Eating your way through the streets of Bangkok

The moment I leave Suvarnabhumi Airport, it all comes rushing back to me. Everywhere I look during the drive into the city, people are eating. A girl dangling helmetless off the back of a scooter feasts on fried rice out of a Styrofoam container. A young mother and her son sip cola out of plastic bags with straws. A taxi driver alternates between smoking and gnawing on pineapple chunks.

Four years ago when I first came to the Kingdom of Siam, the food here was a gut-wrenching spicefest. All sweat and tears. Let’s just say that I’ve come back to get my fill. Thais eat up to eight meals a day and I plan to do the same.

Before my flight, chef Angus An of Maenam fame in Vancouver made me promise to visit Nahm at the Metropolitan Hotel on my first night in Bangkok. David Thompson is expecting you, he told me. These five simple words will prove to be the blueprint for a once-in-a-lifetime dining experience.

Bangkok rush hour, 30-minute traffic jams at every intersection, forgetting to ask the concierge at the VIE Hotel to write down the restaurant address in Thai — this is exactly what not to do on your first night in Bangkok, but our pilgrimage to Nahm is worth it.

In London, Thompson runs the first Thai restaurant to be awarded a Michelin star. He has been both praised and skewered as the Westerner who had enough cajones to open a Thai restaurant (also named Nahm) in Bangkok.

“When I first came here in the 1980s, Thai cuisine had become a take-away culture,” he tells my business partner Steve and I during a behind-the-scenes tour of his kitchen. “You would never eat it in a fine-dining environment.”

Read more from Vancouver Sun...