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Why There Are So Many Thai Restaurants in America

153 points by NaOH 8y ago

mindcrime 8y ago
All this may be true, but part of the reason is still that Thai food is yummy and delicious! Speaking for myself, I could eat Thai pretty much every day. And luckily enough, I feel like we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of good Thai food here in the Triangle area. You've got: YumYum in Cary Thai Villa in Cary Thai Cafe in Durham Thaiphoon in Raleigh Champa in Raleigh Thai Palace in Chapel Hill etc., etc. So sure, thank you Thai government, for sending all this yummy goodness our way!
- elektor 8y ago
  I'll add one more to the list: Twisted Noodles in Durham
- flyosity 8y ago
  Love all the Thai restaurants in the Triangle! We moved from North Raleigh down to Apex a few years back and at nearly the same time a new Thai restaurant opened up less than a mile from our house that's really great. Working at home and having the ability to quickly grab Thai food right down the street is both convenient and dangerous for my diet :)
- apohn 8y ago
  Sawasdee in Raleigh (both locations) is good as well.
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    I know the one on Capital (and loved it, I just don't get down there much) - where's the other one?
    - apohn 8y ago
      It's on Glenwood near Crabtree Valley Mall. Something I just realized is the group that owns Sawasdee Glenwood doesn't own the Capital location. I would have sworn that when the Glenwood location opened it had stuff in the restaurant (e.g. on the menu) that talked about both locations... A quick google shows something fishy definitely happened with the Capital location - https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article87021217.html https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article8702121... Regardless, Sawasdee on Glenwood is good. Like most restaurants, it was really good when it first opened and went through a low (food was super inconsistent, and sometimes terrible) for a while, but over the last year it looks like they've updated menus and the people working there have changed. Maybe a change in ownership? My experiences have been good.
- Djvacto 8y ago
  Finding restaurant recommendations for my area on HackerNews of all places. This is great. Can we get a Triangle Food thread going? In no particular order or connection, some of my favorites: * Relish, by Crabtree * Salt & Lime Cabo Grill, by North Raleigh * Fiction Kitchen, Downtown Raleigh * Remedy Diner, Downtown Raleigh * Beer Garden, by Glenwood (The pretzels <3) * Trophy Pizza & Brewing * Orient Garden in Cary (our favorite Chinese takeout place) * Himalayan Nepali Cuisine, Cary (watch out for that spicy scale) * Coffee & Crepes, Cary * Mac House, Durham * Mura Sushi, North Hills
  - js2 8y ago
    Neomonde, Mami Noras.
    - Djvacto 8y ago
      Mami Nora's is so good. I need to try to re-create their beans and yellow/green sauce at home again.
    - mindcrime 8y ago
      Neomonde is awesome. Love that place!
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Crazy Fire (Mongolian Grille) - Buck Jones Road, Cary - Leesville & Strickland, Raleigh Beyu Cafe, Durham Taberna Tapas, Durham Mateo, Durham Rasa, Chapel Hill Tylers, Durham Q-Shack, Durham Nanataco, Durham Los Palmas, Raleigh Cosmic Cantina, Durham Irregardless Cafe, Raleigh
  - pc86 8y ago
    > Can we get a Triangle Food thread going? Please, no. Yelp is a thing. This is not what HN is for.
    - monksy 8y ago
      Yelp is terrible.
- amyjess 8y ago
  > I feel like we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of good Thai food here in the Triangle area Ditto for North Texas. Some of my favorites include: Banana Leaf in Far North Dallas Thai Spice in Far North Dallas (they live up to their name!) Best Thai Signature in Far North Dallas Legends Thai Cuisine in Plano SaWaDiKa in Richardson And there are so many others around I haven't tried... TBH, I mostly go to a handful because the ones near me are so excellent I don't see a need to shop around.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  I agree. If the food wasn't great, it wouldn't matter how hard they marketed it. There's far too many great options out there to end up with 10x the market share per capita of other cuisines if it isn't also great.
- monksy 8y ago
  Is that Thai cafe near 54/55 where Sarah's empanadas? (Also good) if so I miss that place
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    I'm thinking of Thai Cafe on University in Durham, right across from the Q-Shack (where University and Business 15-501 intersect).
    - monksy 8y ago
      Oh, I was thinking of Thailana https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thai+Lanna+Restaurant/@35.889482,-78.8967237,18z/data=!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x0:0x38e34f0cdff3ea2!2sSarah's+Empanadas!8m2!3d35.8897319!4d-78.8978931!3m4!1s0x0:0x4ad8b2dc3f0b326a!8m2!3d35.889328!4d-78.8977039 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thai+Lanna+Restaurant/@35.... It's very good.
      - mindcrime 8y ago
        I haven't been there. But I work in Morrisville, and that's not too far from me, so I'll make it a point to check them out sometime soon.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  Thai Cafe in Durham is the same owners as Thai Cafe in Wake Forest. If you ever get out this way, let's grab lunch there - I always need an excuse to get to Thai Cafe :)
- deckar01 8y ago
  I miss Chili Cha Cha in the SF Mission. Edit: It's still there, but I'm not.
- namdnay 8y ago
  I spent a few weeks in Bangkok for work back in 2016, and I remember loving the food at first, but after a week the constant flavour profile of sweet+sour+salty+spicy (e.g. sugar + lime juice + fish sauce + peppers) started grating on me. I really tried to test different things, and was invited out regularly by local colleagues. But maybe that's just one part of Thailand? Maybe they say the same thing about "classical French" (i.e. Lyon/Paris) cuisine's reliance on cream, shallots and bacon :)
  - naravara 8y ago
    >Maybe they say the same thing about "classical French" (i.e. Lyon/Paris) cuisine's reliance on cream, shallots and bacon :) My Indian family often complains about Western cuisine's penchant for slathering butter, cream, and cheese on absolutely everything. Even most of the cheap Indian food served in America is way, way too loaded with cream for most Indians' palates.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pouetpouet 8y ago
if only more countries invested in soft power instead of saber rattling.
- smt88 8y ago
  I would argue that the largest direct attack by one major power against another major power since WWII was Russia hacking/interfering in US elections, and that's an example of soft power. I'd honestly rather have sabre rattling, because at least it's in the open and subject to popular scrutiny.
  - jacquesc 8y ago
    You mention the upside of sabre rattling. The downside is it tends to result in people getting killed.
    - smt88 8y ago
      And election meddling doesn't? It's not as direct, but it happens. Also, as I alluded above, sabre-rattling hasn't resulted in armed conflict between superpowers since nuclearization.
- naravara 8y ago
  To be fair, Thailand does plenty of the latter too. Though it's largely focused on internal dissidents.
hrnnnnnn 8y ago
It's the same in Stockholm. Lots of Thai restaurants, food trucks and those semi-permanent wooden structures.
- dagw 8y ago
  One interesting thing I have noticed is that Thai food in Sweden (or at least Gothenburg) tastes almost nothing like Thai food in London. I wonder how much 'foreign' cuisines adapt to match local expectations.
  - mijamo 8y ago
    The worst is Vietnamese food in Stockholm, it taste nothing like Vietnamese and tries to imitate local thai tastes. And that makes me so sad because I love Pho but I have yet to find a good one in Stockholm. I also wonder why people buy sushis in a thai restaurant here, they are usually much worse than in real sushi restaurants and equally expensive. Maybe it's because the different persons at the tables disagreed on which food to buy but still, what's the next step? Selling pizza and Kebab in chinese restaurants?
    - hrnnnnnn 8y ago
      How authentic are the fresh spring rolls? I really like those.
