28 thrilling meals in Thailand with Nok Suntaranon

1. Fireworks exploded with my first bites in Thailand, a wok-fried dish of sweet mud crabmeat laced with the pop of fresh green peppercorn branches, herbal lime leaves, and chile heat at Khun Toom, a second-generation, family-owned seafood hall in Mahachai district, a fishing village in Samut Sakhon province just 40 minutes southeast of Bangkok. There were so many seafood treasures on our table — a sour mackerel soup tart with garcinia, salt-and-pepper fried shrimp in oil tinted orange with shrimp fat, tender squid in creamy golden sauce of salted egg yolk and chili jam — that offered a brisk primer to the multiple taste senses a Thai meal can simultaneously engage. Nok insisted such shimmering, unvarnished flavors are a rarity these days in Bangkok. And as we walked to a nearby bridge just as the sun was setting orange and pink over the boats floating peacefully in the Mae Klong River, we couldn’t have felt farther from the big city.

2. With the temperature still pushing 100 degrees after dark, we needed a cooler for dessert. So Nok brought us to Seng Sim Ee (Chula, Soi 5, Suan Luang Market), a Bangkok classic from her high school days specializing in nam kaeng sai, Thai shaved ice with fruit and sweet syrup and 100 toppings to choose from. We spooned into ice scoops splashed with coconut cream piled high with dark grass jellies, jackfruit, seeds, mung bean noodles, fresh-scooped young coconut meat, and water chestnuts glazed in halos of pink corn starch, bowls of coconut cream topped with softer chunks of older coconut (“we call this ‘coconut-coconut,’ ” Nok says), and bowls of ice topped with a dark, sweet broth steeped from longan garnished with candied persimmon.

3. Bangkok has many fantastic markets, but Nok considers Or Tor Kor Market the finest for quality, and its sprawling aisles offer a brilliant introduction to some of Thailand’s best ingredients and prepared foods. I tasted satay skewers fresh off the charcoal grill and relishes that made my taste buds spin with sweetness, sourness, fermented seafood funk, and spice. But a trip through the aisles of Thai fruits alone — Marion plums, mangosteens, umpteen mangoes, rambutans, and the most coveted durian in the world (buttery Kanyao) — was an education in itself.

4. The ancient holy city and former Thai capital of Ayutthaya just north of Bangkok is renowned for massive, freshwater prawns, and the riverside pavilion of Krua Taen did not disappoint, serving up prawns as large as lobsters perfectly roasted over coconut coals, with puddles of molten orange fat near the heads ideal for enriching the rice. This kitchen served an array of other memorable flavors, as well, including an incendiary minced spare rib in dry curry that came with a garnish of honey-pickled garlic cloves wrapped in spicy cumin leaves that offered yet another eye-opening bite of sweet-and-sour prickly heat.

5. The intimate, open kitchen atelier of Aksorn in Bangkok takes its tasting menu cues from Thai cookbooks of the 1940s through the 1970s, an era when Western influences were being introduced and the original Central department store, where Aksorn now occupies the top terraced floor, was known for imported books and magazines. Australian chef David Thompson’s Michelin-starred cuisine is polished and subtle, with beautiful renditions of fresh vermicelli in crab curry, sardines with fermented bean paste on toast, grilled rice with cured pork, coconut-prawn relish, and sour fish soup with sun-dried seabrite, and tapioca in warm coconut cream with pumpkin for dessert.

6. Chinese culture has influenced Thai cuisine since the 15th century, especially through noodles. It’s also apparent in dim sum parlors like Chok Dee Tae Tiam, a bustling breakfast cafe in Hat Yai. I enjoyed the variety of steamed-to-order dumpling baskets here, but what I’m still dreaming about is the Hakka-style bak kut teh, a clay pot of soup that arrived to the table still roiling with heat in the clutches of a wire carrier. Inside its dark and herbal brew, snappy bundles of enoki mushrooms, crunchy yuba bean curd rolls, and some of the most tender spare ribs ever bobbed beneath the surface.

7. Fresh rice vermicelli — kanom jeen — is a blank canvas for its toppings. And at Kanom Jeen Klong Toey in Hat Yai, the noodles come with curries, deep-fried quail eggs, chicken wings, and a dozen other side dishes of dried anchovies, dried shrimp, pickled mustard greens, sweet radish, and other vegetables. I was especially impressed by the bouquet of 10 different herbs that bloomed from a pick-your-own bucket on our table, from lemon verbena to Thai and Holy basil, pennywort (said to cure heartbreak), culantro, cilantro, sour garcinia, crunchy watercress, and bitter cashew leaves.

