong) strained into a cocktail glass but a delicate herbal drink composed of vodka, Cointreau, galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, lime juice and chile.

Fortunately, the only chile seemed to be the whole red one stuck into a lime leaf as the garnish.

5. Weirdest Drink: Mexican iced coffee at Caffe Nero. This cafe looks into the gardens of the Siam Society, and I had planned to enjoy the refreshing view and recuperate from the heat outside with an iced green tea latte.

There was some confusion when I placed my order, and the waitress brought instead a boot filled with strong, bitter coffee blended with milk, ice and "Kahlua flavor." Yes, a glass boot. "Cowboy have energy," the menu blurb explained and recommended the drink at any time of day "to aid digestion."

The dark little blobs that clung to the sides of the boot indicated it  had been made with instant coffee.

Siam Society, 131 Soi Asok (off Sukhumvit), Bangkok 10240, Thailand. Tel: (02) 661-6470.

6. Best Thai Dessert: Bua loi Benjarong at  Oam Thong Restaurant. I was a little leary of another Benjarong dish at this restaurant after gang kew wan Benjarong goong (green curry with prawns, aubergine, cherry tomatoes, pineapple, lychees and grapes) turned out to be overloaded with inedibly tough tiny green eggplants.

Called makhua puang in Thai, these may have been put into the curry at the last minute so that they were barely cooked. Or else they were underripe. Furthermore, there were no lychees.

The restaurant redeemed itself with this dessert, a bowlful of warm, thick, sweet and salty coconut cream enveloping tiny rice flour dumplings tinted pale green, yellow and violet. There were slices of tender, young coconut meat too. I can't imagine a more soothing dish. 

Oam Thong Restaurant, 7/4-5 Sukhumvit 33, Soi Daeng Udum, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. Tel: (66) 2-662-0766.

7. Best non-Thai dessert: Boi loi nam king at Cabbages & Condoms. This dessert of sticky rice flour dumplings stuffed with black sesame paste in hot, dark ginger syrup is Chinese. However, it's Thai too, because so many Thais came from China long ago, and the Chinese influence on the food is strong. 

I had eaten this dessert at Wazuzu in Las Vegas shortly before leaving for Thailand, and I was longing for another taste. The restaurant obliged with its own excellent version.

Cabbages & Condoms, 8 Sukhumvit 12, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. Tel: (662) 229-4610.

8. Best room with a view: The food hall on the fifth floor of the Emporium Shopping Complex looks out on a beautiful park, the city beyond and the sky train, which in the distance shrinks to the size of a miniature electric railroad.

The variety of food available in the hall is tempting, but it was mid afternoon, and I settled for a simple dessert, grass jelly and red-coated waterchestnut cubes with ice and coconut syrup. It cost about 75 cents.

The Emporium Shopping Complex is on Sukhumvit Road close to Soi 24, Bangkok, Thailand. Take the sky train to the Phrom Phong exit.

9. Best snack: Khanom ping. I picked up a bag of these tiny coconut cookies at a 7-Eleven outside Bangkok but found them neatly packed in jars at the upscale market adjacent to the food hall on the 5th floor of  the Emporium Shopping Complex. 

What sets them apart is an intriguing smoky taste and the way they dissolve to a powder as you bite into them. Although they seem fragile, they were sturdy enough to survive the trip home intact.

10.  Best old standby: P Kitchen  Sometimes I want to relax and not chase edgy new food experiences. That's when I go to P Kitchen (actually P.4 Kitchen according to the sign, but everyone calls it just P Kitchen).

This time, I checked out its version of one of my favorite Thai dishes in Los Angeles, crispy pork with gailan and rice. The omelet that was part of the dish almost hides the pork and gailan.

P Kitchen, 11/3 Sukhumvit Soi 18, Bangkok 10110, Thailand. Tel: 02-663-4950.

A Class at the Blue Elephant

Cooking schools are a dime a dozen in Thailand, but there's a really good one at the Blue Elephant in Bangkok, judging by the one lesson I had.

