By Zane Barodia

Introduction

This Easter Holiday, I travelled to Thailand and was blown away by the amazing variety of food. It was all so alien compared to the food here in England. In this article, I will just highlight some of the best food I ate on my trip. All photos are 100% authentic.

Food

5. Thai Massaman (pork or chicken)

Thai Massaman is a curry with potatoes and usually a meat, fried with onions. It is widely popular in all of Bangkok, and also around the world, with other countries like Malaysia and India specialising in it. You can make it spicy, or if you prefer more mild, not then you do not need to.

4. Pad Thai

This dish has no need for an introduction. The chicken noodles with (if you want) seafood is the legend of Thai food itself. It comes with crushed peanuts and a wedge of lime for squeezing on top. It is actually believed to have Chinese origins. It started becoming popular in WWII, when everyone started making it. Then it became a world-famous dish, and here we are today.

3. Tom Yum Goong

This is probably the least well known on my list. It is a spicy soup with shrimps and chicken. The main word in that sentence is spicy. This is a fiery dish, and when I tried it I immediately had to put coconut milk in it to cool it down a little bit. It can be served with steamed rice if needed. There are hints of herbs like coriander and lemongrass to make it even more flavourful.

2. Fried Rice

I don’t know if this counts as a Thai food, but I saw it everywhere so I will include it. It can be done with any meat or no meat at all. Often served with vegetables, this does not always have to be with something on top. You can eat it plain as well. It can be a lunch or dinner (even though I had it for breakfast one day). Now I think we all know what number one is…

Special mention:

I should also add that there was a hige selection of street food available, very famous in Thailand – including satay chicken, BBQ seafood, shrimp roll, crocodile, gyoza and roti/pancake with lots of different toppings. You can even get scorpions on a sticks and deep fried Witchetty grubs!

1. Thai Green Curry

Eaten all over the world, this is the most popular and well-known Thai dish by a mile! With coconut milk and chicken in a beautifully flavoured sauce, this is in literally every restaurant in Thailand. You can add chillies for flavour and for colour if you would like. It first appeared in the early 1900’s and became a hit amongst the public immediately. Pad Thai is an absolute classic, and I actually made this at a Thai cooking class we did whilst we there!

Drinks

3. Green Fanta

Weird, because Fanta is normally orange or red in England. This was the Orange and Fruit twist flavour. In Thailand, there are many crazy flavours, but the only one I tried was green, or tropical. It was actually really nice, but only a little sweet.

2. Passionfruit juice

This flavour of juice I had never tried, but when I did it tasted fresh, and I loved it.  The seeds were still in it, and they were all in the same bottle, that looked like a cuboid with a round top and was really narrow.

1. Mango Juice/Shake/Slush/Smoothie

I would say I had a mango drink for most meals during the time of my visit. They all tasted so refreshing and most people just made it by grabbing mango, ice and blending it. Then put it in cup and there you had a mango smoothie.