Yum Sap @ Bangkok

I like going on my Thai working trips, my usual stay would be at Emerald Hotel at Rachada- which has a pretty good spread for breakfast ( hhmm..the pork noodles..yummmm), and after ‘work’ in the evenings, I will  take a 15 minutes walk and end up at Carrefour or Robinsons , or walk the opposite way to the Hwai Khuang train station, or to the night market.

And if I can make it, I will try to have one meal at Yum Sap – which is a franchise food outlet serving thai dishes, from my net search, there are more than 25 branches in Bangkok, The menu is also  ‘foreigner friendly’  – pictorial , and available in Thai/ English.   (note the logo for Yum Sap-the yellow smiley face on the top left of the menu )

I had dinner on my own and ordered a set meal, they have a few options, and I choose the rice + fish cakes + green curry chicken – this meal cost me 72B. The chicken curry came in a little bowl, what is shown here is just part of the  curry.

That’s the problem of eating on your own, your choices are limited. However, the next day, after visiting a customer around Bangna, we stopped at a shopping complex near Bangna for lunch and my host decided to have a meal at Yum Sap.

We had cuttlefish salad -springy and fresh cuttlefish in sweet+spicy+sour sauce. Very refreshing .  note the amount of vege that came with the dish… cabbages on the side, and generous amount of  mint and onion with the cuttlefish.

Som Tam ( papaya salad) with salted eggs, if you have read the other posting before this, you would know about my host’s  affinity for this dish. Apart from the papaya shreds, you get long beans, cabbage, peanuts, dried prawns, tomato, chili padi , salted egg etc…, the sauce was really great, sweet, sour, spicy, salty.. perfect, 10 /10

Fish cakes – the deep fried cakes were springy, the cakes are brownish red  ( not whitish as per  normal fish cakes. Must be the special blend with the spices, chili paste etc- I guess) -  the texture can be a bit tough in a nice kinda way, and  with a tinge of spiciness if you are lucky to bite into some chili padi.

Mama Som Tam – seemed that Mama = instant noodles , and the sauce /taste is as per Som Tam, but the ingredients differs, i.e mama (not mine) / the noodles, replacing the papaya shreds as the main component, sounds a bit weird, but I assure you, this is yummilicous. There is also hotdog ( huh ?), squid, cabbage, long beans, peanut, bamboo shoot , chili padi . This is actually a meal on it’s own. (good, an additional choice of food at Yum Sap  if I were to dine alone).

Fried chicken – the meat almost fell off the bones ( is this good or bad ?) , the meat was tender , and overall very tasty fried chicken.  Again, note the amount of the accompanying vege that comes with the dish.

The total bill plus drinks for 3 pax was less that 600B ( <RM60).

I wish we had Yum Sap back in KL …

Nai Reung Lap Pek @Bangkok

I was really looking forward to dinner as my stomach was still working on Malaysian time meaning that it’s already 9 pm according to my stomach,  and I am not yet fed!

Nai Reung Lap Pek ( NRLP) is a busy place, dinner was in full swing and almost all the tables were taken up when we stepped into the restaurant. There was not a mat salleh in sight, and gave the impression of being where the locals would eat, until I overheard the conversation of the people over at the next table, their slang very familiar..Malaysians !

NRLP serves Isan style food.( Wikipedia : Isan is the northeast region of Thailand. Isan’s culture is predominantly Lao, and has much in common with that of the neighbouring country of Laos. )

 I won’t bother to do the ordering,  specification and criteria  was provided to the host ‘ I eat anything one lah..but not too spicy, khop khun’.

Each table will get a basket of salad- which brought the conversation to why  Thai women are slim because  they eat a lot of vegetables ( the rest of the party consist of 3 guys). From the salad basket- there were slices of cucumber, 1/8^th  head of  cabbage, basil, pegaga and errr…some other  unidentified greens.

 

We ordered white rice and some sticky rice, the sticky rice came in pretty straw containers, they were soft yet retain some chewy-ness

 

The fried fish boneless and with the meat were cut into chunks was plainly fried without sauce or gravy but yet taste very good, although deep fried, the meat wasn’t oily, crunchy on the outside and soft on the insides, Yum ( the pix looks kinda funny, i tried to rotate it but it still looks odd on all sides…must be some green stuff i ate)

 

Pork liver ( lap mu) was a combination of pork intestine and liver, with generous amount of onion and chili, it was kinda spicy but bearable, I find the liver a bit overdone , so some pieces were a bit tougher than what I would prefer, but  it was still pretty good.