How could you find a better teacher than Nooror Somany Steppe, founder, director and creative chef of the Blue Elephant restaurant group, which has grown to 12 branches extending from Europe through the Middle East to Asia?

Visiting the Bangkok location is like stepping into Asia's colonial past. The building has the same tropical, exotic feeling that permeates the Raffles in Singapore.

More than a century old, it opened as the Bombay Department Store, became the Japanese army command center during World War II and has now been totally restored.

Classes take place there daily. Students go to the market to learn about ingredients, watch how the dishes are prepared, then cook the day's menu themselves and sit down to eat it.

My class was a special one-dish demo for the group of Thai restaurant owners and chefs (at right) with whom I was traveling. 

We started with blue mai tais from the Blue Bar (above). Yes, there's lots of blue at the Blue Elephant. It's the royal Thai color.

Then we watched Steppe make tom som pla salmon, a sweet, sour, slightly spicy salmon soup. It looked easy, and I had no trouble reproducing it at home.

Dinner after class showed off the Blue Elephant's royal Thai cuisine. The food was exquisite, because that is what makes it royal--beautiful presentation combined with beautiful taste.

Some dishes were classic Thai. Others were updated, like Steppe's  creamy tom yum goong (hot and sour shrimp soup), which she modeled on a French bisque and served in a shot glass. 

Beside it, another shot glass held a single betel leaf wrapped around a mixture of white and pink pomelo, dry shrimp, green mango and pickled lettuce, topped with coconut sauce.

Then on to starters such as steamed flower-shaped dumplings and golden taro dumplings stuffed with shrimp and chicken. Then came  chicken-coconut soup served in a young coconut.

Main dishes included prawns in sweet tamarind sauce and Northeastern style grilled beef with a sauce of dried chiles, accompanied by sticky rice. The rice had been formed into slender rolls and fried. Golden brown, chewy and crisp, they were irresistible.

A snow fish souffle was lightly seasoned with basil and kaffir lime leaves. Rather than a western style souffle in a little casserole, the delicate Thai souffle had been spooned into a length of bamboo and topped with coconut cream and red chile strands.

There was much more, ending with a trio of desserts that included pandan-flavored coconut ice cream, a steamed mung bean cake and foi thong, or golden egg threads cooked in syrup. 

Thai wines aren't yet up to western standards, but those we drank at the Blue Elephant were quite good. They are made for the restaurant at Siam Winery in the Chao Phraya delta, near the Gulf of Siam.

The red is made from a varietal called Pokdum, which is a cross between Muscat Bailey and Golden Queen. The white is a Malaga Blanc, and the rose blends Malaga Blanc and Pokdum.

I wish I had had one of those wines to drink with the tom som pla salmon (photo at right) that I made at home. 

The Blue Elephant Cooking School and Restaurant, 233 S. Sathorn Road, Yannawa, Bangkok, Thailand 10120. Tel: (66-2) 673-9353.  

TOM SOM PLA SALMON
From the Blue Elephant, Bangkok

1 cup salmon in 2/3-inch chunks
1/4 teaspoon Thai shrimp paste (kapi)
1 teaspoon cilantro stems, including any roots that may be attached
4 small shallots
1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 1/2 cups fish or chicken stock
1 tablespoon finely slivered gingerroot
2 tablespoons fish sauce
5 teaspoons tamarind liquid (tamarind paste diluted with water)
2 teaspoons Thai palm sugar (or light brown sugar)
1 green onion, cut into 1-inch lengths, including some of the green top
1/4 cup cilantro leaves

Prepare the salmon and set it aside. 

Wrap the shrimp paste in a small piece of foil, place in a small skillet and roast over high heat just until fragrant (this will reduce the strong aroma). If you cannot obtain shrimp paste, leave it out, but it does add an interesting nuance.  

Place the cilantro stems in a heavy mortar and pound until crushed. Add 2 small shallots and pound until pulverized. Add the peppercorns and shrimp paste and pound to a paste. Scrape out of the mortar and set aside. There will be about 1 tablespoon paste.

