Thai food that needs to be discovered in New York

Jackfruit

Apologies for my long absence and silence. Yours truly has been sampling unusual culinary creations in the Kingdom of Thailand, where street carts, night markets, cafes and restaurants had a vast selection of fun edible stuff. Here’s just a small taste of what I found.

STREET FOOD THAT IS NOT SCARY


Jackfruit ice cream in a cone. Jackfruit itself is rubbery and tastes a bit like bubble gum.



Sweet sticky rice with sesame seeds served on a palm leaf, eaten with toothpicks.


One can eat many things on a stick.


BLACK JELLY







Chow-Guai is a vegetable jelly made from a Chinese plant. It's black and is eaten with ice and palm sugar. This is a dish shrouded in mystery -- no other information can be found about this.

DRIED SOUR FRUITS





BUGS! OF ALL SORTS!


Crickets, beetles, larvae! Play the slideshow to see me eating them. These bugs were sold from a street cart. I picked out the ones I wanted to try, they were scooped into a plastic bag for me and sprayed with some kind of salty soy sauce-like spray but remained crunchy. We only saw one bug cart like this throughout the duration of our trip, so I don't think they are very popular. My eyes lit up when I saw this street cart, so I'm glad we decided to try the bugs that same instant and not to wait to find another one later.

SNAKEHEAD FISH


This is a grilled snakehead fish. It is called so because its head looks like it is covered in snake-like scales and because of its other peculiar features: this freshwater fish breathes atmospheric air with primitive lungs and feeds on other fish and small animals like frogs and rats. Not much of a fish now, is it?

SOMETHING I FORGET THE NAME OF


This is a Muslim dessert crepe that one purchases with a bag of colorful palm sugar strings. We were told it would be unbearably sweet and kind of dry but it turned out moderately sweet and delicious. It was a little bit like eating cotton candy in a crepe. We tried it in Ayutthaya.



KHAO SOI NOODLES


Khao soi noodles are deep fried and crunchy, floating in a very rich coconut milk-based curry.


VAST FOOD COURTS


This food court at the Siam Paragon mall in Bangkok is the largest food court I have ever seen in my life. It had an extraordinary selection of restaurants, stalls, cafes, mini-grocery shops and bakeries. I haven't seen a larger food court even in Japan. Does anyone know of a larger food court? My favorite finds here were the marshmallow taco, hot dog pancakes and a bear-shaped bread bun.

This is a reminder that a whole world of weird food exists beyond the shores of our city, but to stick to the focus of this blog, I will try to research for you guys where you can sample some of this stuff on our soil.