 

Fried pork ribs- notice the salads that comes with the dish ( no wonder Thai women are slim !) – I think we should have more salads accompanying our food in Malaysia ! Celery, slices of ginger and some fried peanuts came with the well marinated bite-size pork ribs, they were  deep fried to perfection, and yet, the meat remained tender.  this went really well with our Chang beer. Porkylicious

 

The mix soup ( tom sept) looks deceiving, red means danger-hot hot hot, colourless should be pretty harmless until I noticed the dried chili swimming in the soup, I took one spoonful of the soup and immediately felt my tongue burn, very the potent one lerr..and that was all I had from the soup ! there were chunks of fish meat in the soup which I had to forgo..sniff..can I have more pork ribs as compensation ?

 

Som Tam ( papaya salad) with salted eggs, I noticed that som tam +salted egg is my host favourite dish, he orders this wherever he go ! I had to do some sorting out of the chili padi when taking this. Green papaya + tomato + peanuts + dried prawns + salted egg + chili +special sauce  all go into a wooden mortar and pestle gadget, everything gets pounded for a bit , Voila ! Som tam . This was a well done som tam, sour + sweet +spice+ saltiness from the salted egg. Somtamalicious

Isan sausage ( sai kork) was lovely…deep fried and succulent, I can’t find any fault with the sausages – not like the Chinese sausages where there are lotsa lard chunks , these sausages are packed to the brim with meat, I guess I felt less guilty eating this than I would Chinese sausages. Oink Oink. ( pix below is ‘contaminated’ with fish slices from the other dish)

 

A very enjoyable meal indeed….pork ribs..hmmm…so dreamy one…

 Location- the restaurant is a few roads ( walking distance) from the Town-In-Town Hotel, Bangkok, which should be at  Ladprao Road, Wangthonglang

Uncle Khim Noodles @ Rayong, Thailand

Was in Thailand for a short working trip which involved a drive to Rayong, after coming off the plane at Suvarnabhumi Airport, we drove about 2 hours . Rayong is located at the Gulf of Thailand, ~ 180km southeast from Bangkok, 70 km southwest of Pattaya.For some interesting sights and info on  Rayong, you can try clicking here

http://www.thailand-guide.org/rayong/

http://www.rayonginfo.com/

http://www.rayongthailand.com/

 After visiting a customer and saying the necessaries and some unnecessaries and since it was nearing lunch time our Thai host suggested to drop by Uncle Khim’s place which is said to  famous for it’s variety of noodles.

Uncle Khim occupied the whole ground floor of a building at a corner , which is about the size of  2 shop lot, we sat on  thick teak wood trunks made into chairs, and to help make the selection easier, there were pictures of the variety of noodles  available.

I am not sure what to order, I love all type of Thai Koay teow ( noodle soup), so I left it for our host to order. And being a bit on the kiasu side ( or maybe host is afraid that I will be the kiasu type) ,  they seemed to have ordered the everything-in-one noodles. It was an interesting combination , in the bowl ( 1 piece each) you have   : pork ribs, wan tharn, prawn and what appears to be 2 different variation of ’siu mai’ , there were some taugeh, and the noodles were the thin koay teow. This was pretty good. , but it was kinda weird to have dimsum in my noodles lerrr, the ’siu mai’ were mince meat +fish paste wrapped in some batter, one was slightly greenish and the other yellowish….

And the usual sights in koay teow shop, you will have the various sauces/ condiments : dried chili, watery chili paste, green chili and sugar. My host did a ’semua taruh’ and dumped spoonfuls of chilies, sugar, dried chili into his bowl of koay teow- that happened before he tasted the soup.. I just added a bit of the dried chili powder and boyy..it was fiery ..

For side orders : we had plain fried fish cakes,

 

And fried  fish cakes in tofu

 

Both were  good, the fish paste was springy and tasty..

i wonder do they have a version where they add  char siu pau into the koay teow ?

 

This is the signboard for the shop,