  - louisswiss 8y ago
    I think that depends where you go in London. As with nearly all foreign cuisines, London tends to have some of the best 'authentic' examples of Thai food and some of the most heavily adapted examples... It's the same with Indian (some excellent restaurants and some very British, cream-filled takeaways), Italian, Mexican and definitely Chinese food. I assume it's at least partly down to many of these more exotic cuisines having been introduced to Britain earlier than much of mainland Europe, resulting in them being more heavily adapted to local tastes.
logfromblammo 8y ago
If you don't appreciate the clickbait headline, it's because the Thai government subsidized them, as a form of soft-power diplomacy.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  Well played, Thai government.
- neolefty 8y ago
  Soft power is the best kind of power. Oh no we've been conquered by excellent cuisine! Someday, we'll just call it "food".
  - Quequau 8y ago
    Yeah but what about these few extra kilos I'm carrying around because of it? Help I'm being oppressed!
  - stuff4ben 8y ago
    >>Someday, we'll just call it "food". epic fail. Should be "Someday, we'll just call it 'Good Eats'" cue AB.
athenot 8y ago
That is actually a great idea. The best way to build a bridge between peoples is through culture, and food is an important part of culture. The next step in bridge building is sharing meals with people of other cultures. Starting or strengthening friendships around food is a great way to lessen the power of prejudices, and put aside our national identities for the benefit of sharing a common bond as humans through our cultural identities. Edit: even though the stated reason in the article has a political motive, I still think it helps at a human level.
- mistermann 8y ago
  > Starting or strengthening friendships around food is a great way to lessen the power of prejudices, and put aside our national identities for the benefit of sharing a common bond as humans through our cultural identities. I agree, and I have a theory/dream that this same principle can be extended and to all identities, including gender, sexual, and political (which are all subset of culture, of course). The value of having these discussions over a meal may be in part that there are certain expectations of social behavior in play, so people tend to be on better than normal behavior, and everyone knows they're going to be there for a while anyways so might as well make the best of it. As a result, it facilitates an environment where people actually listen to what other people are actually saying, rather than relying almost entirely on subconscious, preconceived notions, as is what routinely happens on internet forums. This extra time and dialogue helps bring people's perceptions of reality, in this case their understanding of the beliefs/culture of others, more closely inline with reality itself. In a sense, discussions over a meal forces good behavior on people, and the result of that is that people realize their preconceptions were off the mark. Absent a meal and the social structure and expectations/rules that come with it, and particularly in the case of internet discussions where there is no physical presence and often no strongly enforced behavioral expectations at all, we're left to rely on rationality, conscious awareness and personal discipline, things that aren't really taught or practiced in certain cultures. I'm a big believer that this is one of the key enablers of the increasing polarization we are witnessing in our societies, Western societies in particular.
- mattnewton 8y ago
  I love the Thai food in the US, so much that it has made me consider visiting Thailand. I wonder if it actually nets tourism dollars? I guess it doesn’t need to because Thai restaurants could also be a relatively safe investment if more people love them as much as I do.
sonofblah 8y ago
Smart plan, and works on many levels--both product and service industries included (in terms of creating demand), but of course cultural and diplomatic ones as well, with network effects.
tcbawo 8y ago
I had always assumed that many Asian themed restaurants added Thai menu items because it was trendy/popular. It's common to see sushi at Chinese, Korean, or pan-Asian restaurants. Also, where I live, many specific Latin American restaurants (Peruvian, Costa Rican, etc) have started offering burritos and hot salsa, even though it's not typical of their cuisine.
spaceflunky 8y ago
I have been to Thailand about 5 times since 2006. In fact, I'm writing this from the airport returning from Bangkok this evening. One thing I've noticed over the past decade is that the diversity of tourists has changed dramatically over the years. The first time I went to Thailand I saw mostly Americans, Australians, and Europeans. Nowadays its common to see people from all over the middle-east, Africa, South America, and of course the rest of Asia (China and Japan in particular). I was even surprised to see a Vietnamese tour group at Suvarnabhumi today (interesting to see Vietnamese with the disposal income to travel and the interest to travel to their next door neighbor). Just goes to show everyone loves Thailand. Gastro-diplomacy appears to have paid off! What a great investment!
- freddie_mercury 8y ago
  > I was even surprised to see a Vietnamese tour group at Suvarnabhumi today (interesting to see Vietnamese with the disposal income to travel and the interest to travel to their next door neighbor). I live in Vietnam. Virtually every middle class Vietnamese I know has been to Thailand. For two simple reasons: it is one of the few places on Earth a Vietnamese can travel visa-free and it is relatively cheap. (Especially compared to, say, Singapore, which also allows visa-free travel.)
  - spaceflunky 8y ago
    Is it correct to say that having disposable income for international travel is a relatively new phenomenon for the Vietnamese?
    - freddie_mercury 8y ago
      I guess it depends on what you count as "relatively new". Vietnamese have been traveling internationally, since the early 1990s after Đổi Mới in 1986. It is 4 hours from Saigon to Cambodia by bus. It is 12 hours from Hanoi to China by bus. I think Hanoi to Laos is also 12 hours or so by bus. That's three countries within a pretty easy bus ride, making international travel relatively common. As far back as 2007 (the oldest numbers I could find quickly), Cambodia was seeing over 125,000 Vietnamese tourists a year. There's a reason there are massive casinos in Cambodia all along the border. (Vietnamese aren't allowed to gamble in Vietnam, so they go to Cambodia to do it.) Vietnamese have been traveling throughout Southeast Asia for a while now. It is just that their numbers have finally caught up to (and in many cases surpassed) Japanese & South Koreans so you can notice them. More disposable income certainly helps. But so do things like the increase in the formal economy (it is impossible to get a visa anywhere unless you have a bank account, a labor contract, etc). So do things like the spread of "Western" work hours (even now, the typical non-office job is 6 days a week, usually 10 hour shifts, which doesn't exactly leave much time or energy for travel; so travel most often happens in between jobs).
sabujp 8y ago
my wife pukes every time i cook thai food at home, fish sauce
- draw_down 8y ago
  :(
matz1 8y ago
Indonesian food are delicious and the country population are huge but yet relatively unknown outside Indonesia. So yeah the power of marketing and deliberate smart plan can't be underestimated.
- amitparikh 8y ago
  I will briefly add that Indonesian food is massively popular in the Netherlands ("East Indies" being a former colony). Rijstaffel [1] -- literally, "rice table" -- is a national specialty that is celebrated by the Dutch, although I will admit that the history of the meal is rooted in that former colonialism. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel
  - matz1 8y ago
    Well, Netherlands is a special case, of course. But relatively unknown compare to korea/thai/japan. These country population is much smaller than indonesia yet their cuisine is everywhere.
- syllogism 8y ago
