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The Political History of Pad Thai

183 points by sjcsjc 7y ago

zxexz 7y ago
Thailand has successfully put a lot of effort in exporting cuisine. It's no wonder that Pad Thai and other Thai cuisine is ubiquitous in many countries, with the Thai government putting so much effort into 'gastrodiplomacy' [0][1]. I'm certainly not complaining! [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130926085448/http://thailand.prd.go.th/view_news.php?id=5585&a=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20130926085448/http://thailand.p... [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason-that-there-are-so-many-thai-restaurants-in-america https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-rea...
- mc32 7y ago
  What’s interesting is that Thai food in some east Asian countries is considered fancy and the price reflects that while in North America most of them (but not all) are the affordable kind —that is on par with other non-fancy food joints.
  - taurath 7y ago
    Which? In Taiwan for example it’s easy to get inexpensive Thai the same as it is to get a tonkatsu
    - mc32 7y ago
      Huh? A bento lunch goes for 70 to 120ntd, most Thai places will be over 200 closer to 300. It’s the same price as Indian or Spanish (or figure “foreign food”)
  - n4r9 7y ago
    In the UK a Thai restaurant is typically at least semi-fancy, but you'll often be able to find a pad thai or thai red/green curry as an inexpensive option on a pub or cheap restaurant menu. I went to Thailand a couple of a years ago and visited a restaurant in Bangkok that was supposed to have the best pad thai in the country. It was decent, but I've had better in the UK. The best thing about the restaurant was that every table had a pot of peanut dust that you could add as liberally as you liked to your meal.
    - kbutler 7y ago
      They say "There is a pad thai for every cook in Thailand." My (non-exhaustive!) sampling doesn't contradict that. Tastes differ on which variations are best, but I agree with the ground peanuts (and lime and pepper powder and ideally served with cucumber slices...)
  - naravara 7y ago
    I remember Thai restaurants being fairly fancy back in the '90s and early 2000s. Its evolution into regular "take out" food over the past ~20 years has been interesting to see.
  - bmm6o 7y ago
    In the US, there's an informal hierarchy of what kinds of cuisine can be "fancy" and demand an above-average price. French, obviously, and most other Western European cuisines can be fancy. Which isn't to say that there can't be a cheap pizza or pasta restaurant, but if you look at the range it will be above average. Japanese food - sushi especially - can successfully be expensive, more so than other East Asian cuisines like Thai and Vietnamese. There are regional variations here - if there is a regional interest in it, you can have more expensive restaurants of a particular cuisine - I'm talking more average across the US.
    - mc32 7y ago
      In the US it seems to follow the economic characteristics of the supporting population. So while there is expensive gastronomic cuisine in Mexico City, the great majority of Mexican food (not including chains) is working class cheap. Same for Vietnamese and most Thai. Italian seems more bimodal, you have cheap pizza joints and sandwich/sub/hero shops and you have the white tablecloth places. Japanese is either $$ or $$$ (in rest pricing parlance). But rarely do you get cheap Japanese or cheap Korean though Korean rarely goes to $$$. (maybe LA has super fancy ones) Indian mirrors Korean. I think they kind of loosely mirror the economics of the population that brings the cuisine and those that give it their patronage.
      - spats1990 7y ago
        Sashimi/sushi slot nicely into $$$+ pricing range because the small portions and emphasis on presentation are very similar to the aesthetic often found in high end gourmet restaurants, which tend to serve things that are beautiful, tasty, and tiny. At least where I'm from there's bimodalism in Japanese cuisine if you count sushi rolls, which can be had dirt cheap (pretty localised/internationalised though). I like cheap sushi here because the cheap sushi game is usually locked down by koreans, so the rolls end up being this blend of kimbap and sushi rolls. Dunno about Korean restaurants in the west though, have only been to Korean restaurants in Korea. edit: Wish I was from/lived some place with nice cheap Italian sandwich shops etc, that must be amazing. To edit further, I think western consumers' perception of a country (as well as what you said about the country's population) affects price as well
  - Thorentis 7y ago
    Interesting observation! In Australia it is similar. Roughly speaking, the following cuisines have these types of price ranges: Indian: $-$$ Chinese: $-$$$ Thai: $$ Japanese: $$-$$$ Italian: $-$$$$ French: $$$-$$$$ Local: $$-$$$$ It seems that Asian is fairly set on low-mid, while European can go higher and still do well. Same with Japense and Chinese. Italian has been so integrated into the local cuisine that you have very cheap to very fancy. French is rare so more expensive. Japense also rare, though sushi train type places are becoming more popular (though still on the pricer side).
    - ethbro 7y ago
      Bizarre how that changes around the world. Here in the US (let's say average suburb around a moderately-sized city): Chinese: $-$$ Tex/Mex: $-$$ Indian: $-$$$ Thai: $$ Japanese: $$-$$$ Italian: $-$$$$ French: $$-$$$$ Note: Tex/Mex, Italian, and Japanese availability, quality, and pricing vary widely according to where in the country you are. I'd chalk up French to the 1980s. As in "If you wanted to be a really good chef, you studied French cooking", which resulted in popular "If you wanted to go to a really fancy restaurant, it was French." Thankfully, that seems to be fading in the urban US in favor of more local/fusion emphasis.