Place the stock in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Crush the remaining 2 shallots and add to the stock along with the pounded paste, gingerroot, fish sauce, tamarind liquid and palm sugar. Bring to a boil and simmer 1 minute. 

Add the salmon and bring to a boil. Do not stir after the salmon is added. Simmer 1 minute, until fully cooked. Add the green onion and remove from heat.

Pour the soup into a heated bowl and garnish with cilantro leaves.

Makes 1 large serving or 2 first-course servings. 

 

Crispy Pork Beats Out Noodles

Pa-Ord Noodle on Sunset Boulevard obviously specializes in noodles. And they are very good, because Pa-Ord is the new incarnation of Ord Noodle on Hollywood Boulevard, which became one of the top draws in Thai Town.

Lawan Bhanduram, who founded Ord Noodle, sold it and moved on. Now she has opened Pa-Ord, serving the same dishes. Read what I wrote about this on Squid Ink.

What I like apart from the noodles is No. 24 on Pa-Ord's menu: rice with Chinese broccoli and sliced crispy pork (khao kanah mu grob). I don't think I could go there without ordering this dish.

The small, crunchy pork chunks are irresistible. The meat is fried, then roasted and stays crisp until you finish. Soft rice and bright, fresh Chinese broccoli set it off perfectly. But watch out, devilishly hot bits of Thai chile lurk in the mix. 

If you want to eat Thai style, you'll order a fried egg on top of the rice. Watching a cooking demonstration of red curry in Bangkok, I was surprised to see an omelet served on the side and to learn that this is a typical pairing.

The Thai egg and meat affinity hasn't yet arrived in Los Angeles.  Order red curry in a local Thai restaurant and you may get rice, but not an omelet. And so Pa-Ord's crispy pork is eggless unless you specify otherwise.

Pa-Ord Noodle, 5301 Sunset Blvd., #8, Los Angeles, CA 90027. Tel: (323) 461-3945.

A House of Mystery in Bangkok

Fairfax Avenue, a street in Los Angeles lined with Jewish delis, bakeries and restaurants, would seem to have little in common with Thailand. 

Yet a book that I found in a thrift shop there led me to an extraordinary place in Bangkok.

The book was a silk-bound copy of "The House on the Klong" by William Warren, an American who resettled in Bangkok.

Warren has written any number of books about Thai culture. This one was privately printed in Tokyo in 1968. My copy is the 11th edition, published 10 years later.

The house on the klong was the home of James H.W. Thompson, who developed the Thai silk industry. Assembled from old teak houses brought from various villages, it was furnished in Thai style and housed Thompson's Asian art collection. 

In 1967 Thompson disappeared while walking in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. No trace was ever found.

The house is now a museum, administered by the James H.W. Thompson Foundation.

Bill Warren, whom I met years ago when he came to a Thai food festival in northern California, told me that he designed the gardens at the Thompson house.

And so, during my recent stay in Bangkok, I went to see it. Tours are offered daily. You can wander freely through the beautiful gardens and ground floor structures, which house fine pieces acquired by Thompson.

Inside, you must be escorted by a guide and are not allowed to take photos. This was frustrating, because I would love to have photographed the dining room, where I could almost feel the presence of Thompson and his guests as they ate from antique blue and white china and admired 19th century paintings that depict the life of the Buddha.

The sideboard in this room is an old Chinese worship table. The dining table has the insignia of King Chulalongkorn, or so I read in another book about the house in my collection, "6 Soi Kasemsan II." That book was signed by Thompson himself.

The title is the address of the Thompson compound, which has been expanded to include a shop that sells contemporary silk items with the Thompson label and, happily, a restaurant.

Although I would never be able to eat in the house, I could dine on a veranda that faced it. What a beautiful spot for lunch, looking out on a fish pond and the gardens beyond.

The silk-covered menu has a section titled "Absolutely Thai Thompson Style."  Did Thompson eat such food? Possibly, because the rice with stir-fried shrimp and Thai basil that I ordered is very common.

It was a fine dish, tender shrimp and mushrooms alongside a mound of jasmine rice topped with a fried egg. My drink: lemongrass juice, accompanied by a pot of syrup so that I could sweeten it to taste.