  Indonesian food is definitely popular in Australia as well. My pet theory: foreign cuisines do better when there are clear boundaries. There's sort of a continuum between Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean cuisines, which then overlap somewhat with Cantonese. This makes it harder for foreigners to find the cuisine memorable. The boundaries get blurred further because in many places, it makes sense for an Indonesian or Malaysian family to just call their restaurant Chinese or "Asian", and then offer a mix of the most popular dishes. Thai cuisine overlaps with Laotian and I guess probably Burmese cuisine a bit, but it's otherwise very distinctive --- and it's not like there are many Laotian or Burmese restaurants around.
- jasonkester 8y ago
  This one is pretty easy to see the reason for if you go to a random tourist restaurant in each country. In Thailand, you get four pages of Thai food, going way deeper in variety than you ever see exported. Enough that you could eat there every day and not feel the need to flip to that last page full of Pizzas and spaghetti bolognese. In Indonesia, though, you get Nasi Goreng, Mee Goreng, and if you're really lucky a single curry, before learning about their wood-fired pizzas and other western junk. So you can go there for a month and come back having eaten a lifetime's worth of salty noodles, but not really learning anything about all the other good food you can get there. It's pretty rare that I choose Indonesian over Thai, when I have the choice.
DonaldFisk 8y ago
In London there are plenty of Thai restaurants too, but I don't know how that compares with the proportion of Thais in the general population. There are also plenty of Japanese restaurants, yet very few Japanese. Many of them are run by Chinese who have learned to prepare Japanese food.
- M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
  And many more of them are run by Chinese who haven't learned to prepare Japanese food, unfortunately. By the way, are you the dataflow guy?
  - DonaldFisk 8y ago
    > And many more of them are run by Chinese who haven't learned to prepare Japanese food, unfortunately. It's variable. There are some I'd avoid, but there are also some good Chinese-run Japanese restaurants. > By the way, are you the dataflow guy? Yes. I've had to move my pages (now at http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/FMJ.html http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/FMJ.html ). I've recently made major changes to the numeric type system, which now has a built-in Prolog interpreter and supports units and numeric ranges. I'm planning to add dependent types at some point but not soon. The system's still not ready for release.
    - M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
      Interesting. I'd like to try to use a dataflow system like that for an industrial application (despite my name, not for uranium enrichment centrifuges, I promise). I'll keep my eye on it. Will it be released as open source or a proprietary product? Also, have you looked at the static checking of units of measure in F#? I find myself wishing I had something like that since I work with a lot of physical measurements.
      - DonaldFisk 8y ago
        I intend to release it as shared source, i.e. charge only for commercial use. Units of measure in Full Metal Jacket are SI, similar to those in F#, but it also supports prefixes, e.g. 2.3mg expands to 2.3e-6 kg. The types and units are checked while the program is constructed in the IDE. At present there's no fully working compiler.
jessriedel 8y ago
As I skimmed through the first N paragraphs in search of the buried lede of this article, as I seem to need to do for most articles these days, I am reminded yet again that HN needs an abstract service (aka tl;dr). Commenters should submit an abstract which is voted up or down, hopefully based on accuracy and compactness. Reader could then skim through abstract and make a more informed decision about whether it's worth the time to read, just like is done with academic articles. (People who are going to comment without reading the article will do this regardless of whether you have an abstract.)
asveikau 8y ago
This says that the Thai government started the program in 2001, but I remember Thai food suddenly becoming trendy in the 90s.
- tnorthcutt 8y ago
  “Apparently, the government had been training chefs at its culinary training facilities to send abroad for the previous decade, but this project formalized and enhanced these efforts significantly.”
Taylor_OD 8y ago
Very interesting. I wish there were more, "authentic" Thai places around. I'm in Chicago and by far the best Thai place I've ever eaten at was a small shop in Vermont. The owner is Thai and it's only open for lunch in the summers. No other Thai I've ever had compares. My brother who has spent some time in Thailand said it's because most Thai places are serving Americanized Thai food. Authentic Thai Food is also a difficult thing to search for.
- rhino369 8y ago
  I’m not sure how authentic it is, but the little place below the consulate in River North is pretty good.
- lambda 8y ago
  Are you referring to Wilaiwan's in Montpelier? Excellent place that's only open for weekday lunch, and Saturday lunch when the Farmer's Market is running in the summer. They usually cook large batches of three dishes, and are open 11 AM to 2 PM or whenever they run out, whichever is sooner; and they do seem to frequently run out, I've found that going at 1:45 is not a good plan.
  - Taylor_OD 8y ago
    Yes. Absolutely. It's incredible. The best Thai food I've ever had. I used to go in high school and I recently was back in New England and drove all the way just to go to Wilaiwan's. I got all three options and cleaned all three dishes. A near heavenly experience.
    - lambda 8y ago
      > I got all three options and cleaned all three dishes. A near heavenly experience. Wow! That's a lot of food! However, you inspired me to hit them up for lunch again. Work from home and usually eat lunch at home, but went out and had Wilaiwan's today. Excellent as always; I ought to do that more often.
- mindcrime 8y ago
M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
Thai is pretty terrible compared to Vietnamese and Indonesian cuisines. Such a shame the latter two have made so little of an impact on most of the west, France and the Netherlands, respectively, excluded.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  Never have I seen such a subjective statement in my life. For what it's worth, I prefer Afghan cuisine, but all food is a fusion of earlier ideas anyway.
  - russnewcomer 8y ago
    Kabuli Pulau is fantastic. I used to live down the street from a kebab shop that had the best kebab and pulau, all cooked on outdoor grills in front of it. Fantastic food, and I wish there were more good Afghan places in the U.S. I'm in the midwest, and the closest Afghan place I know of (that serves Afghan food, not just owned by Afghans) is in Chicago.
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      Incredible, I love it :) Hicksville NY has a decently large diaspora, we are a bit spoiled here. I taught myself how to cook their way, here's what I do: Buy onions by the 50lb sack, chop them up, put them in the food processor, cook them once then freeze them into smaller containers. Whenever I want to cook a quick meal in 10 mins, grab the onion puree from the freezer, throw it into a pan with garlic and oil and paprika, fry it up and serve over some bread :)
- namdnay 8y ago
  Honestly, the Vietnamese cuisine in France is quite bad (outside of certain spots in Paris) - Just like pizzas have become synonymous with low-effort fast food, Vietnamese cuisine has become synonymous with dodgy buffets of bland taste and questionable hygiene. I find far better Vietnamese food in London than I do in the south of France
simplicio 8y ago
Interesting. I've been surprised by the number of Thai restaurants that have opened (and often, quickly closed) here in upstate SC, a relatively rural area that, so far as I know, doesn't have a large Thai community. So I guess this at least somewhat explains it. I've also noticed that Thai restaurants tend to be a little more hit-or-miss than other ethnic food places. I imagine the Thai gov't pushing to encourage Thai-Americans who are on the fence about whether they should open a restaurant would explain that as well.
creaghpatr 8y ago
While this play by the Thai government is a pretty indisputable home run in terms of mutual goodwill, what would be the reaction if [controversial foreign power of your choice] launched a similar effort at a greater scale?
