Thai Food

I estimate that, during my year-plus in Bangkok, I ate more than 1,000 real Thai meals prepared by real Thais. This is both good, because I know what Thai food should be like, and bad, because I know there is a lot I can't buy here.

So how to get real-tasting Thai food? As the microeconomists would say, you can make (from a cookbook) or buy (at a restaurant) widely enough to get a feeling of Bangkok-like variety. Here are my recommendations for Thai cookbooks and Thai restaurants in the East Bay:

Thai Cookbooks

You've got to give David Thompson credit. Thai Food's seemingly generic title disguises an ambitious project: to convey the depth and breadth of all Thai food -- high and low, palace and street, North, South, Central, and Northeast. This massive book provides recipes for all the obvious classics, plus many, many that you are unlikely to see in any other cookbook -- recipes, for example, for odd desserts that you would normally buy as a gift to your spirit house, or for moo grob, a delicious fried pork skin concoction properly prepared over four days.

The book is beautiful. Just looking at the pictures, you can tell Thompson is very serious -- that this is what the best dishes look like, that this is right. The only problem: the book is so thick it doesn't hold open well. Sure, beginners may find it imposing, but this instant classic is the ultimate reference source for the farang (foreign) cook.
It Rains Fishes: Legends, Traditions, and the Joys of Thai Cooking by East Bay author and Haas alumna Kasma Loha-unchit, is not so much a cookbook as a disquisition on Thai food: its philosophy, its unique ingredients, its social context. The recipes work, but it's a shame there aren't more of them -- I think the average farang cook would have a bit of difficulty extrapolating from them. And a few of the classic recipes -- larb (meat salad), for example -- would have been nice.
Then there's Thai Home-Cooking from Kamolmal's Kitchen (no picture). It's a decent little paperback with a very wide variety of recipes (my initial attraction), but recipes turn out a bit random. And no pictures!
Feel free to send me review copies of other cookbooks, if you like! Incidentally, the best places to buy the necessary ingredients are Chao Thai (on University, good for curry pastes, a wide variety of fish/soy sauces (including the always incredible Healthy Boy brand of mushroom-flavored light soy sauce), and freezable ingredients like kaffir lime leaves), Berkeley Bowl (for veggies), and Ranch 99.

Thai Restaurants

Here, in order, are SF East Bay Thai Restaurants I consider worth messing with, as well as their specialties:
  1. Thai Noodle (Berkeley): People bypass this place due to its divey, purple neon look, but it is great for all types of Thai "street food." The Thai Boat Noodle is the most flavorful beef noodle dish you can get anywhere -- pho joints be damned! Good for anything where you don't expect lots of vegetables. Extra: Thai Noodle now has some great dishes available nowhere else, including Khao Kaa Moo (slowly braised pork leg), Khao Soi (a Chiang Mai style coconut curry soup with egg noodles), and Woonsen Pad Thai (a seafood-based pad thai made with mung bean noodles). They're all really good.

  2. Hua Hin (Berkeley): Damn, their muu yang (roast pork) is good, and they have an authentically fiery tom yam (hot-and-sour) soup. The other stuff is good too, but dishes tend to resemble each other after a while. Memorable as well to me: Eggplant with Beef, Sweet & Sour Pork.

  3. Dara (Berkeley): A small menu, but good for Northeastern food: larb, yam, and this great Vientiane duck. Plus this is the only restaurant in the Bay Area that you can get authentic hot sticky rice with your meal. (You can get sticky rice at the Wat, below, too.)

  4. Thai Delight (Berkeley): Bland at times, but the best Pad See Ew in all Christendom. Get it! (Or get Pad Keemao, AKA drunken noodles, its spicier cousin.) Their red coconut curry-based Pineapple Curry is also quite good. The rest... well, it's OK.

  5. Ruen Pair (Berkeley): Varied menu and good on the spicy stuff, but a bit pricey for what it is.

  6. Thep Naaree (Albany): Seems to put a lot of effort into their preparations (they even appear to make their own curry paste) but I can't say I've been bowled away.

  7. Phuping (El Cerrito): Sure, it's got a terrible name, but they make authentic-tasting dishes. Despite its connection to SF's famed Thep Phanom, it has just never leapt out at me.

  8. Wat Mongkolwatanaram (Berkeley): Not a restaurant -- it's the Thai Buddhist temple on Russell, near Berkeley Bowl. Some stuff you can't get anywhere else (like various kanom-style desserts, including the crowd pleaser kanom croke), a few things rock (the fried chicken is awesome, especially with real sticky rice and nam jim, the spicy-sweet dipping sauce), and some stuff is boring (beef noodle soups and steam-table curries.) Go before noon to avoid the dreadlocked crowds and their bovine queueing for Veggie Pad Thai.

    And finally....

  9. Friends don't let friends go to Cha-am. Cha-am sucks, people! Anyone who truly knows Thai food hates Cha-am, and it causes clinical depression in several Thailand-based Peace Corps volunteers I've known. Get it through your heads, people of Berkeley!

  10. I haven't been to Soi4 in Rockridge. People say it's very good -- but what do they know? It also appears to be named after Silom Soi 4, or in other words, Patpong. I know it's passe to name your restaurant after Thai flowers, but after the principal red light district? (And if it's Sukhumvit Soi 4, that's no better.)

  11. People in Los Angeles (or at least, Zagat-voting ones) seem to think that the two Saladang restaurants are the bee's knees. Though Saladang Song is very pretty, the menus are relatively limited, and the food... well, it's not amazing.
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