Bangkok Part 3/5: Slightly overhyped

This part of my Bangkok report is horrendously late, and will cover those places that had stellar reputations and (in some cases) very long queues. Perhaps those who raved about the food exaggerated too much, or perhaps the quality has deteriorated recently, but I just didn’t find them to be as impressive as the reviews suggested.

Not that they’re bad, mind you. Some of them are even worth a try… they’re just not as mind-blowing as I had expected.

Thip Samai

This hugely famous pad thai shop was packed to capacity and had a long line out front even on a week night.

The queue to get into Thip Samai.

The noodles are pretty nice, a little sweetish, with very delicately balanced flavours. Any addition of condiments – be it a squeeze of lime or chilli flakes – will change the flavour noticeably. They use good, fresh ingredients and got the cooking down to a production-line level of efficiency so we got our food fairly quickly in spite of the crowds. There was even a station manned by a couple of cooks who do nothing but fry up paper-thin crepes of egg and wrap the noodles in them.

While the food was good, it was not exactly mind-blowing. There just wasn’t enough wok hei and the flavours just aren’t very robust. Now, having had a taste of what most people agree is one of the best pad thais around, I can safely say that the pad thai is nowhere near as good as the Penang char koay teow I grew up on. Probably no stir-fried noodle dish ever will be. That’s something we can be proud of as Malaysians.

Looks kinda like char koay teow, but nowhere near as good.

We also ordered this egg-wrapped Pattaya-style pad thai.

Aside from the pad thai, they also have a coconut slush that’s apparently made according to a recipe given to the shop by the King’s mother, specifically to pair with their pad thai. It was pretty good, sweeter than normal coconut water and with a slight hint of caramel. There is a small problem with it that could just be down to my personal taste – there was this slightly unpleasant smell of coconut oil every time I swallow a mouthful of the stuff. I wouldn’t order it again because of this, but Lady Fartsalot didn’t have any issue. At any rate, since it’s only 25 Baht a cup, it’s certainly worth trying out at least once.

A kingly drink.

Another famous drink at Thip Samai is their orange juice – the only juice I know of that is charged at market rate, depending on the types of oranges they were able to buy that day. It certainly tastes good, with plenty of orange pulp and the flavour of natural oranges. However, I thought it was a little overpriced at 130 Baht for a big bottle containing about 1 liter of the stuff.

Most expensive orange juice I have ever had.

Prawn pad thai

Having finished our meal at Thip Samai, being the gluttons that we are, we immediately hopped next door to another pad thai shop that serves prawn pad thai. It was a little wetter than the pad thai at Thip Samai, with big, nicely cooked prawns and some ‘prawn oil’ or something, but other than that it was more or less the same pad thai dish. And actually, I thought it tasted more of crab than it did of prawn.

The prawn is the undisputed star of this dish.

Kaiton Pratunam chicken rice

On the day we went to this shop, they were not open at their usual time because the whole city was in mourning due to the death of a prominent religious figure. This meant we had to wait for many hours till they opened later in the day, and had to change our plans significantly.

When the shop finally opened, it was immediately packed with people and the workers were furiously chopping up some massive birds. It looked like we were in for a memorable chicken rice meal.

I am disappointed, however, to say that it had not been worth the wait. The rice was very fragrant and had a strong chicken flavour, but everything else was painfully ordinary. On top of the rice was a very small portion of chicken which tasted like the sort of run-of-the-mill steamed chicken you could find at most stalls in Malaysia. The condiments are slightly different: there was a sweetish chilli sauce, cili padi, ginger and some sweet soy sauce, but beyond that, it was just a regular old chicken rice meal.

Looks for all the world like a mediocre chicken rice meal at a not-very-good coffee shop in some sleepy backwater town. Tastes like it, too, unfortunately.

Thean Song duck

The roast duck was very tender and came in a very rich and thick dark sauce. There was also a nice vinegary condiment that worked well with it. I was just a little disappointed with this one because it didn’t have much duck flavour.

Lots of duck meat but not really a lot of duck flavour.

The soft steamed bread at the same shop was a little better. Nice and warm and fluffy, it came with a generous helping of kaya. This kaya had the deep, rich orange colour of a good egg yolk and was extremely smooth. It was drizzled with what appeared to be evaporated milk. The combo would make for a really lovely light breakfast.

I actually liked this a lot more than I did the duck, carnivore though I may be.

The entries in this post had so much hype that my expectations were built up higher than they were able to deliver. In the next Bangkok installment, we will have a look at a few interesting items that we just stumbled upon without any expectations whatsoever. Stay tuned!

Leong Kee – Rockin’ it old-school… like a boss

Stall on the sidewalk outside 76, Jalan Tun H.S. Lee, 50000, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

We normally don’t like going to KL if we can help it, because we hate traffic jams and overpriced parking. But there was an anti-Lynas petition thing going on at Dataran Merdeka and we decided to brave the super-congested streets of KL to go contribute our signatures.