      - com2kid 7y ago
        New Chinese restaurants have dishes easily starting at $25 with nicer seafood dishes in the 30s+. Not enough fancy Thai places though, only 1 really unique one in all of the Seattle area to the best of my knowledge.
        rjayatilleka 7y ago
        Could you name it please? Thanks
        com2kid 7y ago
        Late reply if you see this. 1. Dong Ting Chun is really good. 2. Liuyishou Hotpot. 3. Núodle has some good dishes.
  - clairity 7y ago
    in LA, you can find excellent versions of every type of asian cuisine (thai, vietnamese, japanese, korean, filipino, indian, cambodian, bangladeshi, etc.), not to mention other cuisines like ethiopian, mexican, salvadorean, etc., for a range of prices. the affordable end is still often delicious, but requires a bit more trial and error to find the good places. european cuisines and “new american” tend to be pricier, but is still often yummy. this is why i think LA is the best food city in the country. you can often find the same (particularly asian) foods elsewhere, but either for more money, inferior quality, or both.
ravenstine 7y ago
> A bowl of rice noodles uses less grain than does a serving of plain rice, and after the second world war Thailand experienced a rice shortage. Popularizing the noodles was also a way to make precious grain supplies last longer. I like the hypothesis, though I wish this was tested. In my experience, rice can be pretty airy once it's been scooped. Nevertheless, pad thai is amazing.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
wenc 7y ago
"Gastro-diplomacy": the Korean government did something similar. https://qz.com/747757/your-newfound-love-of-korean-food-is-a-government-conspiracy/ https://qz.com/747757/your-newfound-love-of-korean-food-is-a... Interestingly, it turns out that competent governments are able to export culture and brand in a directed, purposeful way (as opposed to organic) if they put enough money and effort behind the effort and have the right kind of staffing. It's fascinating because most government tourism boards rarely achieve success. I'd never have imagined that bureaucrats would know anything about promoting the arts.
- barrkel 7y ago
  > most government tourism boards rarely achieve success How do you figure that? Most government tourism advertising is branding, and not specific to a business (it's usually "Visit X" with some motivational photos, where X is a country or region). Countries certainly have brands, are perceived in a certain way. Are you suggesting that brand advertising has no effect on this? Is it that brand advertising works for brands other than countries?
  - wenc 7y ago
    I speculate, but have no data, that most exercises carried out by tourism boards like advertising, cultural events, etc. barely move the needle on tourism because they're based on the usual drab formula of advertising and cultural events. To really create interest in a country, one has to export a desirable mainstream cultural product like food or media. One has to tell a story, and good branding requires a compelling story. I mean, if all there was were nice advertising of sandy beaches and temples in Thailand, etc. I'd probably not be motivated to visit. Nothing wrong with it, but there's no emotional connection because there's no narrative (sandy beaches are everywhere, and there are temples in most Asian countries -- there's nothing distinct about these things in themselves). But the tourism board of many countries stick to this formula because there's not much imagination on what else there is to be done. On the other hand I've eaten Thai food regularly due to the ubiquity of Thai restaurants in North America, watched viral tearjerker Thai commercials on Youtube, watched Muay Thai (popularized by American movies like Kickboxer, and more recently by Tony Jaa's movies like Ong Bak), read stories about Bangkok's traffic jams where people have to pee in a cup (probably hyperbole), seen Thailand featured on travel shows like Bourdain's -- the result of which I now have a human connection to Thailand and made me want to visit. (I did a few years ago and really enjoyed it) I can't say I have the same feelings about Indonesia for instance, even though it's the 4th largest country in the world and probably quite fascinating to visit. Australians frequent Bali because it's a nearby tropical destination, but I'd bet many people around the world couldn't tell you much about Indonesia if you asked them. Now imagine if Indonesia started exporting its food, which I can attest is quite good based on what I had in Amsterdam. That would start a whole new conversation about Indonesia.
NikolaeVarius 7y ago
Ramen was also heavily popularized by US influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramen#Postwar_popularization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramen#Postwar_popularization due to American wheat flooding Japans market and other similar factors.
- zumu 7y ago
  Also a riff on Chinese noodles.
- GuB-42 7y ago
  Ramen is also a modern food, but at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to Pad Thai. Pad Thai is top down designed. Made by the government to be appreciated by most people, but with enough character to make it distinctive of the country. Ramen is bottom up. That's essentially people trying to make survival food taste good. And it shows. The base recipe for Pad Thai is always the same, just like with traditional food. Individual chefs then add their own personal touch. Ramen however vary wildly. It is a soup, and there are noodles in it but beside that there is no real recipe. There are some common themes (ex: pork, onion, seaweed, ...), but you will probably find more exception than there are rules. While a restaurant can claim it serves "true" Pad Thai, "true" Ramen makes no sense.