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  To be fair, it matters very much who is making the gesture. The gorilla in the room behaves very differently from the underdog. Everybody expects that.
- mikestew 8y ago
  You mean like McDonald's and Applebee's? Does the effort have to have the explicit backing of a government?
- debatem1 8y ago
  What a wonderful world it would be if world war three were fought with menus. Yes, please, let's engage in gastrodiplomacy.
runarberg 8y ago
There are also plenty of Thai restaurants in Reykjavík (and Iceland in general), probably for a different reason then the article states since Iceland has a significant Thai population. Living in Seattle for the past year, and loving Thai food, I noticed that there is a general overall difference in the type of restaurant a Thai place is between Reykjavík and Seattle. Thai places in Seattle seem a lot fancier then in Reykjavík. In Seattle you most likely have to order a table, or at the very least have a waiter show you to your table. In Reykjavík, on the other hand, Thai places tend to range all over the place, all the way down to having only 4 bar-like seats by the window. The menu is also way more diverse in Reykjavík. In Seattle, you can pretty much guess the entire menu before you walk into a Thai place. While in Reykjavík a Thai place might only have three types of pad thai on the menu, or only sell soup, or even sell have 3 or 4 pages of stuff on the menu, including non-thai cuisine. Generally, I like the Thai places in Reykjavík better then in Seattle.
- thinkythought 8y ago
  Check out "Thai Tom", it's more the style you're thinking of and very, very good. Expect to stand in a big line though
  - kristjansson 8y ago
    Very, very good. One of those meals I can remember years later. Sit by the burners and sweat for the full experience.
- dannycastonguay 8y ago
  You make me want to go to Iceland for the Thai food.
  - runarberg 8y ago
    In general though, if you want good Thai food I mostly recommend in North Thailand or Laos. Sometimes I would go to the same place and order the same thing, but get a completely different thing (for example, deep fried noodles instead of steamed; a fresh set veggies, etc), but either time be blown away by tastyness.
some_account 8y ago
> Starting or strengthening friendships around food is a great way to lessen the power of prejudices, and put aside our national identities for the benefit of sharing a common bond as humans through our cultural identities. I will remember that the next time the Muslims decide to put fire to hundreds of cars here in Sweden. I will just offer some Swedish meatballs and offer a dance around the pole. Because hey, we are all humans...we can get along right? That was sarcasm, because... It gets tiresome to see people believe a hug is all that is needed to make people bond.
- dang 8y ago
  This breaks the HN guidelines in so many ways as to be a bannable offense. Please don't toss extraneous flamebait into thread again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
russnewcomer 8y ago
Depending on where you live, the reason also could be because there is a refugee population that has been resettled in that city. Omaha, where I live, has a growing local chain of Thai restaurants (Salween, if you live here) that are owned and run by Karen refugees who have been resettled here. Their food is very, very good, the restaurants are very popular around town, and they greatly assist their community. If you want to help refugees and other people groups, patronizing businesses owned by them is a fantastic way to do so.
rhplus 8y ago
On a similar theme, there's a couple of companies that produce cookie-cutter Irish pubs for global markets: https://www.eater.com/2017/3/7/14839472/irish-pub-design https://www.eater.com/2017/3/7/14839472/irish-pub-design
tootie 8y ago
Not mentioned is that probably half of Thai restaurants in the US are run by Chinese people. A good chunk of Japanese, Vietnamese and even some non-Asian restaurants are run by Chinese also. One of the top Thai restaurants in my area is run by a white guy. And there's a sushi place run by Thai folks. Good cooking doesn't care where you're from.
- quacked 8y ago
  If only they were all "good cooking". I'd say maybe 1/10 Asian (Chinese/Japanese/Thai/Vietnamese etc) restaurants are actually tasty- the rest are barely adequate, and their continued success relies on the fact that most American diners don't have developed palates.
  - PakG1 8y ago
    I'll be downvoted for this too. Visited some friends in Memphis. Was told this restaurant was amazing, it's famous, that restaurant was amazing, it's famous, so on. Tried them all. Wasn't impressed. They were OK, but they didn't live up to expectations. Realized that Memphis is actually not a big city, so there isn't a huge amount of competition to motivate restaurants to up their game. Don't get me wrong, the restaurants were OK. But they didn't deserve to be called famous outside of Memphis. And I realized that a lot of American cities are probably similar size and probably face a similar situation. Hence no wonder why many Americans don't get to know what actually good ethnic food tastes like, or even good "American" food, for that matter. Can't blame them for not having developed palates.
    - quacked 8y ago
      I experienced this when I moved to Houston, and I've commented about it before. People told me everywhere that the abundance of restaurants was incredible, that I had to try X restaurant and Y cafe, etc. After trying them all, I've found them to be pretty bland. There's not a lot of complex flavor, food is inconsistently cooked, stored, etc. The weird thing is that the meals look incredible, like they're visually stunning but boring to eat. I only really noticed this after I started copying some Gordon Ramsey videos I was watching online. Preparing easy, simple meals the way that he prepares them (taking care to select produce and quality dairy, using fresh herbs, etc.) yields food that's better than I've eaten in 90% of restaurants. These aren't the really long "how to cook like a Michelin chef with a blowtorch and truffles" videos, either, these are like the "quick and easy broccoli soup with goat cheese and walnuts" videos.
fipple 8y ago
It’s a lot simpler than this. Pad Thai is very sweet and Americans love sugar.
- eznoonze 8y ago
  Pretty much! They are mostly over-sweetened versions of some southeast asian food. Once I had a curry chicken in a supposingly high end Thai restaurant. The curry sauce was so sweet that it tasted like dessert. Most Thai restaurants in North America are like that. I guess to most people sugar==taste good. This rule applies to many other ethnic cuisines that target "mainstream" in NA as well.
iammiles 8y ago
I wonder if that's the reason why a few of my favorite local Thai restaurants all have the same or similar Thai tourism posters displayed throughout. Regardless I think this is a brilliant idea by the Thai government. I'd love to see other regions / governments do a similar thing!
davidw 8y ago
I had a look at ratios of immigrants to numbers of restaurants in Italy a while back, but it looks like the chart may have been lost during a blog migration: https://journal.dedasys.com/2008/05/13/restaurants-immigrants-and-the-popularity-of-various-cuisines/ https://journal.dedasys.com/2008/05/13/restaurants-immigrant...
rco8786 8y ago
I remember reading something similar regarding Chinese restaurants. It works though, my wife and I spent 2 weeks in Thailand largely because we were so enthralled with Thai food in the US.
Reedx 8y ago
Interesting, had never heard of gastrodiplomacy or culinary diplomacy. But a few other countries, including the US, have established some of these programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy
kbcool 8y ago
I would like to believe this article but: a) Having eaten supposed Thai food in the USA I can tell you it's not Thai! Most of it's Chinese based. b) You're talking about a government that couldn't organise its way out of a coupe let alone have a foreign policy. There's no way they are organised enough to do this. It would be a great idea if it was in fact real.
mavelikara 8y ago
TL;DR: > But as it turns out, there is a much simpler answer: The Thai government paid for it.