8. To step inside the century-old Yin Gee Thong in downtown Trang is to walk into an aromatic cloud of spice shop history, where four generations of Sanunchartvanitch family ownership have curated the 500 tins of spices that line its shelves. Among them are proprietary blends synonymous with Trang’s famous roast pork (rich with anise, cardamom, and fennel), for beef (anise, cumin, black pepper, and mace), and a turmeric heavy biryani powder vivid with coriander and cinnamon. The fiery kua kling red curry paste here, unable to be replicated in America, is key to some of Kalaya’s dishes.

9. Watching Nok cook in the kitchen of her mother, Kalaya Suntaranon, was bittersweet because Nok’s mom was hospitalized with back pain. Yet, it was also magical to watch the daughter take over the two burners in this humble home kitchen and orchestrate a feast like the great chef she’s become. Stellar seafood from Yantakhao’s market — whole pompano, tiger shrimp, and squid still filled with creamy roe — shined. But a complex curry with various cuts of beef also taught me how Thai people love a complexity of meat textures in their dishes, as well, from tenderloin to earthy liver and a “Tiger Cries” cut of brisket prized for a springy resilience that “even the tiger cries when he chews it.” This was also my first experience eating rice paddy water bugs, whose strong aroma when singed in a basket over the stove (before being mashed into a chile relish) has been described as that of a “sweet banana.”

10. Part of Nok’s mission is to preserve disappearing flavors, and she found a kindred spirit in chef Khanaporn “Aum” Janjerdsak of Trang Ko’e, whose private dinners in Trang are devoted to exploring historic flavors of the Peranakan tradition of mixed-culture cooking that emerged from 700 years of migration. Using antique china plates, Aum produced one the most elegant meals of our trip, from crispy top-hat-shaped pastry cups (an homage to British high tea) filled with shrimp and daikon to pork braised in homemade red rice wine, shrimp in cashew curry, and a stunningly beautiful dessert of crushed ice tinted deep blue with butterfly pea leaf flowers, topped with the glint of silver foil, made to look a crashing ocean wave in the Andaman Sea.

11. We ate noodles daily in Thailand, but I was transfixed by the delicately resilient snap of the thin egg noodles made on antique machinery at Mee Ko Lumm, an ageless noodle shop around the corner from Nok’s childhood home in Yantakhao. A kiln-like smoker smoldering with timber from local rubber plantations produces the most deeply smoked char siu pork ever to be laid over top. Pair it with sliced crushed peanuts, chile vinegar, and sliced smoked liver (Nok’s favorite), and I could savor these every day for lunch.

12. The southern city of Trang is famous for roast pork, and chef Jintana Sutharoj carries on her family’s tradition there at Jay Laan Guay-Jab. Not only is the crispy pork itself a crackling-skinned masterpiece, but the shop’s signature pork noodle soup is a profound homage to pig in its many forms. Velvety chunks of braised belly, cubes of blood, liver, and crunchy chopped pig ears ribbon a dark broth that’s stewed for hours from neck bones and five spice and puddles inside the holes of thick rice noodles that curl inside the broth like tubes of macaroni.

13. Fermentation is an essential building block of Thai food, the unmistakable twinge of fish sauce and shrimp paste adding their tidal persuasion to so many dishes. But in Nok’s Southern family home the Queen of Umami is budu, a fermented liquid of salted mackerel bodies used in the sweet dressing of khao yum rice salad that Kalaya Suntaranon ages under her counter for several months. Nok gave me an unforgettable sniff of the family budu at three different stages, and the early months almost knocked me out. The finished version takes a year, but by six months something magical was already happening. The earlier stench had begun to blow off and was replaced by a mysterious deep-sea essence that’s the ancient Thai counterpart to Roman garum.

14. Chicken is a favorite snack everywhere in Thailand, but we got to sample two very different but also memorable renditions of the Southern style within 24 hours. At Gai Yaang Jah Toh, a roadside stand in Trang, we got to sample Muslim-style grilled birds roasted over sparking charcoals with a sweet coconut milk curry sauce infused with coriander and ginger that was painted over top to order with a brush made of bundled lemongrass stalks. In the bustling port city of Krabi, we stopped at one of Nok’s favorites, Kanom Jeen Koh Joi, for wok-fried chicken whose garlicky orange crust was laced with fish sauce and the hum of MSG, served with fried shallots, housemade vermicelli, and different curry sauces.