It had been raining, and that added a mysterious, spectral feel to a place that will always be shadowed by the strange disappearance of Jim Thompson. 

Jim Thompson House & Museum, 6 Soi Kasemsan 2, Rama 1 Road, Bangkok, Thailand 10330. Tel: (662) 216-7368. Opens daily at 9 a.m. The last tour is at 5 p.m.

A Place Where Cats Eat Too

If you love cats, there is one restaurant in Bangkok where you must eat. It is P Kitchen on Soi 18, which branches off Sukhumvit near the Asok exit from the sky train (BTS).

There is actually a tiny 4 after the P, so I suppose the correct name is P.4 Kitchen, but I never heard anybody call it that.

P.8 might be a better name, because that is how many cats I have counted while eating there. The cats are not in the restaurant, which is open-air (I felt a few sprinkles of rain one night), but next door.

A fence comes right up to the tables, and this is where they assemble. As you eat, they stare at you, and a cat who wants food knows how to exude devasating appeal. If you're heartless, you'll ignore them. If not, you'll toss a few bites over the fence.

The reason they are so determined is that the food at P Kitchen is very good. A small, family-run place, it turns out dishes that would cost a lot more, and perhaps not be as well prepared, at more pretentious places.

Western tourists eat there because they stay in the neighbohood, as I did, but the food has not been altered to please them.

One of the best dishes of my entire trip was P Kitchen's yam pak boong grob, or crispy morning glory with minced pork and shrimp.

Pak boong and morning glory are names for a long-stemmed green that crosses cultures in Asia. In this dish, it is lightly coated with lacy batter, like tempura, and fried until the batter becomes crisp. And it stays crisp, no matter how long it takes you to eat.

The minced pork and a few whole shrimp are in a bowl of spicy sweet sauce for dipping.

With this, I drank the fresh juice from a young coconut, then scraped out the tender flesh for dessert. The price for both was a little over $3.

Another time I had asparagus stir-fried with shrimp. Cut into short lengths, this Thai asparagus was slim and crunchy, nothing like the fatter spears in California markets. I also ordered crispy catfish salad.

Can you imagine such a fresh and interesting seafood dinner for $7? And this included fresh limeade (nam manao) and rice.

I've attempted to copy another P Kitchen dish that I liked very much, pork in lemon (actually lime) sauce with garlic and chile.

The pork was served like a salad over raw cabbage with lettuce underneath. Thais usually add a dash of sugar to such dishes, but this was not sweet, just fragrant with fresh lime juice balanced with fish sauce.

I stir-fried the pork, but I suspect the P Kitchen cook might have boiled it and then added the seasonings. That's what I'll try next time.  

P.4 Kitchen, 11/3 Sukhumvit Soi 18, Bangkok, Thailand 10110. Tel: 02-6634950. Open 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Closed Sunday.

PORK WITH LIME, GARLIC AND CHILE
Adapted from P.4 Kitchen, Bangkok

1 pound lean pork
1/2 small head cabbage
2 leaves lettuce
5 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon thinly slivered fresh red chile or 1 serrano chile, thinly sliced
White pepper
Mint sprigs

Cut the pork in very thin strips (less than 1/8-inch-thick) that are 1 1/2 to 2 inches long.  This is easy to do if the pork is partially frozen. Set aside.

Cut the cabbage in half lengthwise and remove the core. Now cut crosswise in 1/2-inch slices. Separate the cabbage layers. Line a serving plate with the lettuce leaves, then top with the cabbage.

Combine the lime juice, fish sauce and sugar in a small bowl and stir to dissolve the sugar.

Heat a wok over high heat. Add the oil and heat until very hot. Add the garlic, then immediately add the pork and stir-fry until cooked through and no pink color remains, about 5 minutes depending upon the heat and thickness of the meat.

Stir in the red chile, then add the lime juice mixture. Cook and stir about 1 minute, until the meat absorbs the flavors. Taste, check the seasoning and add more lime juice and/or fish sauce if needed. The taste should be bright with lime and not overly salty.

