windy_city_fan

We are visiting Bangkok for about 2.5 days in December with friends (also headed to Hua Hin for a day and half). Between our 2 families, we have 2 kids aged 5 and 7. The kids are perfectly comfortable eating mildly spicy Thai dishes or satays, Roti Mataba etc. We are staying at the Intercontinental near the Chit Lom BTS. Given our extremely short stay, whats the best places to eat great Thai food? We've heard that food courts can be a decent alternative to eating off the streets (probably the best places to eat). We noticed several eating options around the Chit Lom and Siam BTS stations viz. food courts like Eathai at Central Embassy, Food Loft and food courts in nearby malls like Amarin, Central World, Siam Paragon etc. To add to our confusion, there are also mall based branches of popularly recommended restaurants like Kalpapruek, Taling Pling and Somboon Seafood etc. We have a couple of questions: How do these latter restaurant branches compare with the above food courts? What would be the best food courts or sit down restaurant branches to eat at in that area (vicinity of Chit Lom and Siam BTS) if we had to narrow down to just 3 meals? We wouldn't mind paying a premium if a particular food court or restaurant offered better quality (fresher) food that isn't dumbed down for farangs but we've also heard that a higher price in Bangkok doesn't always mean better quality! Thanks in advance!

Thanks! Well, we really love to switch around cuisines to keep it interesting. A great bowl of slow cooked chili, a nice andouille gumbo, a Moroccan lentil soup, a hearty posole, a bowl of tonkatsu ramen or a nice well simmered Pho; any of these made well would satisfy me equally. However, if there is 1 cuisine that both my wife and I love, It'd be Thai cuisine. We'd go weak in the knees eyeing a nicely charred Pad Kee Mao basking in the glory of its wok hei or even a flavorful Pad Gra Prao. There are several foods typical to Mumbai that aren't made as well anywhere in the rest of India, let alone in the United States. For instance the vada pav is classic Mumbai street food; a sandwich or actually a slider involving a potato patty aka 'batata vada' placed between a soft very mildly sour and very slightly chewy 'pav'. There are several variations of the 'vada' itself but it is the pav that no one outside of Mumbai has managed to nail down. The pav is akin to a dinner roll; is of Portuguese origins and depending on your street vendor, sweet and spicy chutneys are added on and other fixings like fried chillies. The food we typically cook and eat at home most often is quite unlike hat's available at Indian restaurants here. We are originally from a coastal region south of Goa and we eat what's known as Saraswat Konkani cuisine. The cuisine is coincidentally vegetarian (or even vegan). However, seafood is pretty common as is consumption of tons of freshly scraped coconut (not coconut milk) for use in curries. As far as cooking other cuisines go, the last I cooked from one my of cookbooks was a couple of recipes from Ottolenghi's book 'Plenty' and from Fuschia Dunlop's "Land Of Plenty". I meant the ex-cast iron stomach in reference to eating off the street food stalls of Mumbai. I still do that on my trips back home but these days am likely to suffer the following morning!

No, we were hosting the site pages on a home server running off a domain name that we let expire. We had a baby, changed a couple of jobs and the blog suffered as a result! We have plans to revive it and one of these days hopefully, we'll be able to unveil it in a new avatar! We were in this small town called Jackson right off I-94 and our nearest culinary oasis was Ann Arbor. We would also find reasons to make occasional runs to Dearborn for middle eastern food and deserts and on to Chicago for wider culinary explorations

Hello! Originally from Mumbai; now living in greater NY metro area, I lived for a while in OH and in south central MI with occasional (some would say too frequent) foodie runs into Chicago! Much of my youth has been spent lining my (ex-cast iron!) stomach with Mumbai street food (of course when mom wasn't looking!). My wife and I used to run a now defunct blog on our eating adventures and we often get introduced within the family as the "crazy ones who drive hundreds of miles (and in some cases fly across the country!) for that 1 amazing meal!" Looking forward to learn from and contribute to these forums!