153 points by NaOH 8y ago

All this may be true, but part of the reason is still that Thai food is yummy and delicious! Speaking for myself, I could eat Thai pretty much every day. And luckily enough, I feel like we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of good Thai food here in the Triangle area. You've got: YumYum in Cary Thai Villa in Cary Thai Cafe in Durham Thaiphoon in Raleigh Champa in Raleigh Thai Palace in Chapel Hill etc., etc. So sure, thank you Thai government, for sending all this yummy goodness our way!

elektor 8y ago
I'll add one more to the list: Twisted Noodles in Durham
flyosity 8y ago
Love all the Thai restaurants in the Triangle! We moved from North Raleigh down to Apex a few years back and at nearly the same time a new Thai restaurant opened up less than a mile from our house that's really great. Working at home and having the ability to quickly grab Thai food right down the street is both convenient and dangerous for my diet :)
apohn 8y ago
Sawasdee in Raleigh (both locations) is good as well.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  I know the one on Capital (and loved it, I just don't get down there much) - where's the other one?
  - apohn 8y ago
    It's on Glenwood near Crabtree Valley Mall. Something I just realized is the group that owns Sawasdee Glenwood doesn't own the Capital location. I would have sworn that when the Glenwood location opened it had stuff in the restaurant (e.g. on the menu) that talked about both locations... A quick google shows something fishy definitely happened with the Capital location - https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article87021217.html https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article8702121... Regardless, Sawasdee on Glenwood is good. Like most restaurants, it was really good when it first opened and went through a low (food was super inconsistent, and sometimes terrible) for a while, but over the last year it looks like they've updated menus and the people working there have changed. Maybe a change in ownership? My experiences have been good.
Djvacto 8y ago
Finding restaurant recommendations for my area on HackerNews of all places. This is great. Can we get a Triangle Food thread going? In no particular order or connection, some of my favorites: * Relish, by Crabtree * Salt & Lime Cabo Grill, by North Raleigh * Fiction Kitchen, Downtown Raleigh * Remedy Diner, Downtown Raleigh * Beer Garden, by Glenwood (The pretzels <3) * Trophy Pizza & Brewing * Orient Garden in Cary (our favorite Chinese takeout place) * Himalayan Nepali Cuisine, Cary (watch out for that spicy scale) * Coffee & Crepes, Cary * Mac House, Durham * Mura Sushi, North Hills
- js2 8y ago
  Neomonde, Mami Noras.
  - Djvacto 8y ago
    Mami Nora's is so good. I need to try to re-create their beans and yellow/green sauce at home again.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Neomonde is awesome. Love that place!
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Crazy Fire (Mongolian Grille) - Buck Jones Road, Cary - Leesville & Strickland, Raleigh Beyu Cafe, Durham Taberna Tapas, Durham Mateo, Durham Rasa, Chapel Hill Tylers, Durham Q-Shack, Durham Nanataco, Durham Los Palmas, Raleigh Cosmic Cantina, Durham Irregardless Cafe, Raleigh
- pc86 8y ago
  > Can we get a Triangle Food thread going? Please, no. Yelp is a thing. This is not what HN is for.
  - monksy 8y ago
    Yelp is terrible.
amyjess 8y ago
> I feel like we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of good Thai food here in the Triangle area Ditto for North Texas. Some of my favorites include: Banana Leaf in Far North Dallas Thai Spice in Far North Dallas (they live up to their name!) Best Thai Signature in Far North Dallas Legends Thai Cuisine in Plano SaWaDiKa in Richardson And there are so many others around I haven't tried... TBH, I mostly go to a handful because the ones near me are so excellent I don't see a need to shop around.
wccrawford 8y ago
I agree. If the food wasn't great, it wouldn't matter how hard they marketed it. There's far too many great options out there to end up with 10x the market share per capita of other cuisines if it isn't also great.
monksy 8y ago
Is that Thai cafe near 54/55 where Sarah's empanadas? (Also good) if so I miss that place
- mindcrime 8y ago
  I'm thinking of Thai Cafe on University in Durham, right across from the Q-Shack (where University and Business 15-501 intersect).
  - monksy 8y ago
    Oh, I was thinking of Thailana https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thai+Lanna+Restaurant/@35.889482,-78.8967237,18z/data=!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x0:0x38e34f0cdff3ea2!2sSarah's+Empanadas!8m2!3d35.8897319!4d-78.8978931!3m4!1s0x0:0x4ad8b2dc3f0b326a!8m2!3d35.889328!4d-78.8977039 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Thai+Lanna+Restaurant/@35.... It's very good.
    - mindcrime 8y ago
      I haven't been there. But I work in Morrisville, and that's not too far from me, so I'll make it a point to check them out sometime soon.
mgkimsal 8y ago
Thai Cafe in Durham is the same owners as Thai Cafe in Wake Forest. If you ever get out this way, let's grab lunch there - I always need an excuse to get to Thai Cafe :)
deckar01 8y ago
I miss Chili Cha Cha in the SF Mission. Edit: It's still there, but I'm not.
namdnay 8y ago
I spent a few weeks in Bangkok for work back in 2016, and I remember loving the food at first, but after a week the constant flavour profile of sweet+sour+salty+spicy (e.g. sugar + lime juice + fish sauce + peppers) started grating on me. I really tried to test different things, and was invited out regularly by local colleagues. But maybe that's just one part of Thailand? Maybe they say the same thing about "classical French" (i.e. Lyon/Paris) cuisine's reliance on cream, shallots and bacon :)
- naravara 8y ago
  >Maybe they say the same thing about "classical French" (i.e. Lyon/Paris) cuisine's reliance on cream, shallots and bacon :) My Indian family often complains about Western cuisine's penchant for slathering butter, cream, and cheese on absolutely everything. Even most of the cheap Indian food served in America is way, way too loaded with cream for most Indians' palates.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pouetpouet 8y ago

if only more countries invested in soft power instead of saber rattling.

smt88 8y ago
I would argue that the largest direct attack by one major power against another major power since WWII was Russia hacking/interfering in US elections, and that's an example of soft power. I'd honestly rather have sabre rattling, because at least it's in the open and subject to popular scrutiny.
- jacquesc 8y ago
  You mention the upside of sabre rattling. The downside is it tends to result in people getting killed.
  - smt88 8y ago
    And election meddling doesn't? It's not as direct, but it happens. Also, as I alluded above, sabre-rattling hasn't resulted in armed conflict between superpowers since nuclearization.
naravara 8y ago
To be fair, Thailand does plenty of the latter too. Though it's largely focused on internal dissidents.

hrnnnnnn 8y ago

It's the same in Stockholm. Lots of Thai restaurants, food trucks and those semi-permanent wooden structures.