  - CobrastanJorji 7y ago
    Is Pad thai designed? The article seems to have implied that the guy who decided it was a national standard was just a thing his housekeeper happened to make.
jimmyseoul 7y ago
My fiancé is Thai, so I eat a lot of Thai food. Pad Thai is still my favorite though she says it’s considered street food in Thailand lol.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  Fiancée.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - shantly 7y ago
    Could be either, really. 21st century and all that. (Making some assumptions about a screen name beginning with “jimmy”) [edit] oh missed the “she” so you’re right. Probably?
mmhsieh 7y ago
Somehow haggis never took off. Next year, Scotland.
- analog31 7y ago
  Now Haggis will have to compete with Curry.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    You'v no had haggis curry?
    - stubish 7y ago
      Now I want haggis curry. Thanks.
- bregma 7y ago
  One local place here served haggis nachos. The lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep boiled, ground, seasoned, mixed with oatmeal and stuffed in its own rectum to be boiled again then chopped and sprinkled over corn chips with salsa and cheese and served with sour cream and guacamole. What's not to love?
  - elfexec 7y ago
    Salsa, cheese, sour cream and guacamole can make anything taste good. Is there a better combination out there? Only if guacamole wasn't so expensive. > The lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep boiled, ground, seasoned, mixed with oatmeal and stuffed in its own rectum to be boiled I will never. > with salsa and cheese and served with sour cream and guacamole. Oh, doesn't sound so bad. I'll give it a shot.
  - KuiN 7y ago
    > The lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep boiled, ground, seasoned, mixed with oatmeal and stuffed in its own rectum Hey we're no monsters. It's the heart, lungs & liver of a sheep stuffed into it's _stomach_ not it's rectum. (Though often these days it's in an artificial casing, the whole stomach thing seems to put people off).
strictnein 7y ago
A sort of related question that I've struggled to get a good answer on: how does one actually pronounce "Pad" in "Pad Thai"? Pad as in iPad? Or closer to pod?
- happyglands 7y ago
  I've always heard "pád", but I've never been to Thailand or heard it from them.
- dev-ns8 7y ago
  While in Thailand, I never once heard someone pronounce it as "pod", always Pad Thai
- ValentineC 7y ago
  The Google Translate audio is exactly how I've heard it being spoken by Thai people: https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=th&tl=en&text=%E0%B8%9C%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%94%E0%B9%84%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%A2 https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=th&t...
- rnicholus 7y ago
  Either, really. And you’ll hear Thai people pronounce it either way (depending on their English reference - usually British), since locals will not call it “Pad Thai”.
  - mdturnerphys 7y ago
    Not sure what you mean by this. This is the name in Thai and "ผัดไทย" ([pʰàt tʰāj] in IPA) is what is written on shops and carts where it's sold. The vowel in "pad" is in between the two options given in the question above. Unlike English, where accents primarily change the vowels, vowels stay quite constant across accents in Thai.
    - rnicholus 7y ago
      I mean that I’ve heard either pronunciation. And when addressing to English native speakers, the pronunciation may not be connected to local custom...
massanishi 7y ago
No wonder when I visited Georgia (country), they had more Thai restaurants than Chinese restaurants. That's unheard of coming from the North American background.
- 98codes 7y ago
  You haven't lived in Seattle apparently. We get new Thai places like Manhattan gets new bank branches.
  - asguy 7y ago
    Or Portland. You can throw a rock and hit a decent Thai restaurant.
    - hasmolo 7y ago
      I love the why for Portland. I've always felt like we have so many Thai places because they are so flexible on options. Going to dinner with lactose intolerant folks, vegans, veggies, and carnivores? Thai will easily serve everyone, and there will be multiple choices for each person.
      - selimthegrim 7y ago
        s/o to Pad Thai Kitchen on Belmont. I hope they're still kicking.
        solarfair 7y ago
        They definitely are alive and delicious :)
podiki 7y ago
While this short article gets the point across, it is a short rehash of the article [1] (which is quoted and linked Quartz) https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3007657/history-pad-thai-how-stir-fried-noodle-dish-was-invented-thai https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3007657/hi...
- dang 7y ago
  Ugh, that's bad. Thanks for catching it. We've changed the URL from https://qz.com/quartzy/1617172/thailands-beloved-pad-thai-dish-has-a-strange-political-history/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1617172/thailands-beloved-pad-thai-di..., which is a ripoff of this.
gumby 7y ago
The article was about food but glossed over one point: the kingdom of Siam was multi-ethnic, including various people with shared connections across borders (e.g. muslim Malays, Hmong, Karen, Chinese, etc). Switching to "Thai" land was intended to marginalize these other factions. I mention this because the name change was blandly listed along with mentioning the desire to dechinesify the noodles' origin. This was very much the tenor of the times: Hungary had achieved dual status in the "Austro-Hungarian" empire half a century before; by the 30s "national" self determination was all the rage thanks to WW1, Woodrow Wilson, and picking apart the bones of the Ottoman Empire. I am not a member of any of the groups involved with no axe to grind (at least in this regard!). But since the article was both a fun trivia piece but brushed against this topic I thought it worth clarifying.
