7 ms·

How Thai food took over America (2019)

58 points by mortenjorck 5y ago

nont 5y ago
Padthai was newly developed in the past century as an internationalized quick dish and to unite people from different cultures: Chinese, Laotian, Indian, etc. I did hear that the government in early 2000s did try to promote Thai cultures, but I highly doubt it's still being continued as it was ousted in 2006 while many people from the cabinet were branded as evils/enemies. About the ingredients, that's so true. One notably example is most if not all Thai basil dishes aren't actually cooked with Thai basil leaves; they're cooked with holy basil leaves (in Thai, Thai basil leaves aren't even called basil). Holy basil leaves are in fact considered a rare item to be found in the states as most Asian markets don't carry them. Some Thai restaurants would sell them at a really high price like $8 for what you would buy $1 Thai basil leaves at an Asian market. As for restaurants, it's kind of a trend, sometimes a social status, for a person to have graduated in a developed country. While studying, they usually work at these Thai restaurants to earn pocket money and also socialize with the local Thai community. I would attribute the growth of Thai restaurants in the US to the fact that these students find it easier to earn much more money than having to work in the field they have studied for their whole life, or to a Thai housewife who finds a business opportunity - the same food they cook in Thailand can be sold for 6+ times more in the US (a papaya salad is sold at around $1 and the companion sticky rice is around 30 cents). Most dishes sold here are also considered easy dishes, meaning can be cooked quickly or without much effort. A larb dish is a quicky, but compare that to layered pandan desert... that takes hours while sold for 50 cents on the street in Bangkok. A tip from me, if you want cheap authentic Thai food, go to your local Thai temple on the weekend. The cooks usually bring their fresh cooked Thai food as offerings to the monks at lunch time. It's kinda Thai thing. Once the monks take parts of the offerings, the remaining food will be shared. You're expected to donate or participate during the prayer, but after that, we're talking about good Thai buffet here lol. $10 or $15 is already considered a lot for donation. If you're new, just tell you're interested in the rituals. Most of them are friendly and will try to guide you all the way through. You'll likely be fed as they want you to try their home dish.
- askvictor 5y ago
  Indeed, I remember reading about the Thai government's cuisine export plan; here's a paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237606213_Origin_and_Growth_of_the_Thai_Food_Industry_-_The_Kitchen_of_the_World https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237606213_Origin_an...
- mdturnerphys 5y ago
  > in Thai, Thai basil leaves aren't even called basil In Thai there are completely separate words for different types of basil. There's no word that just means basil, so holy basil and other varieties aren't called basil either.
  - toastal 5y ago
    Yup, Thai basil (โหระพา, ho-ra-pa) is the kind of leaf you add to soups and Isaan salads. Holy basil (กะเพรา, ga-prao) is the kind you get in most stir fries. Lemon basil (แมงลัก, maeng-lak) the seeds are in deserts and and leaves used in some curries and soups but uncommon. Most words that were related in the sense would share the same noun before the adjective, but they look and sound like entire separate herbs.
  - dangerbird2 5y ago
    That being said, from a taxonomic standpoint, Thai basil, lemon basil, and western Sweet Basil are both varieties of Ocimum basilicum, while Holy Basil or tulsi is a separate species Ocimum tenuiflorum
dhosek 5y ago
I remember first encountering Thai food around 1990ish and it seeming pretty exotic then. In the Chicago suburb where I live there are four within the boundaries of the suburb plus another nine in the adjacent suburbs. When I lived in the near north side of Chicago there were easily a dozen Thai restaurants in the area bounded by the river, North Avenue and Wells Street, all of which had really nice decor, locations that couldn't possibly be cheap and menus at ridiculously low prices. I'm still not convinced that they weren't part of some sort of money laundering operation. The big thing that I think Thai offers is that it feels light and satisfying and healthy and delicious all at once in a way that other ethnic cuisines generally don't. The Bohemian cuisine that I grew up with was satisfying and delicious but definitely neither light nor healthy.
- tayo42 5y ago
  > Thai offers is that it feels light and satisfying and healthy and delicious Can agree but after spending some time learning thai dishes, there are a lot that are really not that healthy. There's a lot of sugar in dishes to offset the bitterness of fish sauce and other ingredients. Coconut creams, milk and oil add tons of calories.
  - nont 5y ago
    >Can agree but after spending some time learning thai dishes, there are a lot that are really not that healthy. There's a lot of sugar in dishes to offset the bitterness of fish sauce and other ingredients. As a Thai, I can confirm this. Not really to offset, but make the dish more flavorful. They sometimes use a lot of palm sugar, but... maybe that's a tad healthier than cane.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      A someone who enjoy the cuisine but isn’t deeply steeped in the methods, I would say it aims for balance in individual dishes in a way the some cuisines do not. There are certainly other culinary traditions that look for balance but they may approach it across a multi course meal, and think of it in different terms. The balance of salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and fattiness in some Thai dishes is quite remarkable though.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
Been sampling plenty of Thai food in California over the past couple of decades. I have been told by a friend who has been back and forth between California and Thailand that the Thai food in California is better (his Thai wife agrees). Why? Fresher ingredients. (Don't flame me, please, it's just what I had heard — it made sense to me though.)
