What to Eat in Bangkok

What it is: Stir-fried rice noodles with tamarind, fish sauce, egg, dried shrimp, and peanuts.

What to expect: Season it yourself at the table from the four-jar caddy: fish sauce, sugar, chilli flakes, vinegar chillies. The street version is drier and smokier than restaurant versions abroad.

What it is: Green papaya salad pounded in a mortar with lime, chilli, fish sauce, and peanuts.

What to expect: Ask for 'phet nit noi' (a little spicy) unless you mean it — the default heat is serious. Eaten with sticky rice and grilled chicken.

What it is: Intense, dark pork or beef noodle soup in small bowls, thickened traditionally with a little blood.

What to expect: Served in stacks of tiny bowls — ordering five is normal, the empties become your scorecard. Victory Monument's boat-noodle alley is the classic setting.

What it is: Ripe mango over coconut-milk sticky rice with a salty-sweet coconut drizzle.

What to expect: Best in Thai mango season (roughly March–June) when nam dok mai mangoes are at their peak. The salt in the coconut sauce is intentional.

What it is: Hot-and-sour prawn soup with lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaf, and chilli.

What to expect: Comes clear (nam sai) or creamy (nam khon, with evaporated milk). The aromatics in the bowl are for flavour, not eating.

What it is: Charcoal-grilled marinated pork skewers, glossy with coconut milk and palm sugar.

What to expect: A breakfast and commuter food, sold from smoking sidewalk grills with bags of sticky rice. Two or three skewers make the best cheap breakfast in the city.