Sprinkle lightly with white pepper and turn out onto the cabbage. Garnish with mint sprigs.

Makes 4 servings.

 

Santa Lands at Thai Town

Traffic outside obscured the sound of Santa's sleigh landing on the Thailand Plaza Restaurant Sunday afternoon. But all of a sudden in he popped with a sack of gifts for the little kids who were waiting.

Parents brought them up to sit in his lap while dads and friends took photos. It wasn't an entirely happy occasion. The littlest ones screamed with rage and fear. Who was this devil in a red suit who didn't speak Thai?

Not in the least disturbed, Santa did his job and with a ho ho ho sleighed off to some other engagement while families stayed behind to eat.

Throughout the holidays, Thailand Plaza is featuring the green papaya salad som tam as prepared by visiting chefs from Thailand.

Winners of a national som tam contest, they have devised such creative versions as a som tam hamburger (actually, a chicken burger with Thal seasonings accompanied by som tam sauce) and tempura som tam. In this one, shrimp and strands of papaya and carrot are batter-coated, fried crisp and arranged around a bowl of som tam dipping sauce. 

Too bad Santa didn't have time to try either one, but the rest of us can still get a taste.

He'll be gone by Christmas Day, but the guest chefs will stay on until  New Year, when their big jet-powered sleigh takes off for Thailand.

Thailand Plaza Restaurant, 5321 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027. Tel: (323) 466-1804.

Ngwanlee: It's The Same as Ever

Soi Langsuan has changed so much I hardly recognized it on this trip to Bangkok. The street is much more upscale, lined with smart residences, spas and restaurants. LeNotre is there, and so is Starbucks.

Instead of the restaurants I remember, among them Pan Pan, which was always crowded; the Hot Shoppe, Old World and the Bee Z Pub, I saw the Yaki Ten Japanese Bar and Restaurant, Le Pre Grill, Air Plane Restaurant and Cafe, Forlente Italian restaurant and The Ninth Cafe, which puts out Thai, Italian and fusion dishes.

Order The Ninth's stir-fried spicy spaghetti with basil leaves and you can finish with a slice of double chocolate cake, tiramisu or pannacotta with raspberry sauce. 

But the soi still has street food and sidewalk tables where office workers eat lunch. And Ngwanlee is still there, at the far end where Langsuan deadends at Lumpini Park.

Unlike its upscale surroundings, this Chinese/Thai restaurant is as plain as ever. But you go there to eat, not to look at a fancy dining room.

The best time to go is night. If it's not raining, the restaurant will be open to the stars. But this trip I went for lunch, which is served in a barracks like air-conditioned room with tinny tables, a linoleum floor and a gruff waitress.  

The food, as always, was wonderful. Three dishes and a rich tasting nam manao (limeade) with a touch of salt came to $10, plus a tip for the gruff but efficient server.

The plates were Chinese style, meaning my lunch would have served two or three. But I wanted all of the fried shrimp with garlic and pepper for myself. The tender, very fresh shrimp were butterflied and fried, then sprinkled with pepper and topped with golden flakes of fried garlic.  

Fried fish noodle would be noodles with fish, right? Well, not exactly. In Ngwanlee's version, the noodles are the fish, cut into pale, thin strips and mixed with bean sprouts and yellow chives in a light, broth-based sauce. This delicately seasoned dish is the opposite of the fiery food one expects in Thailand. 

For old times sake, I had to have a favorite from the past, pak boong fai dang, which means morning glory vegetable stir-fried in a red hot wok (fai is Thai for fire and dang is red). The greens come in a Chinese style brown sauce with good-sized chunks of garlic and a scattering of fermented soy beans.

The menu is long, and Ngwanlee has a thrifty way to adjust for rising costs without reprinting it. A disclaimer reads, "The price may be changed. Must be sorry here." But whatever the price, you will not be sorry that you ate there.

Ngwanlee Langsuan Restaurant, 101/25-26 Soi Langsuan, Patumwan, Bangkok, Thailand. Tel: (02) 251-8366

The Answer to a Guessing Game

A few weeks ago, I posted a Thai guessing game. The idea was to guess the identity of a Bangkok restaurant's variation on one of the most popular Thai dishes in the United States.