15. The Southern Thai islands are renowned for their pristine seafood and bright curries, and we found a beautiful perch to sample them at Baan Rim Nam, an open-air dining room overlooking Phang Nga Bay on Koh Yao Yai that we accessed by a squid boat turned water taxi from our hotel on nearby Koh Yao Noi. This was the most memorable crab curry I ate, served over nests of thin, blue rice noodles. The fried snapper glazed with palm sugar and fish sauce was also spectacular, as were the piles of Andaman Sea dog conch harvested from right in front of the restaurant (splashed with tangy nam jim). A rich, warm pandan-infused coconut cream was served for dessert in coconuts cracked open just before we ate them.

16. We experienced Andaman seafood in its most primal form— just caught on long-tail boats and roasted over bamboo fires inside remote Toh Buad Cave, used by fishermen to shelter from storms. Whole fish, wild mussels simmered with lemongrass, and local multigrain rice cooked in a wok over a campfire anchored the meal along with prawns, squid, and satay beef cooked over charcoal braziers — even better eaten on banana leaf plates splashed with a local variation of nam jim seafood sauce tanged with tamarind and sweet palm sugar. This was the first of several meals cooked by renowned chef “Ma” Kanchana Maikaew.

17. At the Fish Basket, a floating seafood market in the harbor of Koh Yao Noi, we ate pristine oysters grown on ropes that dangled from the raft. They were shucked on site and topped with crispy fried shallots, the citrusy pop of bead-shaped caviar limes, a dab of chili jam, and acacia buds whose bitter green crunch left a lingering honeyed sweetness to counter the briny finish.

18. Sator beans — a.k.a. “stinky beans” and a fixture on Thai crudité platters and in stir-fry — can be startling at first encounter. They look like favas and snap like green almonds or unripe olives but release a camphorous aroma true to their nickname that is an acquired taste. We harvested them from trees with long-handled knives and ate them fresh from their slender pods — which seemed both milder and more potent all at once. Halfway through our trip, I’d come to appreciate sators, and to regard their powerful personality as an essential counterpoint to balance the other big flavors of a bold Southern Thai feast.

19. Thailand offers sweets that are just as intense as its savory foods, and Roti My Friend on Koh Yao Noi made some of the best roti I’ve ever eaten. They’re cooked in two distinct styles — crispy, with the gossamer crepes fried in margarine then chipped into crunchy bits drizzled with sugar and sweetened condensed milk, or “soft,” cooked more quickly into pliant, stretchy ribbons that are easy to pull apart or wrap around the grooved slices of fresh-scooped young coconut.

20. “Thailand has never been colonized, so we’re not afraid of foreign influences in our food,” said Sarun “Phi Ping” Charoensuwan, Thailand’s former ambassador to France and Korea. So it was fitting Nok’s good friend and his wife, Weeree “Siang” Thitipoonya, would dine with us at Lerdtip Wanghin, where celebrity Thai Iron Chef “Gigg” Kamol carries on his family’s Chinese-Thai tradition in a low-key neighborhood restaurant with big-time flavors. It was recently named the 87th best restaurant in Asia by World’s 50 Best. I could see why. The restaurant’s signature whole raw crab marinated in tangy nam jim seafood sauce was a raw crustacean revelation, as was Kamol’s steamed Phuket lobster splashed with sesame oil fried garlic, a Hong Kong technique that resulted in the most velvety tender lobster I’ve ever eaten. Just as intriguing was a seared Japanese wagyu steak over a bed of spicy dry curried rice, pad prik khao, that was served crisping in a hot stone bowl, a dolsot bibimbap inspiration Kamol brought back from Korea while cooking for his friends, the Charoensuwans, at the Thai embassy in Seoul.

21. “Bangkok’s sidewalks are lined with street vendors from whom you can put together a fantastic meal for just a few dollars. I focused primarily on sweets and snacks, and my favorite were kanom krok, the bubble-shaped fritters made from coconut milk rice flour batter. Fresh from the griddle, with wafer-like wings on the side, their shape offers both delicate crunch and custard-like creaminess, with a subtle sweetness to contrast savory fillings like scallions or corn.

22. Translating home recipes to a restaurant setting is one of Nok’s goals, and the intimate parlor-style dining room of Baan Nual, an unmarked house in Bangkok’s Soi Sam Sen 2 neighborhood, offers an appealing model. Former Vogue Thailand art designer Sittisak Sakornsin left publishing to open this hidden eatery with his sister, chef Yuwarat Sakornsin. Their takes on the Central Thai cooking they grew up with feature homey preparations, from crab rice to sauteed bitter acacia greens with ground pork. Their signature is a stunningly rich shrimp dish with evaporated milk, garlic, and shrimp fat. (“Good on fettuccine, too!” says Sittisak).