- keiferski 7y ago
  National self-determination movements go back far before the 1930s and indeed that’s (one of the primary reasons) why the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires started to break up in the late 19th century. WW1 and its aftermath were just the final steps.
  - davidw 7y ago
    Here's a weird bit of trivia from the world of cycling: how an Italian bike got the not very Italian looking name of "Wilier": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilier_Triestina#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilier_Triestina#History
  - gumby 7y ago
    Indeed that’s why I started with Hungary, though the French Revolution lit a fire (e.g. in early 19th century Germany)
- naravara 7y ago
  This article and your comment actually clarified a lot for me. I always thought it was strange how many quintessentially "Thai" things have the word "Thai" in their names (muay thai, pad Thai, Thai tea, etc.) It didn't seem natural that people would make stuff and then self-consciously name it after their own ethnicity. It would be like Indians calling their tea preparation "Indian Tea" rather than just using "chai," the native Indian word for "tea." The Indianness of the tea wouldn't have been a relevant thing if it's being made in India for other Indians after all. So why would Thai people invent a style of boxing and then call it "Thai style boxing" even in their native language? It hadn't occurred to me that it was all a top-down effort to create a "national identity" and didn't organically develop from the folk culture at all.
kyleblarson 7y ago
Bit of an aside but I've been cooking out of this Thai cookbook lately and it's been super fun and delicious: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547465/night--market-by-kris-yenbamroong/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547465/night--marke...
- cbsks 7y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation! I just put it on my wishlist.
Canada 7y ago
The dish is foreign in Thailand too. It's always available where westerners might be expected to ask for it but I've never, ever, ever seen anyone Thai order it. (Where westerners are not expected it's not on the menu) I can completely understand why as it's never even half as good as a cheap place outside Thailand would serve. It's always kinda dry and bland. You can even massively overpay for it at the best hotels in Bangkok and still it sucks. It's like trying to get proper American Chinese in China... good luck with that.
- nawitus 7y ago
  Thais do order and eat it.
  - Canada 7y ago
    I bet McDonalds sells 50,000 burgers for each time that happens. In my experience most would choose a warmed sausage pack from the convenience store over what is sold as "pad thai" in Bangkok. Like okay, you absolutely need to eat something. They both taste the same but at least the sausage pack only cost 20 baht.
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  > The dish is foreign in Thailand too. It's always available where westerners might be expected to ask for it but I've never, ever, ever seen anyone Thai order it. I'm sorry but what on Earth are you talking about? I can only assume you have simply never visited Thailand? This is just so inaccurate I don't know what to say.
  - jzwinck 7y ago
    I live in Southeast Asia and have been to Thailand many times. Pad Thai is well known to every Thai person but it is not seen all that often on their plates (or in their plastic bags, where takeaway food is conveyed). And indeed a lot of Thai restaurant menus do not list Pad Thai, or if they do it's far down the list, like "chicken fingers" in an American restaurant. In tourist hotspots (which abound in Thailand) you'll tend to see picture menus and Pad Thai will be on them. But there are much, much better dishes to be had outside these areas. One issue is they don't all have consistent names, e.g. when I asked for a recommendation and was given an absolutely amazing dry curry crab noodle dish with egg, I asked for its name in Thai and translated it was "curry crab" which would never get you a similar dish in another restaurant. Even the venerable Pad Kee Mao, which I think is always a noodle dish in America, is sometimes a totally different rice dish in Thailand.
TrackerFF 7y ago
There's been popping up Thai restaurants left and right here in Norway for the past 15-20 years. I suspect it has something to do with the large amount of Thai women immigrating here...hell, even in my small rural hometown of 3000, there's one Thai restaurant, and one Thai food truck. Every neighboring town and village has the same. And you always see them selling spring rolls etc. on facebook buy / sell groups.
kazinator 7y ago
Beware: a lot of the off-the-shelf sauces don't have any trace of tamarind.
m3kw9 7y ago
Most Thai places cannot make good pad Thai. I don’t know why, but I’d have to go to one that is known to have a good one, otherwise it’s usually way too sweet
- shantly 7y ago
  I’ve had three, one allegedly from somewhere pretty good, and all were way too sweet for my taste. Only had a couple bites of each, just found them really unpleasant. And I’m American, so I’m fairly desensitized to sugar!
madeofpalk 7y ago
Probably the biggest thing I’ve missed since moving from Australia to London is remotely passable Thai food. Thankfully I’ve found one place, on Deliveroo, that is pretty decent, but everywhere else is mostly rubbish unfortunately.
- andyljones 7y ago
  What's the one place?
  - madeofpalk 7y ago
    Love Bike Thai Kitchen, around Cannonbury.
LouisJScott 7y ago
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183 points by sjcsjc 7y ago