Only one person got it right (congratulations, Anjali).  It was rad na. Here, that means soft wide rice noodles topped with Chinese broccoli and a thick, Chinese style gravy. 

At Patara, the ingredients are the same, but the preparation is radically different. There, sheets of fresh rice noodles are cut into squares, deep-fried and stacked, looking like crisp layers of filo pastry. Thin strips of beef and chunks of gai lan in a delicate sauce are spooned over the top.

Like this surprising rad na, Patara's food raises Thai cooking to a level that I hadn't seen before--traditional, yet imaginative and modern. 

Some of the dishes came from the first Patara, which opened in London in 1990. The Bangkok restaurant is in lively Thong Lor, far up a lane that branches off Sukhumvit 55.

The building is a refurbished Thai house. Inside, the look is contemporary but accented with antiques and Thai touches such as the Thai style day bed in the bar.

That bar produced the best cocktail that I had in Bangkok, the Lychee Pirinha, a blend of lychees, lime juice and rum. The long list of bar specialties includes a green mango margarita and a Bangkok martini infused with lemon grass and kaffir lime.

The Lychee Pirinha came from London, as did skewered lamb with panang curry sauce. That dish was introduced  to Bangkok with trepidation, because lamb isn't favored in Thailand. It turned out to be a hit, nonetheless. The taste brings to mind India, but the curry sauce is Thai. 

Stir-fried lettuce, new on the menu when I was there, was as simple and distinctive as the rad na. Placing a cover on the  intensely hot wok held in smoke that gave an edgy taste to the lettuce. 

Tiny appetizer dumplings were tinted with natural colors. Pork satay came wrapped in betel leaves. And soft shelled crab topped a green mango salad.

Big river prawns that looked more like small lobsters were speckled with green peppercorns and fried garlic, a different  interpretation of garlic pepper shrimp from others I saw in Bangkok, and very different from anything I've had at home.

And I had a rare chance to taste Thai primrose blossoms in a sweet and spicy salad. This dish is seasonal, and very few restaurants serve it, said Vitoon Sila-On of S&P, the restaurant group that includes Patara.

Founded by his mother, Patara Sila-On, S&P has grown to 100 or more restaurants and 200 bakery shops. Patara is expanding too. The latest branch opened recently in Beijing.

S&P food is more traditional than Patara's. In an S&P branch that looks out on the Chao Phrya river, I had very good green curry with beef, fried fish in sweet and sour mango sauce, garlic pepper spareribs, Chinese broccoli with salted fish and sticky rice with durian.

Patara is more upscale and innovative, as in dessert the night that I was there--young coconut ice cream with such typical Thai toppings as millet, lychees, jelly cubes and beans. In the midst of these sat a chocolate square with the restaurant name.

Only a small lighted sign on Sukhumvit 55 indicates the lane that leads to Patara.  My cab driver made several turns before he found it. To solve this problem, you can take the sky train to the Thong Lor exit, and the restaurant will send a tuk-tuk to pick you up.  

Patara Fine Thai Cuisine, 375 Soi Thong Lor 19, off Sukhumvit 55, Bangkok, Thailand. Tel:  0-2185-2960-1. Open for lunch and dinner daily.

Both S&P and Patara have published cookbooks. Patara's "In the Mood for Thai" explains how to make such dishes as the lamb with panang curry and the primrose salad and has an excellent section on Thai ingredients.  

One of the simpler recipes, easy for western cooks, is salmon steamed with black bean topping. 

PLA SALMON NUNG TAO SEE
Salmon in Black Bean and Fresh Ginger Crust
From Patara restaurant's cookbook, "In the Mood for Thai"

1 tablespoon Chinese black beans
1/2 cup warm water
3 tablespoons oil
1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped ginger
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
1 tablespoon finely chopped small hot chiles, or to taste
3 tablepoons vegetable or chicken stock
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 pound salmon steaks, lightly dusted with flour
Parsley sprigs and fine strips of red chile for garnish

Soak the beans in 1/2 cup warm water for 10 minutes. Squeeze out and reserve the water, then chop the beans.

