What to eat in Bangkok, from breakfast skewer to midnight roti.

The checklist

Fifteen dishes for a first trip.

• ☐ Pad kra pao — minced pork or chicken stir-fried with holy basil and chilli, over rice with a fried egg. Often called Thailand’s real national dish.
• ☐ Khao man gai — poached chicken on rice cooked in stock, with ginger-soy sauce and broth.
• ☐ Boat noodles — small bowls of dark, spiced pork or beef noodle soup. Order several.
• ☐ Moo ping — charcoal-grilled pork skewers with sticky rice, a breakfast classic.
• ☐ Som tam — green papaya salad pounded to order. Isan-style stalls make it hottest.
• ☐ Pad see ew — wide rice noodles with dark soy, egg and Chinese broccoli.
• ☐ Pad thai — best from a stall that cooks it for Thai customers.
• ☐ Tom yum — the hot and sour soup, with prawns.
• ☐ Green curry with rice, at a curry-and-rice stall.
• ☐ Mango sticky rice — best from March to June, in mango season.
• ☐ Roti from a late-night cart, with banana and condensed milk.
• ☐ Khanom buang — crisp little Thai crêpes, sweet or savoury, in Chinatown.
• ☐ Larb — minced meat salad with lime, chilli and toasted rice.
• ☐ Satay with peanut sauce from a grill cart.
• ☐ A Thai iced tea, orange and sweet, to put out the chilli.

By the hour

A Bangkok eating day.

Where to go

Five places to eat your way through.

• Yaowarat (Chinatown) — the busiest street food in the city after dark. MRT Wat Mangkon is the nearest station.
• Silom Soi 20 — an office-worker lunch street, best roughly 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; most vendors pack up by 2.
• Victory Monument — the city’s boat noodle neighbourhood, plus Isan stalls for som tam and larb.
• Wang Lang Market — a local market across the river; take the ferry from Tha Chang pier.
• Or Tor Kor Market — next to Chatuchak, with a food court of regional Thai dishes.

Ordering

How to order at a Bangkok stall.

• Pick the specialist. A stall that cooks one or two things, with a queue of locals, usually does them best.
• Point, then say how hot. “Pet” is spicy, “mai pet” not spicy. Pad kra pao is usually ordered spicy.
• Season it yourself. Noodle stalls leave a caddy of sugar, fish sauce, chilli vinegar and dried chilli on the table. Taste first.
• Stack the boat noodle bowls. They are small on purpose, a leftover from the days they were sold from canal boats. Three or four is normal.
• Eat it hot. Choose food cooked in front of you over trays sitting in the sun, and drink bottled water.
• Carry small notes for street stalls, and expect places near big sights to charge more than local neighbourhoods.

Copy this

Your Bangkok food passport.

• ☐ Moo ping at breakfast — street: ___
• ☐ Pad kra pao — spice level I asked for vs got: ___
• ☐ Khao man gai before it sold out — yes / missed it: ___
• ☐ Boat noodles — bowls stacked: ___
• ☐ Som tam — tears shed: ___
• ☐ A Yaowarat night — best bite, with: ___
• ☐ Mango sticky rice — in season or not: ___
• ☐ A dish I pointed at and never learned the name of: ___

Keep the trip

Remember the stall, not just the dish.

The hardest part of a Bangkok trip is finding that one stall again. Snap each stop in PlateDiary and the dish is cut out and filed under the place, so the map shows exactly which corner of Yaowarat sold the noodles. Capture works with roaming off.

Every name is optional — “the green one, very spicy” is a perfectly good save. Prices stay in baht, and when you are home, your Served story picks the dish of the month and your new places, ready to flip through or share as a poster.