Thailand has successfully put a lot of effort in exporting cuisine. It's no wonder that Pad Thai and other Thai cuisine is ubiquitous in many countries, with the Thai government putting so much effort into 'gastrodiplomacy' [0][1]. I'm certainly not complaining! [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130926085448/http://thailand.prd.go.th/view_news.php?id=5585&a=2 https://web.archive.org/web/20130926085448/http://thailand.p... [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason-that-there-are-so-many-thai-restaurants-in-america https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-rea...

mc32 7y ago
What’s interesting is that Thai food in some east Asian countries is considered fancy and the price reflects that while in North America most of them (but not all) are the affordable kind —that is on par with other non-fancy food joints.
- taurath 7y ago
  Which? In Taiwan for example it’s easy to get inexpensive Thai the same as it is to get a tonkatsu
  - mc32 7y ago
    Huh? A bento lunch goes for 70 to 120ntd, most Thai places will be over 200 closer to 300. It’s the same price as Indian or Spanish (or figure “foreign food”)
- n4r9 7y ago
  In the UK a Thai restaurant is typically at least semi-fancy, but you'll often be able to find a pad thai or thai red/green curry as an inexpensive option on a pub or cheap restaurant menu. I went to Thailand a couple of a years ago and visited a restaurant in Bangkok that was supposed to have the best pad thai in the country. It was decent, but I've had better in the UK. The best thing about the restaurant was that every table had a pot of peanut dust that you could add as liberally as you liked to your meal.
  - kbutler 7y ago
    They say "There is a pad thai for every cook in Thailand." My (non-exhaustive!) sampling doesn't contradict that. Tastes differ on which variations are best, but I agree with the ground peanuts (and lime and pepper powder and ideally served with cucumber slices...)
- naravara 7y ago
  I remember Thai restaurants being fairly fancy back in the '90s and early 2000s. Its evolution into regular "take out" food over the past ~20 years has been interesting to see.
- bmm6o 7y ago
  In the US, there's an informal hierarchy of what kinds of cuisine can be "fancy" and demand an above-average price. French, obviously, and most other Western European cuisines can be fancy. Which isn't to say that there can't be a cheap pizza or pasta restaurant, but if you look at the range it will be above average. Japanese food - sushi especially - can successfully be expensive, more so than other East Asian cuisines like Thai and Vietnamese. There are regional variations here - if there is a regional interest in it, you can have more expensive restaurants of a particular cuisine - I'm talking more average across the US.
  - mc32 7y ago
    In the US it seems to follow the economic characteristics of the supporting population. So while there is expensive gastronomic cuisine in Mexico City, the great majority of Mexican food (not including chains) is working class cheap. Same for Vietnamese and most Thai. Italian seems more bimodal, you have cheap pizza joints and sandwich/sub/hero shops and you have the white tablecloth places. Japanese is either $$ or $$$ (in rest pricing parlance). But rarely do you get cheap Japanese or cheap Korean though Korean rarely goes to $$$. (maybe LA has super fancy ones) Indian mirrors Korean. I think they kind of loosely mirror the economics of the population that brings the cuisine and those that give it their patronage.
    - spats1990 7y ago
      Sashimi/sushi slot nicely into $$$+ pricing range because the small portions and emphasis on presentation are very similar to the aesthetic often found in high end gourmet restaurants, which tend to serve things that are beautiful, tasty, and tiny. At least where I'm from there's bimodalism in Japanese cuisine if you count sushi rolls, which can be had dirt cheap (pretty localised/internationalised though). I like cheap sushi here because the cheap sushi game is usually locked down by koreans, so the rolls end up being this blend of kimbap and sushi rolls. Dunno about Korean restaurants in the west though, have only been to Korean restaurants in Korea. edit: Wish I was from/lived some place with nice cheap Italian sandwich shops etc, that must be amazing. To edit further, I think western consumers' perception of a country (as well as what you said about the country's population) affects price as well
- Thorentis 7y ago
  Interesting observation! In Australia it is similar. Roughly speaking, the following cuisines have these types of price ranges: Indian: $-$$ Chinese: $-$$$ Thai: $$ Japanese: $$-$$$ Italian: $-$$$$ French: $$$-$$$$ Local: $$-$$$$ It seems that Asian is fairly set on low-mid, while European can go higher and still do well. Same with Japense and Chinese. Italian has been so integrated into the local cuisine that you have very cheap to very fancy. French is rare so more expensive. Japense also rare, though sushi train type places are becoming more popular (though still on the pricer side).
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Bizarre how that changes around the world. Here in the US (let's say average suburb around a moderately-sized city): Chinese: $-$$ Tex/Mex: $-$$ Indian: $-$$$ Thai: $$ Japanese: $$-$$$ Italian: $-$$$$ French: $$-$$$$ Note: Tex/Mex, Italian, and Japanese availability, quality, and pricing vary widely according to where in the country you are. I'd chalk up French to the 1980s. As in "If you wanted to be a really good chef, you studied French cooking", which resulted in popular "If you wanted to go to a really fancy restaurant, it was French." Thankfully, that seems to be fading in the urban US in favor of more local/fusion emphasis.
    - com2kid 7y ago
      New Chinese restaurants have dishes easily starting at $25 with nicer seafood dishes in the 30s+. Not enough fancy Thai places though, only 1 really unique one in all of the Seattle area to the best of my knowledge.
      - rjayatilleka 7y ago
        Could you name it please? Thanks
        com2kid 7y ago
        Late reply if you see this. 1. Dong Ting Chun is really good. 2. Liuyishou Hotpot. 3. Núodle has some good dishes.
- clairity 7y ago
  in LA, you can find excellent versions of every type of asian cuisine (thai, vietnamese, japanese, korean, filipino, indian, cambodian, bangladeshi, etc.), not to mention other cuisines like ethiopian, mexican, salvadorean, etc., for a range of prices. the affordable end is still often delicious, but requires a bit more trial and error to find the good places. european cuisines and “new american” tend to be pricier, but is still often yummy. this is why i think LA is the best food city in the country. you can often find the same (particularly asian) foods elsewhere, but either for more money, inferior quality, or both.