dagw 8y ago
One interesting thing I have noticed is that Thai food in Sweden (or at least Gothenburg) tastes almost nothing like Thai food in London. I wonder how much 'foreign' cuisines adapt to match local expectations.
- mijamo 8y ago
  The worst is Vietnamese food in Stockholm, it taste nothing like Vietnamese and tries to imitate local thai tastes. And that makes me so sad because I love Pho but I have yet to find a good one in Stockholm. I also wonder why people buy sushis in a thai restaurant here, they are usually much worse than in real sushi restaurants and equally expensive. Maybe it's because the different persons at the tables disagreed on which food to buy but still, what's the next step? Selling pizza and Kebab in chinese restaurants?
  - hrnnnnnn 8y ago
    How authentic are the fresh spring rolls? I really like those.
- louisswiss 8y ago
  I think that depends where you go in London. As with nearly all foreign cuisines, London tends to have some of the best 'authentic' examples of Thai food and some of the most heavily adapted examples... It's the same with Indian (some excellent restaurants and some very British, cream-filled takeaways), Italian, Mexican and definitely Chinese food. I assume it's at least partly down to many of these more exotic cuisines having been introduced to Britain earlier than much of mainland Europe, resulting in them being more heavily adapted to local tastes.

logfromblammo 8y ago

If you don't appreciate the clickbait headline, it's because the Thai government subsidized them, as a form of soft-power diplomacy.

creaghpatr 8y ago
Well played, Thai government.
neolefty 8y ago
Soft power is the best kind of power. Oh no we've been conquered by excellent cuisine! Someday, we'll just call it "food".
- Quequau 8y ago
  Yeah but what about these few extra kilos I'm carrying around because of it? Help I'm being oppressed!
- stuff4ben 8y ago
  >>Someday, we'll just call it "food". epic fail. Should be "Someday, we'll just call it 'Good Eats'" cue AB.

athenot 8y ago

That is actually a great idea. The best way to build a bridge between peoples is through culture, and food is an important part of culture. The next step in bridge building is sharing meals with people of other cultures. Starting or strengthening friendships around food is a great way to lessen the power of prejudices, and put aside our national identities for the benefit of sharing a common bond as humans through our cultural identities. Edit: even though the stated reason in the article has a political motive, I still think it helps at a human level.

mistermann 8y ago
> Starting or strengthening friendships around food is a great way to lessen the power of prejudices, and put aside our national identities for the benefit of sharing a common bond as humans through our cultural identities. I agree, and I have a theory/dream that this same principle can be extended and to all identities, including gender, sexual, and political (which are all subset of culture, of course). The value of having these discussions over a meal may be in part that there are certain expectations of social behavior in play, so people tend to be on better than normal behavior, and everyone knows they're going to be there for a while anyways so might as well make the best of it. As a result, it facilitates an environment where people actually listen to what other people are actually saying, rather than relying almost entirely on subconscious, preconceived notions, as is what routinely happens on internet forums. This extra time and dialogue helps bring people's perceptions of reality, in this case their understanding of the beliefs/culture of others, more closely inline with reality itself. In a sense, discussions over a meal forces good behavior on people, and the result of that is that people realize their preconceptions were off the mark. Absent a meal and the social structure and expectations/rules that come with it, and particularly in the case of internet discussions where there is no physical presence and often no strongly enforced behavioral expectations at all, we're left to rely on rationality, conscious awareness and personal discipline, things that aren't really taught or practiced in certain cultures. I'm a big believer that this is one of the key enablers of the increasing polarization we are witnessing in our societies, Western societies in particular.
mattnewton 8y ago
I love the Thai food in the US, so much that it has made me consider visiting Thailand. I wonder if it actually nets tourism dollars? I guess it doesn’t need to because Thai restaurants could also be a relatively safe investment if more people love them as much as I do.

sonofblah 8y ago

Smart plan, and works on many levels--both product and service industries included (in terms of creating demand), but of course cultural and diplomatic ones as well, with network effects.

tcbawo 8y ago

I had always assumed that many Asian themed restaurants added Thai menu items because it was trendy/popular. It's common to see sushi at Chinese, Korean, or pan-Asian restaurants. Also, where I live, many specific Latin American restaurants (Peruvian, Costa Rican, etc) have started offering burritos and hot salsa, even though it's not typical of their cuisine.

spaceflunky 8y ago

I have been to Thailand about 5 times since 2006. In fact, I'm writing this from the airport returning from Bangkok this evening. One thing I've noticed over the past decade is that the diversity of tourists has changed dramatically over the years. The first time I went to Thailand I saw mostly Americans, Australians, and Europeans. Nowadays its common to see people from all over the middle-east, Africa, South America, and of course the rest of Asia (China and Japan in particular). I was even surprised to see a Vietnamese tour group at Suvarnabhumi today (interesting to see Vietnamese with the disposal income to travel and the interest to travel to their next door neighbor). Just goes to show everyone loves Thailand. Gastro-diplomacy appears to have paid off! What a great investment!

freddie_mercury 8y ago
> I was even surprised to see a Vietnamese tour group at Suvarnabhumi today (interesting to see Vietnamese with the disposal income to travel and the interest to travel to their next door neighbor). I live in Vietnam. Virtually every middle class Vietnamese I know has been to Thailand. For two simple reasons: it is one of the few places on Earth a Vietnamese can travel visa-free and it is relatively cheap. (Especially compared to, say, Singapore, which also allows visa-free travel.)
- spaceflunky 8y ago
  Is it correct to say that having disposable income for international travel is a relatively new phenomenon for the Vietnamese?
  - freddie_mercury 8y ago
    I guess it depends on what you count as "relatively new". Vietnamese have been traveling internationally, since the early 1990s after Đổi Mới in 1986. It is 4 hours from Saigon to Cambodia by bus. It is 12 hours from Hanoi to China by bus. I think Hanoi to Laos is also 12 hours or so by bus. That's three countries within a pretty easy bus ride, making international travel relatively common. As far back as 2007 (the oldest numbers I could find quickly), Cambodia was seeing over 125,000 Vietnamese tourists a year. There's a reason there are massive casinos in Cambodia all along the border. (Vietnamese aren't allowed to gamble in Vietnam, so they go to Cambodia to do it.) Vietnamese have been traveling throughout Southeast Asia for a while now. It is just that their numbers have finally caught up to (and in many cases surpassed) Japanese & South Koreans so you can notice them. More disposable income certainly helps. But so do things like the increase in the formal economy (it is impossible to get a visa anywhere unless you have a bank account, a labor contract, etc). So do things like the spread of "Western" work hours (even now, the typical non-office job is 6 days a week, usually 10 hour shifts, which doesn't exactly leave much time or energy for travel; so travel most often happens in between jobs).

sabujp 8y ago

my wife pukes every time i cook thai food at home, fish sauce

draw_down 8y ago
:(

matz1 8y ago

Indonesian food are delicious and the country population are huge but yet relatively unknown outside Indonesia. So yeah the power of marketing and deliberate smart plan can't be underestimated.

