Thailand a country with a huge food culture

How many times have you heard that, its not always easy to pick a good restaurant in a new tourist destination or city, more often than not you regret your choice and leave half satisfied, cutting your loss and taking one just for being a tourist.

Here I am “Nepo Kitchen” in Thailand a week’s work at a resort, helping to get the kitchen ready and prepare for the coming high season. It’s the fourth time I’ve been at this seaside resort just north of Khao Lak and its always more than an assignment.

Go and eat dinner at the traditional Thai seafood grill restaurant just up yonder, it sounded like a good idea. So off we went, to a village I don’t know the name of and a restaurant that I have no idea what it was called. so sorry I can't recommend it.

The menu was listed and served Thai style, presented in the middle pf the table, sharing family style. Our visit was during the quiet tourist shoulder period, it was a big restaurant with maybe 100 places. there were only 2 other occupied tables, more staff than guests, it could’ve been a warning sign if it wasn’t highly recommended.

Ice in the beer, 1 ply serviettes as thin as cheap toilet paper, pastel coloured plastic plates from an era gone by and aluminium cutlery that bent with every mouthful.

We worked our way through a fantastic meal with a local friend "a hungry gourmand" proud of his traditional food and full of anecdotes and foodie stories.

Probably due to the lack of tourist at the time of our visit but our restaurant closed at 19,30 it just goes to show that you need help and trial and error when selecting the traditional local experience when on holidays.

Of course, some of it was hot & spicy but if you don’t like hot and spicy go to another country for your holiday.

It should be hot.

Som Tum, a standard in most Thai restaurants, available with different local touches ours had the inclusion of aged salted eggs.

Locals order off the menu.

I think it was the staff food. Pigs intestines, they weren’t on the menu, but our hungry host ordered them for us, boiled up pig’s intestines, simply served with some onions, fresh herbs and chilli.

Sea snails, sorry don’t know the correct name, we were told they were conch, but for me conch is bigger, simply cooked, it was the sauce again that set them off.

A Thai classic.

Tom Yum, served in its own little charcoal heated brazier, again another Thai classic.

The tom Yum would’ve been registered as a three chili hot dish on any menu in a non Thai city, but here we were served a bowl of numbingly hot chili to give our soup a bit of a kick if we so desired.

We ordered extra to go, the restaurants and locals are always very flexible.

Grilled squid Thai style.

One common denominator during the meal were the sauces, each dish came with its own specific sauce, some were similar, but all were different, not a sweet chili sauce in sight. Some of the dishes were simply cooked others take a generation to master.

Grilled white Snapper; it must’ve been wrapped in a banana leaf and grilled, succulent and tasty, white snapper is a common high-end restaurant fish here in Thailand, we in Australia and some other countries know it as barramundi, and we know what a fantastic table fish it is.