ravenstine 7y ago

> A bowl of rice noodles uses less grain than does a serving of plain rice, and after the second world war Thailand experienced a rice shortage. Popularizing the noodles was also a way to make precious grain supplies last longer. I like the hypothesis, though I wish this was tested. In my experience, rice can be pretty airy once it's been scooped. Nevertheless, pad thai is amazing.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

wenc 7y ago

"Gastro-diplomacy": the Korean government did something similar. https://qz.com/747757/your-newfound-love-of-korean-food-is-a-government-conspiracy/ https://qz.com/747757/your-newfound-love-of-korean-food-is-a... Interestingly, it turns out that competent governments are able to export culture and brand in a directed, purposeful way (as opposed to organic) if they put enough money and effort behind the effort and have the right kind of staffing. It's fascinating because most government tourism boards rarely achieve success. I'd never have imagined that bureaucrats would know anything about promoting the arts.

barrkel 7y ago
> most government tourism boards rarely achieve success How do you figure that? Most government tourism advertising is branding, and not specific to a business (it's usually "Visit X" with some motivational photos, where X is a country or region). Countries certainly have brands, are perceived in a certain way. Are you suggesting that brand advertising has no effect on this? Is it that brand advertising works for brands other than countries?
- wenc 7y ago
  I speculate, but have no data, that most exercises carried out by tourism boards like advertising, cultural events, etc. barely move the needle on tourism because they're based on the usual drab formula of advertising and cultural events. To really create interest in a country, one has to export a desirable mainstream cultural product like food or media. One has to tell a story, and good branding requires a compelling story. I mean, if all there was were nice advertising of sandy beaches and temples in Thailand, etc. I'd probably not be motivated to visit. Nothing wrong with it, but there's no emotional connection because there's no narrative (sandy beaches are everywhere, and there are temples in most Asian countries -- there's nothing distinct about these things in themselves). But the tourism board of many countries stick to this formula because there's not much imagination on what else there is to be done. On the other hand I've eaten Thai food regularly due to the ubiquity of Thai restaurants in North America, watched viral tearjerker Thai commercials on Youtube, watched Muay Thai (popularized by American movies like Kickboxer, and more recently by Tony Jaa's movies like Ong Bak), read stories about Bangkok's traffic jams where people have to pee in a cup (probably hyperbole), seen Thailand featured on travel shows like Bourdain's -- the result of which I now have a human connection to Thailand and made me want to visit. (I did a few years ago and really enjoyed it) I can't say I have the same feelings about Indonesia for instance, even though it's the 4th largest country in the world and probably quite fascinating to visit. Australians frequent Bali because it's a nearby tropical destination, but I'd bet many people around the world couldn't tell you much about Indonesia if you asked them. Now imagine if Indonesia started exporting its food, which I can attest is quite good based on what I had in Amsterdam. That would start a whole new conversation about Indonesia.

NikolaeVarius 7y ago

Ramen was also heavily popularized by US influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramen#Postwar_popularization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramen#Postwar_popularization due to American wheat flooding Japans market and other similar factors.

zumu 7y ago
Also a riff on Chinese noodles.
GuB-42 7y ago
Ramen is also a modern food, but at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to Pad Thai. Pad Thai is top down designed. Made by the government to be appreciated by most people, but with enough character to make it distinctive of the country. Ramen is bottom up. That's essentially people trying to make survival food taste good. And it shows. The base recipe for Pad Thai is always the same, just like with traditional food. Individual chefs then add their own personal touch. Ramen however vary wildly. It is a soup, and there are noodles in it but beside that there is no real recipe. There are some common themes (ex: pork, onion, seaweed, ...), but you will probably find more exception than there are rules. While a restaurant can claim it serves "true" Pad Thai, "true" Ramen makes no sense.
- CobrastanJorji 7y ago
  Is Pad thai designed? The article seems to have implied that the guy who decided it was a national standard was just a thing his housekeeper happened to make.