Heat the oil in a wok. Add the ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant. Add the chopped beans, chiles and the stock. Continue to stir-fry.

Stir in the sugar, pepper and 2 tablespoons of the bean soaking liquid. Cook until reduced and thick.

Place the salmon on a heatproof plate lightly coated with oil. Spoon the black bean sauce over the salmon and coat thoroughly.

Place on a rack in a steamer over boiling water. Cover and cook 7 minutes, or until the salmon is cooked through.

Remove the salmon from the steamer. Divide into 2 portions and place each on a heated  plate. Garnish each with a parsley sprig and red chile strips.

Makes 2 servings.

 

A Wat with a Link to L.A.

The main reason to go to Wat Pho in Bangkok is to see the giant reclining Buddha inside the temple. 

Another is to visit the Wat Pho massage school.

And a third is to eat at a restaurant across the street.

Wat Pho attracts so many tourists that you feel pressured to walk quickly around the golden Buddha in order to make room for others. No place to sit and contemplate, and no time for that.

With Thai companions, I escaped the crowd into a more peaceful area, the monks' quarters, where we sought out an altar dedicated to Pha Thammaracha-Nutwat.

This monk came to Los Angeles in 1973 and served as head monk of Wat Thai in North Hollywood from 1979 to 2002. At the same time, he taught at Wat Pho, where he passed away in 2002.

With me was Pramorte (Pat) Tila, who was on the original board of directors of Wat Thai and was involved in building the temple.

Pat Tila lives in Thailand now. His son, Jet, was active in Hollywood's Thai Town  and the L.A. restaurant and cooking school scene until he moved to Las Vegas to become executive chef of Wazuzu in the Wynn Encore.

But I couldn't leave the wat without visiting the massage school, where students are trained in classical Thai massage, and customers serve as guinea pigs. 

The massages are communal. Modesty isn't an issue. You remain fully clothed. However, the guy next to me took his shirt off, which was not a pretty sight.

In years past, I came and went to the school like a regular, walking through the quiet grounds with nobody around. It was enchanting, like spending a moment in  "The King and I." Now, the school is full of tourists.   

The price for a massage has more than doubled since those days. But at less than $12 for an hour, it's still a bargain. The rate for Thais is less than half what foreigners pay.

Leaving the wat, we crossed the street to the Coconut Palm Restaurant, which is frequented by locals and students from a nearby commercial college. Tourists must find it too, because the long menu is in English and Thai.

Thais are picky about what they eat, and my friends critiqued every dish. I listened when Jet praised the mee grob. An expert at cooking almost anything, he has long been my personal guide to Thai food.

This mee grob was spicy and sweet, properly crisp and not sticky. And it was natural in color rather than tinted with catsup or chili sauce to make it look more appetizing. The garnishes included cross sections of pickled garlic heads, scallion tops and dried shrimp.

Jet also liked the filling for  khanom beaung, a Vientamese style crisp pancake folded over sweetened pickled radish, pork, dried shrimp, peanuts and bean sprouts. 

Pat Tila said that fried fish cakes (tod mun pla) were too loose and not sufficiently chewy. This doesn't mean that they didn't taste good.

Our driver, Sert, wanted to have rad na, because the Coconut Palm makes his favorite version of this rice nooodle dish. Pat spoke up that the sauce needed more nam pla (fish sauce). This would have made it saltier.

We also ate very spicy pork larb, prawn salad with lemongrass and roasted chile paste and fried rice with shrimp paste, which was sweet, spicy--and shrimpy. The bill for six dishes and drinks was around $15.

I would have gone back another day, but Bangkok's notorious traffic has to be factored into any plans. And I was staying in a part of town so unreachable at peak hours that one night a taxi driver simply refused to go there.

Coconut Palm Restaurant, 394/3-5 Maharaj Road. Pranakorn, Bangkok 10200, Thailand. (Tel) 0-2622-2246.