They committed to stay there until they get a million signatures. I hope they've hit their target by now.

Having signed the thing, and since we are seldom in KL, we went looking for dinner around the vicinity. What followed can be summed up as two unfulfilled dreams and one incredibly lucky find.

Unfulfilled Dream 1

I am ashamed to say that, though I’ve lived in Klang Valley for more than 10 years, I have yet to eat at Coliseum. Now, the same friends who were appalled at this also told me that the food was only mediocre. So my reason for wanting to eat there was not really for the food; it was just so I could finally say I did. Hopefully before the geriatric wait staff… err… retire.

Anyway, that was our original dinner destination. Then on the way there, we passed by Soong Kee Beef Noodles and I casually pointed out to Lady Fartsalot that the pork porridge there was pretty good. She immediately jumped and said THAT was the porridge she had wanted to try a few years ago but never had the chance to up till now!!! She MUST try it!!!

But I wanted Coliseum! I tried to talk her out of it. I had waited more years for Coliseum. This was supposed to be MY night to finally have the thing I’ve always wanted to try, dammit!

There are men, far better men than I am, who are able to win these sorts of arguments against their significant others. As for me, well, it looked like Coliseum will have to wait another few months or years.

Unfulfilled Dream 2
So we parked and paid an exorbitant fee. Then walked back to Soong Kee for the porridge.

As we walked up, however, we saw that the stall owner had just about finished packing up. He was sold out for the day.

Great. Expensive parking paid and no porridge to show for it. I was just about to suggest Coliseum again when Lady Fartsalot spotted something a short walk away from Soong Kee.

The Lucky Find

It was a stall. On a sidewalk. It looked like it came from one of those old-timey Chinese shows, and for a minute I wondered if we were looking at a film shoot.

... for a movie about a time when the gangsters were seriously stylish and the guns came with fabulous red tassels.

But there were no cameras around and I figured this was a real food stall.

We walked closer and saw that it was nothing more than a rough table with a simple wooden frame attached, to which has been affixed a few fluorescent light bulbs. The sign was all in Chinese characters but luckily I could recognise most of them. Pig parts soup and chicken rice – the menu was as spartan as the stall.

But, unfortunately for the ladies, the owners' physiques are nowhere near anything resembling a Spartan's.

That doesn’t seem to be a problem for the stall’s customers. There was quite a lot of them, eating at the rickety tables on the sidewalk, or sitting in their big cars stopped next to the stall as they waited for their takeaway orders to be ready.

The stall's 'kitchen extension' was inside the back of this beat-up van.

There were people from all walks of life there… from kids who looked college-aged to an older gentleman with the waistband of his pants pulled up almost to his armpits.

Under the harsh glare of the white lights, a the middle-aged owner was working at a brisk pace, chopping pig parts and chicken, ladling soup into bowls as he sent out a non-stop stream of food from his tiny stall.

This stall looked legit.

We obviously had to try the food, and boy were we happy with what we tasted.

It's usually really hard to be unhappy with any food that contains this much pork.

The mixed pork soup had very generous amounts of meat and organs. The meat was amazing, incredibly tender with a slight springiness to it. I don’t really eat internal organs, but I have it on the highest authority (Lady Fartsalot is a pig parts fanatic) that they are very good as well. The soup had a pretty unique taste: a fairly strong porky flavour with a slight sourness from pickled vegetables. However, she did complain that it wasn't as peppery as she would have liked.

I can't imagine anyone describing this as anything other than 'perfectly cooked'.

The poached chicken was equally great. The stall owner called it ‘smooth chicken’ and he wasn’t exaggerating. The meat was tender and silky, cooked just right and extremely juicy. The flavour was subtle, reminding me of Cantonese cooking, and went well with the white rice. 

Smoother than a black con artist and playa who can sing like Marvin Gaye and play the sax. At the same time.

Of course, being Malaysians, some of us will prefer some chilli dip to give the chicken some kick – no worries they got that too.

And a pretty powerful kick, too. This is spicier than most chicken rice chilli I've encountered.

It turned out to be a great meal – prepared the traditional way, without any frills. Just plain good cooking done by someone who had quite obviously been perfecting his art over many years.

So, so glad that our two previous dinner plans didn’t work out.

Got this shot as business was winding down for the day.

Snack-sized review

Pig parts soup and smooth poached chicken rice served from a tiny standalone stall on a sidewalk in KL. Simple, rustic food that’s made very well and offered at extremely good prices.

Stats

Price: As old-school as the stall’s looks: only about RM15 for a delicious meal for two including drinks.

Hours: Opens about 5:30pm till they run out… which could happen as early as 10pm.