jimmyseoul 7y ago

My fiancé is Thai, so I eat a lot of Thai food. Pad Thai is still my favorite though she says it’s considered street food in Thailand lol.

kgwgk 7y ago
Fiancée.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- shantly 7y ago
  Could be either, really. 21st century and all that. (Making some assumptions about a screen name beginning with “jimmy”) [edit] oh missed the “she” so you’re right. Probably?

mmhsieh 7y ago

Somehow haggis never took off. Next year, Scotland.

analog31 7y ago
Now Haggis will have to compete with Curry.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  You'v no had haggis curry?
  - stubish 7y ago
    Now I want haggis curry. Thanks.
bregma 7y ago
One local place here served haggis nachos. The lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep boiled, ground, seasoned, mixed with oatmeal and stuffed in its own rectum to be boiled again then chopped and sprinkled over corn chips with salsa and cheese and served with sour cream and guacamole. What's not to love?
- elfexec 7y ago
  Salsa, cheese, sour cream and guacamole can make anything taste good. Is there a better combination out there? Only if guacamole wasn't so expensive. > The lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep boiled, ground, seasoned, mixed with oatmeal and stuffed in its own rectum to be boiled I will never. > with salsa and cheese and served with sour cream and guacamole. Oh, doesn't sound so bad. I'll give it a shot.
- KuiN 7y ago
  > The lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep boiled, ground, seasoned, mixed with oatmeal and stuffed in its own rectum Hey we're no monsters. It's the heart, lungs & liver of a sheep stuffed into it's _stomach_ not it's rectum. (Though often these days it's in an artificial casing, the whole stomach thing seems to put people off).

strictnein 7y ago

A sort of related question that I've struggled to get a good answer on: how does one actually pronounce "Pad" in "Pad Thai"? Pad as in iPad? Or closer to pod?

happyglands 7y ago
I've always heard "pád", but I've never been to Thailand or heard it from them.
dev-ns8 7y ago
While in Thailand, I never once heard someone pronounce it as "pod", always Pad Thai
ValentineC 7y ago
The Google Translate audio is exactly how I've heard it being spoken by Thai people: https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=th&tl=en&text=%E0%B8%9C%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%94%E0%B9%84%E0%B8%97%E0%B8%A2 https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=th&t...
rnicholus 7y ago
Either, really. And you’ll hear Thai people pronounce it either way (depending on their English reference - usually British), since locals will not call it “Pad Thai”.
- mdturnerphys 7y ago
  Not sure what you mean by this. This is the name in Thai and "ผัดไทย" ([pʰàt tʰāj] in IPA) is what is written on shops and carts where it's sold. The vowel in "pad" is in between the two options given in the question above. Unlike English, where accents primarily change the vowels, vowels stay quite constant across accents in Thai.
  - rnicholus 7y ago
    I mean that I’ve heard either pronunciation. And when addressing to English native speakers, the pronunciation may not be connected to local custom...

massanishi 7y ago

No wonder when I visited Georgia (country), they had more Thai restaurants than Chinese restaurants. That's unheard of coming from the North American background.

98codes 7y ago
You haven't lived in Seattle apparently. We get new Thai places like Manhattan gets new bank branches.
- asguy 7y ago
  Or Portland. You can throw a rock and hit a decent Thai restaurant.
  - hasmolo 7y ago
    I love the why for Portland. I've always felt like we have so many Thai places because they are so flexible on options. Going to dinner with lactose intolerant folks, vegans, veggies, and carnivores? Thai will easily serve everyone, and there will be multiple choices for each person.
    - selimthegrim 7y ago
      s/o to Pad Thai Kitchen on Belmont. I hope they're still kicking.
      - solarfair 7y ago
        They definitely are alive and delicious :)

podiki 7y ago

While this short article gets the point across, it is a short rehash of the article [1] (which is quoted and linked Quartz) https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3007657/history-pad-thai-how-stir-fried-noodle-dish-was-invented-thai https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3007657/hi...

dang 7y ago
Ugh, that's bad. Thanks for catching it. We've changed the URL from https://qz.com/quartzy/1617172/thailands-beloved-pad-thai-dish-has-a-strange-political-history/ https://qz.com/quartzy/1617172/thailands-beloved-pad-thai-di..., which is a ripoff of this.

gumby 7y ago

The article was about food but glossed over one point: the kingdom of Siam was multi-ethnic, including various people with shared connections across borders (e.g. muslim Malays, Hmong, Karen, Chinese, etc). Switching to "Thai" land was intended to marginalize these other factions. I mention this because the name change was blandly listed along with mentioning the desire to dechinesify the noodles' origin. This was very much the tenor of the times: Hungary had achieved dual status in the "Austro-Hungarian" empire half a century before; by the 30s "national" self determination was all the rage thanks to WW1, Woodrow Wilson, and picking apart the bones of the Ottoman Empire. I am not a member of any of the groups involved with no axe to grind (at least in this regard!). But since the article was both a fun trivia piece but brushed against this topic I thought it worth clarifying.