amitparikh 8y ago
I will briefly add that Indonesian food is massively popular in the Netherlands ("East Indies" being a former colony). Rijstaffel [1] -- literally, "rice table" -- is a national specialty that is celebrated by the Dutch, although I will admit that the history of the meal is rooted in that former colonialism. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel
- matz1 8y ago
  Well, Netherlands is a special case, of course. But relatively unknown compare to korea/thai/japan. These country population is much smaller than indonesia yet their cuisine is everywhere.
syllogism 8y ago
Indonesian food is definitely popular in Australia as well. My pet theory: foreign cuisines do better when there are clear boundaries. There's sort of a continuum between Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean cuisines, which then overlap somewhat with Cantonese. This makes it harder for foreigners to find the cuisine memorable. The boundaries get blurred further because in many places, it makes sense for an Indonesian or Malaysian family to just call their restaurant Chinese or "Asian", and then offer a mix of the most popular dishes. Thai cuisine overlaps with Laotian and I guess probably Burmese cuisine a bit, but it's otherwise very distinctive --- and it's not like there are many Laotian or Burmese restaurants around.
jasonkester 8y ago
This one is pretty easy to see the reason for if you go to a random tourist restaurant in each country. In Thailand, you get four pages of Thai food, going way deeper in variety than you ever see exported. Enough that you could eat there every day and not feel the need to flip to that last page full of Pizzas and spaghetti bolognese. In Indonesia, though, you get Nasi Goreng, Mee Goreng, and if you're really lucky a single curry, before learning about their wood-fired pizzas and other western junk. So you can go there for a month and come back having eaten a lifetime's worth of salty noodles, but not really learning anything about all the other good food you can get there. It's pretty rare that I choose Indonesian over Thai, when I have the choice.

DonaldFisk 8y ago

In London there are plenty of Thai restaurants too, but I don't know how that compares with the proportion of Thais in the general population. There are also plenty of Japanese restaurants, yet very few Japanese. Many of them are run by Chinese who have learned to prepare Japanese food.

M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
And many more of them are run by Chinese who haven't learned to prepare Japanese food, unfortunately. By the way, are you the dataflow guy?
- DonaldFisk 8y ago
  > And many more of them are run by Chinese who haven't learned to prepare Japanese food, unfortunately. It's variable. There are some I'd avoid, but there are also some good Chinese-run Japanese restaurants. > By the way, are you the dataflow guy? Yes. I've had to move my pages (now at http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/FMJ.html http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/FMJ.html ). I've recently made major changes to the numeric type system, which now has a built-in Prolog interpreter and supports units and numeric ranges. I'm planning to add dependent types at some point but not soon. The system's still not ready for release.
  - M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
    Interesting. I'd like to try to use a dataflow system like that for an industrial application (despite my name, not for uranium enrichment centrifuges, I promise). I'll keep my eye on it. Will it be released as open source or a proprietary product? Also, have you looked at the static checking of units of measure in F#? I find myself wishing I had something like that since I work with a lot of physical measurements.
    - DonaldFisk 8y ago
      I intend to release it as shared source, i.e. charge only for commercial use. Units of measure in Full Metal Jacket are SI, similar to those in F#, but it also supports prefixes, e.g. 2.3mg expands to 2.3e-6 kg. The types and units are checked while the program is constructed in the IDE. At present there's no fully working compiler.

jessriedel 8y ago

As I skimmed through the first N paragraphs in search of the buried lede of this article, as I seem to need to do for most articles these days, I am reminded yet again that HN needs an abstract service (aka tl;dr). Commenters should submit an abstract which is voted up or down, hopefully based on accuracy and compactness. Reader could then skim through abstract and make a more informed decision about whether it's worth the time to read, just like is done with academic articles. (People who are going to comment without reading the article will do this regardless of whether you have an abstract.)

asveikau 8y ago

This says that the Thai government started the program in 2001, but I remember Thai food suddenly becoming trendy in the 90s.

tnorthcutt 8y ago
“Apparently, the government had been training chefs at its culinary training facilities to send abroad for the previous decade, but this project formalized and enhanced these efforts significantly.”

Taylor_OD 8y ago

Very interesting. I wish there were more, "authentic" Thai places around. I'm in Chicago and by far the best Thai place I've ever eaten at was a small shop in Vermont. The owner is Thai and it's only open for lunch in the summers. No other Thai I've ever had compares. My brother who has spent some time in Thailand said it's because most Thai places are serving Americanized Thai food. Authentic Thai Food is also a difficult thing to search for.

rhino369 8y ago
I’m not sure how authentic it is, but the little place below the consulate in River North is pretty good.
lambda 8y ago
Are you referring to Wilaiwan's in Montpelier? Excellent place that's only open for weekday lunch, and Saturday lunch when the Farmer's Market is running in the summer. They usually cook large batches of three dishes, and are open 11 AM to 2 PM or whenever they run out, whichever is sooner; and they do seem to frequently run out, I've found that going at 1:45 is not a good plan.
- Taylor_OD 8y ago
  Yes. Absolutely. It's incredible. The best Thai food I've ever had. I used to go in high school and I recently was back in New England and drove all the way just to go to Wilaiwan's. I got all three options and cleaned all three dishes. A near heavenly experience.
  - lambda 8y ago
    > I got all three options and cleaned all three dishes. A near heavenly experience. Wow! That's a lot of food! However, you inspired me to hit them up for lunch again. Work from home and usually eat lunch at home, but went out and had Wilaiwan's today. Excellent as always; I ought to do that more often.
mindcrime 8y ago

M_Bakhtiari 8y ago

Thai is pretty terrible compared to Vietnamese and Indonesian cuisines. Such a shame the latter two have made so little of an impact on most of the west, France and the Netherlands, respectively, excluded.

anoncoward111 8y ago
Never have I seen such a subjective statement in my life. For what it's worth, I prefer Afghan cuisine, but all food is a fusion of earlier ideas anyway.
- russnewcomer 8y ago
  Kabuli Pulau is fantastic. I used to live down the street from a kebab shop that had the best kebab and pulau, all cooked on outdoor grills in front of it. Fantastic food, and I wish there were more good Afghan places in the U.S. I'm in the midwest, and the closest Afghan place I know of (that serves Afghan food, not just owned by Afghans) is in Chicago.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    Incredible, I love it :) Hicksville NY has a decently large diaspora, we are a bit spoiled here. I taught myself how to cook their way, here's what I do: Buy onions by the 50lb sack, chop them up, put them in the food processor, cook them once then freeze them into smaller containers. Whenever I want to cook a quick meal in 10 mins, grab the onion puree from the freezer, throw it into a pan with garlic and oil and paprika, fry it up and serve over some bread :)
namdnay 8y ago
Honestly, the Vietnamese cuisine in France is quite bad (outside of certain spots in Paris) - Just like pizzas have become synonymous with low-effort fast food, Vietnamese cuisine has become synonymous with dodgy buffets of bland taste and questionable hygiene. I find far better Vietnamese food in London than I do in the south of France

simplicio 8y ago

Interesting. I've been surprised by the number of Thai restaurants that have opened (and often, quickly closed) here in upstate SC, a relatively rural area that, so far as I know, doesn't have a large Thai community. So I guess this at least somewhat explains it. I've also noticed that Thai restaurants tend to be a little more hit-or-miss than other ethnic food places. I imagine the Thai gov't pushing to encourage Thai-Americans who are on the fence about whether they should open a restaurant would explain that as well.

creaghpatr 8y ago

While this play by the Thai government is a pretty indisputable home run in terms of mutual goodwill, what would be the reaction if [controversial foreign power of your choice] launched a similar effort at a greater scale?

