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Pad Thai was invented by the Thai government
- GuB-42 7y agoPad Thai was maybe the most accessible food I have eaten in Thailand while still being recognizable as Thai food. The rest tends to be insanely hot, weird, or both, at least for westerners. Definitely worth it, but the experience can be painful. It is understandable that they selected Pad Thai as a national dish if their plan was to build a national identity and promote tourism as well.
- Mediterraneo10 7y agoA similar example is the shopska salad[0], known throughout the Balkans as a symbol of either Bulgaria’s Shopsko region in particular or Bulgaria as a whole, but in fact this dish under that name only goes back to the 1960s or so and was part of a national marketing campaign. (Incidentally, tomatoes, cucumbers and white cheese form the colours of the Bulgarian flag, which do make this an even more apt cultural export, but I’m not sure that was intended.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopska_salad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopska_salad
- emptyfile 7y agoWow I had no idea! I did always seem suspicious that a traditional salad was so modern.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoThis appears to be a new version of the word 'invented' that I haven't previously encountered. >“He simply had this particular version of a Thai noodle that was made by his housekeeper in his kitchen and he really liked it,” Van Esterik says.
- bildung 7y agoHe didn't invent the dish in itself, he invented the pad Thai as a national dish.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoThen the Pad Thai is about as Thai as the Apple Pie is American.
- wodenokoto 7y agoIt was chosen as a national dish by the government, which seems completely uncontroversial.
- peteretep 7y ago> regarded his home country as backward and was determined to remake it There's a fine tradition of Thai leadership doing this, another notable one being Rama V, who introduced forks and spoons to replace chopsticks (which is what you should be eating your Pad Thai with if you're trying to get the authentic experience :-P)
- pjc50 7y agoTurkey has been through this a number of times. I suppose both Singapore and to a lesser extent Korea count too.
- ryannevius 7y ago> which is what you should be eating your Pad Thai with if you're trying to get the authentic experience Really? Up here in Chiang Mai, chopsticks are the primary eating tool available at most pad thai shops.
- wdutch 7y agoI can't find a reliable online source to back this up (I think I read it in Welty's "The Thai & I") but I seem to recall that Thai culture predominantly dined in the Indian style using their hand before adopting fork and spoon.
- 7y ago
- notahacker 7y agoDefinitely not the first or last political figure to try to make their favourite food iconic. I think the more interesting detail buried in there is that for all the nationalistic sentiment behind its promotion, it was originally a Chinese diaspora dish, even incorporating the Chinese words for noodles which are also the names of popular dishes in Malaysia/Singapore
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> even incorporating the Chinese words for noodles which are also the names of popular dishes in Malaysia/Singapore What words are those? Mainland mandarin uses 面 mian. (In this use, the character has the sense "flour"; 面 is technically short for 面条 miantiao, "flour strips". But in practice it's always 面, never 面条.) I see the article says this: > It was originally called kway teow pad Thai – kway teow being “rice noodles” That "teow" is a good match for 条, but I'm stumped as to the "kway". > it was originally a Chinese diaspora dish, even incorporating the Chinese words for noodles (sorry for the overlapped quote) The use of Chinese words for noodles doesn't really imply that the dish was originally Chinese, similarly to how English using an Aztec word for tomatoes doesn't imply that pizza originates with the Aztecs. I know Vietnamese is riddled with words borrowed from Chinese; Thailand didn't have that level of exposure, but a foreign ingredient is pretty likely to come with a foreign name. All I'm really saying here is that if there was an obviously indigenous noodle dish, it would be totally unsurprising if the name of that dish referred to noodles, and also unsurprising if the word for noodles was borrowed from China even though the dish wasn't. Words have a lot of staying power.
- notahacker 7y agoI'm taking into account the article's description of it as probably first being cooked by the Chinese diaspora as well as the linguistic borrowing. [Char] Kway Teow is a standard Chinese diaspora menu item across SE Asia (the words refer to flat rice noodles and I believe are Hokkien rather than Mandarin) although the Singaporean/Malay versions have [multiple] different approaches to spices and sauces. All food cultures overlap of course, but it's probably a less distinctively Thai dish than the curries and spicy salads (the former of which are arguably even better known to Westerners)
- paulftw 7y agoScmp website has way too much fancy JavaScript making my iphone lag and not resulting in a better reading experience
- saagarjha 7y agoIt’s a bit busy and the progressive loading takes a while, but it’s far from causing my iPhone to lag. What phone are you using?
- askvictor 7y agoMore recently, I believe Thailand had been paying chefs to set up Thai restaurants overseas as a way to promote tourism. Don't have a source unfortunately, but read it recently in some news
- kevinconaway 7y agoYou might have read it here on HN [0] 9 months ago [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17770707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17770707