keiferski 7y ago
National self-determination movements go back far before the 1930s and indeed that’s (one of the primary reasons) why the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires started to break up in the late 19th century. WW1 and its aftermath were just the final steps.
- davidw 7y ago
  Here's a weird bit of trivia from the world of cycling: how an Italian bike got the not very Italian looking name of "Wilier": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilier_Triestina#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilier_Triestina#History
- gumby 7y ago
  Indeed that’s why I started with Hungary, though the French Revolution lit a fire (e.g. in early 19th century Germany)
naravara 7y ago
This article and your comment actually clarified a lot for me. I always thought it was strange how many quintessentially "Thai" things have the word "Thai" in their names (muay thai, pad Thai, Thai tea, etc.) It didn't seem natural that people would make stuff and then self-consciously name it after their own ethnicity. It would be like Indians calling their tea preparation "Indian Tea" rather than just using "chai," the native Indian word for "tea." The Indianness of the tea wouldn't have been a relevant thing if it's being made in India for other Indians after all. So why would Thai people invent a style of boxing and then call it "Thai style boxing" even in their native language? It hadn't occurred to me that it was all a top-down effort to create a "national identity" and didn't organically develop from the folk culture at all.

kyleblarson 7y ago

Bit of an aside but I've been cooking out of this Thai cookbook lately and it's been super fun and delicious: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547465/night--market-by-kris-yenbamroong/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547465/night--marke...

cbsks 7y ago
Thanks for the recommendation! I just put it on my wishlist.

Canada 7y ago

The dish is foreign in Thailand too. It's always available where westerners might be expected to ask for it but I've never, ever, ever seen anyone Thai order it. (Where westerners are not expected it's not on the menu) I can completely understand why as it's never even half as good as a cheap place outside Thailand would serve. It's always kinda dry and bland. You can even massively overpay for it at the best hotels in Bangkok and still it sucks. It's like trying to get proper American Chinese in China... good luck with that.

nawitus 7y ago
Thais do order and eat it.
- Canada 7y ago
  I bet McDonalds sells 50,000 burgers for each time that happens. In my experience most would choose a warmed sausage pack from the convenience store over what is sold as "pad thai" in Bangkok. Like okay, you absolutely need to eat something. They both taste the same but at least the sausage pack only cost 20 baht.
iamaelephant 7y ago
> The dish is foreign in Thailand too. It's always available where westerners might be expected to ask for it but I've never, ever, ever seen anyone Thai order it. I'm sorry but what on Earth are you talking about? I can only assume you have simply never visited Thailand? This is just so inaccurate I don't know what to say.
- jzwinck 7y ago
  I live in Southeast Asia and have been to Thailand many times. Pad Thai is well known to every Thai person but it is not seen all that often on their plates (or in their plastic bags, where takeaway food is conveyed). And indeed a lot of Thai restaurant menus do not list Pad Thai, or if they do it's far down the list, like "chicken fingers" in an American restaurant. In tourist hotspots (which abound in Thailand) you'll tend to see picture menus and Pad Thai will be on them. But there are much, much better dishes to be had outside these areas. One issue is they don't all have consistent names, e.g. when I asked for a recommendation and was given an absolutely amazing dry curry crab noodle dish with egg, I asked for its name in Thai and translated it was "curry crab" which would never get you a similar dish in another restaurant. Even the venerable Pad Kee Mao, which I think is always a noodle dish in America, is sometimes a totally different rice dish in Thailand.

TrackerFF 7y ago

There's been popping up Thai restaurants left and right here in Norway for the past 15-20 years. I suspect it has something to do with the large amount of Thai women immigrating here...hell, even in my small rural hometown of 3000, there's one Thai restaurant, and one Thai food truck. Every neighboring town and village has the same. And you always see them selling spring rolls etc. on facebook buy / sell groups.

kazinator 7y ago

Beware: a lot of the off-the-shelf sauces don't have any trace of tamarind.

m3kw9 7y ago

Most Thai places cannot make good pad Thai. I don’t know why, but I’d have to go to one that is known to have a good one, otherwise it’s usually way too sweet

shantly 7y ago
I’ve had three, one allegedly from somewhere pretty good, and all were way too sweet for my taste. Only had a couple bites of each, just found them really unpleasant. And I’m American, so I’m fairly desensitized to sugar!

madeofpalk 7y ago

Probably the biggest thing I’ve missed since moving from Australia to London is remotely passable Thai food. Thankfully I’ve found one place, on Deliveroo, that is pretty decent, but everywhere else is mostly rubbish unfortunately.

andyljones 7y ago
What's the one place?
- madeofpalk 7y ago
  Love Bike Thai Kitchen, around Cannonbury.

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