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
To be fair, it matters very much who is making the gesture. The gorilla in the room behaves very differently from the underdog. Everybody expects that.
mikestew 8y ago
You mean like McDonald's and Applebee's? Does the effort have to have the explicit backing of a government?
debatem1 8y ago
What a wonderful world it would be if world war three were fought with menus. Yes, please, let's engage in gastrodiplomacy.

runarberg 8y ago

There are also plenty of Thai restaurants in Reykjavík (and Iceland in general), probably for a different reason then the article states since Iceland has a significant Thai population. Living in Seattle for the past year, and loving Thai food, I noticed that there is a general overall difference in the type of restaurant a Thai place is between Reykjavík and Seattle. Thai places in Seattle seem a lot fancier then in Reykjavík. In Seattle you most likely have to order a table, or at the very least have a waiter show you to your table. In Reykjavík, on the other hand, Thai places tend to range all over the place, all the way down to having only 4 bar-like seats by the window. The menu is also way more diverse in Reykjavík. In Seattle, you can pretty much guess the entire menu before you walk into a Thai place. While in Reykjavík a Thai place might only have three types of pad thai on the menu, or only sell soup, or even sell have 3 or 4 pages of stuff on the menu, including non-thai cuisine. Generally, I like the Thai places in Reykjavík better then in Seattle.

thinkythought 8y ago
Check out "Thai Tom", it's more the style you're thinking of and very, very good. Expect to stand in a big line though
- kristjansson 8y ago
  Very, very good. One of those meals I can remember years later. Sit by the burners and sweat for the full experience.
dannycastonguay 8y ago
You make me want to go to Iceland for the Thai food.
- runarberg 8y ago
  In general though, if you want good Thai food I mostly recommend in North Thailand or Laos. Sometimes I would go to the same place and order the same thing, but get a completely different thing (for example, deep fried noodles instead of steamed; a fresh set veggies, etc), but either time be blown away by tastyness.

some_account 8y ago

> Starting or strengthening friendships around food is a great way to lessen the power of prejudices, and put aside our national identities for the benefit of sharing a common bond as humans through our cultural identities. I will remember that the next time the Muslims decide to put fire to hundreds of cars here in Sweden. I will just offer some Swedish meatballs and offer a dance around the pole. Because hey, we are all humans...we can get along right? That was sarcasm, because... It gets tiresome to see people believe a hug is all that is needed to make people bond.

dang 8y ago
This breaks the HN guidelines in so many ways as to be a bannable offense. Please don't toss extraneous flamebait into thread again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

russnewcomer 8y ago

Depending on where you live, the reason also could be because there is a refugee population that has been resettled in that city. Omaha, where I live, has a growing local chain of Thai restaurants (Salween, if you live here) that are owned and run by Karen refugees who have been resettled here. Their food is very, very good, the restaurants are very popular around town, and they greatly assist their community. If you want to help refugees and other people groups, patronizing businesses owned by them is a fantastic way to do so.

rhplus 8y ago

On a similar theme, there's a couple of companies that produce cookie-cutter Irish pubs for global markets: https://www.eater.com/2017/3/7/14839472/irish-pub-design https://www.eater.com/2017/3/7/14839472/irish-pub-design

tootie 8y ago

Not mentioned is that probably half of Thai restaurants in the US are run by Chinese people. A good chunk of Japanese, Vietnamese and even some non-Asian restaurants are run by Chinese also. One of the top Thai restaurants in my area is run by a white guy. And there's a sushi place run by Thai folks. Good cooking doesn't care where you're from.

quacked 8y ago
If only they were all "good cooking". I'd say maybe 1/10 Asian (Chinese/Japanese/Thai/Vietnamese etc) restaurants are actually tasty- the rest are barely adequate, and their continued success relies on the fact that most American diners don't have developed palates.
- PakG1 8y ago
  I'll be downvoted for this too. Visited some friends in Memphis. Was told this restaurant was amazing, it's famous, that restaurant was amazing, it's famous, so on. Tried them all. Wasn't impressed. They were OK, but they didn't live up to expectations. Realized that Memphis is actually not a big city, so there isn't a huge amount of competition to motivate restaurants to up their game. Don't get me wrong, the restaurants were OK. But they didn't deserve to be called famous outside of Memphis. And I realized that a lot of American cities are probably similar size and probably face a similar situation. Hence no wonder why many Americans don't get to know what actually good ethnic food tastes like, or even good "American" food, for that matter. Can't blame them for not having developed palates.
  - quacked 8y ago
    I experienced this when I moved to Houston, and I've commented about it before. People told me everywhere that the abundance of restaurants was incredible, that I had to try X restaurant and Y cafe, etc. After trying them all, I've found them to be pretty bland. There's not a lot of complex flavor, food is inconsistently cooked, stored, etc. The weird thing is that the meals look incredible, like they're visually stunning but boring to eat. I only really noticed this after I started copying some Gordon Ramsey videos I was watching online. Preparing easy, simple meals the way that he prepares them (taking care to select produce and quality dairy, using fresh herbs, etc.) yields food that's better than I've eaten in 90% of restaurants. These aren't the really long "how to cook like a Michelin chef with a blowtorch and truffles" videos, either, these are like the "quick and easy broccoli soup with goat cheese and walnuts" videos.

fipple 8y ago

It’s a lot simpler than this. Pad Thai is very sweet and Americans love sugar.

eznoonze 8y ago
Pretty much! They are mostly over-sweetened versions of some southeast asian food. Once I had a curry chicken in a supposingly high end Thai restaurant. The curry sauce was so sweet that it tasted like dessert. Most Thai restaurants in North America are like that. I guess to most people sugar==taste good. This rule applies to many other ethnic cuisines that target "mainstream" in NA as well.

iammiles 8y ago

I wonder if that's the reason why a few of my favorite local Thai restaurants all have the same or similar Thai tourism posters displayed throughout. Regardless I think this is a brilliant idea by the Thai government. I'd love to see other regions / governments do a similar thing!

davidw 8y ago

I had a look at ratios of immigrants to numbers of restaurants in Italy a while back, but it looks like the chart may have been lost during a blog migration: https://journal.dedasys.com/2008/05/13/restaurants-immigrants-and-the-popularity-of-various-cuisines/ https://journal.dedasys.com/2008/05/13/restaurants-immigrant...

rco8786 8y ago

I remember reading something similar regarding Chinese restaurants. It works though, my wife and I spent 2 weeks in Thailand largely because we were so enthralled with Thai food in the US.

Reedx 8y ago

Interesting, had never heard of gastrodiplomacy or culinary diplomacy. But a few other countries, including the US, have established some of these programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy

kbcool 8y ago

I would like to believe this article but: a) Having eaten supposed Thai food in the USA I can tell you it's not Thai! Most of it's Chinese based. b) You're talking about a government that couldn't organise its way out of a coupe let alone have a foreign policy. There's no way they are organised enough to do this. It would be a great idea if it was in fact real.

mavelikara 8y ago

TL;DR: > But as it turns out, there is a much simpler answer: The Thai government paid for it.