23. The Thai dessert som choun is essentially seasonal fruit in sweet syrup. But in its most coveted, regal form, as served at Padung’s Kitchen, an exclusive cooking school specializing in royal recipes, the dish draws power from patience, precision, and subtlety. Culinary instructor Padung Kaewvichit takes days to make the syrup from separate pandan and jasmine infusions that are then steeped with a rare citrus called som sar. When poured over carefully pitted Thai stone fruits then garnished with fine slivers of ginger, green mango, and roasted shallots, it’s cooling, calming, dynamic, and so aromatic that Nok raves, “There’s nothing like it on the planet.”

24. Translating rustic cuisine with intense flavors into a luxurious Michelin-style tasting menu without sacrificing soul is a daunting task. But Sorn, recently named the best restaurant in Thailand (and No. 2 in Asia) by the World’s 50 Best restaurants, aces the test with 16 spectacular courses that convey the spirit and ingredients of Southern Thailand with playfully elegant creativity and bright flavors. From raw Phuket lobster with green mango chile paste to crab in yellow curry paste, and inventive presentations for coconuts, cashews, abalone, sator beans, and special rice cooked to order in clay pots over charcoal. The stunningly pretty “Sea Holds the Forest” take on khao yum rice salad even uses budu dressing. Nok criticized the curry course (not intense enough for her), but by the time we devoured all nine Thai sweets on the elaborate dessert cart, we all agreed this was a special, memorable meal.

25. Pad Thai, the iconic noodle dish most associated with Thai restaurants in America, is hardly as ubiquitous in Thailand. I only encountered one worth mentioning, from Pad Thai Fai Ta Lu in Bangkok. Unlike the carb-forward noodle heaps in the American rendition, the noodles here were sparse but also infused with a tangy savor that functioned primarily as a springboard for the buttery head-on prawns and tofu also tucked neatly inside the folded banana leaf bundle.

26. Thailand’s cuisine has distinctly regional personalities, so we missed out on some flavorful adventures by not traveling north. A take-out meal of Esaan specialties from Bangkok’s Somtum Jay So, however, was a tantalizing tease. Deeply smoked and tender grilled chicken, spicy beef laab crunchy with roasted rice powder, snappy grilled pork neck with chili sauce, spicy little round sausages and, of course, the signature green mango salad — its crunchy laces pungent with fish sauce, chiles with fermented raw crab — left my lips tingling. I used fingerfuls of sticky rice to mop up extra sauce. Now I know where I’m heading next time in Thailand: Chiang Mai!

27. Nok recalls when “boat noodles,” or guay-tiew-ruea, were still dished out from vendors on actual boats into tiny, one-gulp cups she and her friends would stack up high in an eating competition. It’s more common now as a packaged ramen flavor, reduced to a thin, dark broth shaded with five-spice and MSG. But a more traditional version is still available at Thong Smith Siamese Boat Noodles, a chain with a polished rustic vibe in the upscale food court of Bangkok’s Central Embassy mall. The dark thick broth there is incredibly nuanced, its five-spice and lemongrass notes enriched with coconut milk and pig’s blood — a combo known as nantok, or “waterfall.” The brew clings to thin, snappy noodles and coats your lips with a swelling heat when you slurp. Right next door, Thong Sweet is Smith’s dessert sibling, serving up fantastic coconut ice, pandan noodles with coconut milk, and irresistible fried bananas.

28. Coffee culture in Thailand is experiencing a new wave. You can still taste the old-school style all throughout the South, brewed dark and strong over sweetened condensed milk, as we had at the century-old Soon Seng in Nok’s hometown of Yantakhao. But just around the corner, we found wedding photographer-turned-barista Wathanyu Chuchana, indulging his passion for coffee at a shaded card table beside the road called Somsook Slowbar, hand-pressing meticulous espressos and elaborate iced coffees from high-end Asian beans. Spurred by a now decades-old royal Thai project to replace the opium farms of Northern Thailand with coffee, specialty arabica coffee is finally taking off alongside a growing coffee house culture, despite the relative high cost of Thai beans. I enjoyed caffeinating from Gray18Cafe in Trang, and Rise and MiVana in Bangkok, as well as Nana Coffee Roasters, whose Moonstone blend was remarkably expressive of lychee fruit.