‘Real Spicy Thai Food’? Not a word of it

Thailand was one of my most beautiful food holidays in recent years. The lively, silky soft jungle curry‘s in a hut along the road, in the sultry, clammy tropical evening heat, with the tastiest, juiciest fresh tofu. The bunches of green pepper granules, fresh from the stick, the living swords on the market. I have tasted completely new flavors there, such as water bug: a kind of cockroach-like water insect that has something dropped through the pheromones that the male produces and at the same time has a huge drifting pear ice perfume. In the same restaurant near Krabi we ate plump raw shrimp with chili and raw garlic on whole slices of lime, with peel and all. In short: all things I had never encountered here in a Thai restaurant.

Until last week.

I recognized that raw-shrimp dish immediately on the website of Khaosaan Road-Real Spicy Thai Food, in The Hague. « Thai Food is not only about ‘Tom Yam Kung’ (…) The Restaurant Concept is Original Thai Flavour, not Westernized Like Other Thai Restaurants Abroad. You May Experience Eating Authentical Hot Thai Food Just Like Eating in Thailand« They write.

Hell Yeah, Bring It On!

Khaosaan Road – a small two -storey shop on Nobelstraat – refers to a famous, busy entertainment street in Bangkok, where all tourists get drunk. It immediately feels like a real Thai eatery: the coconut sugar is stacked in boxes against the counter, a new fridge is still in the corner behind the tables in the cardboard, you have to ask for a napkin or the cutlery yourself. But what makes it really authentic is the sign on the toilet on which an icon does not summarize us to stand with your shoes on the glasses and squat.

Then that ‘real spicy thai food’ – not a word lied to: it is really Thai and really spicy. The menu – a plastic bolder with insert covers – consists of three parts: a menu in the Thais, in Chinese and in English. They partly overlap, but the dishes in the back seem to have been included somewhat duty, because they are expected at a Thai restaurant. The Penang Curry is certainly not the level of what else we eat, which is especially dusty due to an excess of turmeric powder.

Crying tiger

For the topper is where you have to be. Google Translate must be involved. That sometimes delivers some vague translated descriptions: ‘garden wading fish’ turns out to be just dorade; What is ‘crying tiger’ remains enigmatic for the time being.

The fresh shrimps are not on slices lime here, but are sprinkled with chips kaffir-lime leaf and a generous puddle lime juice, so that the raw shrimp meat slightly white as ceviche, the lime acid also just gets the sharp edges of the excess raw garlic (you still don’t want to kiss). In any case, it does justice to the memory of the court in Thailand. But the raw crab is even tastier and more surprising. A very blue crab, in pieces, with the same kind of dressing of fish sauce, lime juice, sugar and chili, but in a different ratio and with leafy. A perfect balance of acid, sweet-pitty and that savory celery taste opposite that soft, sweet fresh crab meat, beautiful at room temperature. What a pleasure.

Larb – or Laab – you see more often in the Netherlands. A kind of lukewarm salad made of minced meat, usually chicken or pig, usually in North Thaise style, with lots of lime and lemongrass. The Larb Ped Here is more Isaan-Stijl (a region in the northeast) with red onion, mint, broken chili peppers and ground spices that give a more earthly taste that fits well with the flashing of the chopped duck. Just like the nutrition of the roasted granules Sticky Rice. They really belong, but are not always used in the average Thai. They not only give taste and crunch, they also bind the sauce to the loose minced meat, by sucking it up a bit.

What also makes it very authentic is that the LARB is really very hot. The friendly lady in the ministry asked: how spicy want you to eat? We said very cool: just as it should be. During dinner it was still possible, it was really not a pleasure the next morning. But that is part of the work, I am happy to talk about you.

A prominent dish on the map is the ‘crispy German pig’s leg’. It is a good color salt, because intensely pink, but not too salty ham disk, softly and then crispy deep gold fried. The meat is megazacht (you pull the bone out without any difficulty) and not dry, the skin crispy as a pork belly, the fat runs out when you put the knife in it. Nothing wrong with that, but it is really interesting because of the sauces. One is dark brown, earthly acid of the tamarind, chili and roasted chili drug and presumably something of soy. The other Superfris, fruity of lime juice and fresh chili pepper, with raw garlic, fish sauce, sugar and lime leaf. Both very differently, but both very Thai and nice and sour, to cut through that fatty pig.

The only thing we have not seen is Coriander tonight. The ladies from the kitchen say they don’t use it because many of their Chinese clientele are allergic to that. That is not that authentic. On the other hand, that Chinese clientele is the reason that we can eat the adventurous, real Thai dishes here, dishes that the average Dutch person will usually not venture. You win some, You Lose Some. Khaosaan Road is a wonderful discovery.

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