- zem 5y ago
  the one thing i've never been able to find in california is a roasted duck in red curry as good as the one i had in bangkok. not sure what the difference is, but the one in bangkok was seriously one of the best thai curries i've ever had and the local versions are just okay, even in restaurants that make other things really well.
  - nont 5y ago
    Did you mean this https://youtu.be/WrJs0pZtKBU https://youtu.be/WrJs0pZtKBU ? It's a quite effortful dish to make. Ducks here are not easy to find and not fresh, usually frozen. After defrosting, they will have to properly roast it while in Thailand, you can source good roasted ducks from somewhere else. I also suspect that they use canned red curry instead of making it themselves. If you have some expat Thai friends, they would sometimes make it. Befriend these people! Some good food would drop from time to time.
    - zem 5y ago
      yes, that one! i even tried making it myself a couple of times (from bottled curry paste) but as you say it's quite an effort and i wasn't really satisfied with the results. i'll have to try making the curry paste from scratch at least once and see how it goes.
- PakG1 5y ago
  You need to watch Netflix's Chef's Table, specifically the episode about Bo Songvisava and her restaurant Bo.lan. It's really interesting. She said that before she started Bo.lan, no Thai people who went out for dinner ate at Thai restaurants because there weren't really any high-quality Thai restaurants. Thai food was considered cheap street food or stuff you made at home. If you go out for dinner, you go to a nice classy western restaurant or something like that. So apparently, she was working at a western restaurant and wanted to learn how to make Thai food, but nobody could teach her because everyone had forgotten how to make it. All the pastes and whatnot were made in factories at the time. She actually had to travel all the way to the UK to learn how to make Thai food in a high-class Thai restaurant (David Thompson's Nahm). Then she eventually made her way back to Thailand and opened up Bo.lan, making everything the traditional way from scratch with natural fresh ingredients. When you see the episode, it's really astonishing. I never would have considered the idea that a professional chef would not be able to find anyone knowledgable about one's own ethnic cuisine in one own's country and would have to travel around the world to learn about one's own ethnic cuisine. REALLY interesting.
petilon 5y ago
The sad part is that many Thai and Chinese restaurants serve a highly Americanized version of their cuisines. Sometimes so Americanized that it has little to do with the original other than the name. For example a Chinese restaurant I went to recently put sugar in all dishes. I asked them about it that and they suggested Kung Pao Chicken if I don’t want sugar. They put sugar in everything else.
- treme 5y ago
  nothing sad about this. People grow up being used to different taste tone / palettes depending on local region, so businesses choose to cater to benefit of both customers and the business.
- kcb 5y ago
  When people bring this up it always reminds me of this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4 All the older first gen immigrants are like, it's not all authentic but it's pretty similar and tasty would eat it again. While the later gen kids are acting like its dog food.
  - c21h30o2 5y ago
    Old Chinese people have experienced starvation. Young people have not.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    It's also hilarious to act like there is one authorative version of a Chinese dish. China is 1 billion people over a large geographic area that has culturally exchanged for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years; at this point, the same dish can have many regional variations in preparation. The mapo tofu or kung pao chicken you find in its homeland of Chongqing is going to be very different from the versions of the dish served to locals in Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou. In that sense, American preparations of the same dish are adjusted to local taste and ingredient availability.
    - 5y ago
known 5y ago
Transparency begets Trust
silverpepsi 5y ago
I just spent 5 months in Thailand and I don't know that I have any concept whatsoever what real Thai food is. I was staying close to Nana station and frequently eating at restaurants that I thought were what Thai people eat, not fancy places, and they were super economical. My Thai teachers were asking me about how sweet it was, and I reported back "not very". They said - ah-ha - as if I confirmed something they were already sure of. They said that entire section of Bangkok is fake Thai food adopted to foreigners. Really Thai food would be much, much sweeter and it is common for foreigners to complain about it. In fact, the way my teachers describe it, it sounds like the goal is almost always to maximize every flavor attribute simultaneously, as bizarre as that sounds. So it would be delicious to a Thai if it were super spicy, sweet, and salty.
- clairity 5y ago
  > "...sounds like the goal is almost always to maximize every flavor attribute simultaneously, as bizarre as that sounds. So it would be delicious to a Thai if it were super spicy, sweet, and salty." from what i heard, the goal is to balance these flavors (plus sour, iirc), not maximize them. that's why there's often the 4 spice jar set at each table, to adjust to taste.
- Spionbil 5y ago
  >My Thai teachers were asking me about how sweet it was While I haven't had really sweet thai food. I have bought a large variety of snacks at thai grocers. Something that always strikes me is how sweet they are. Whether it's prawn crackers, crisps, seaweed, dried fish or corn snacks. It's all so very very sweet. It's rarely to my western tastes as you say. Though that won't keep me from tasting every variety I can get my hands on.
rurban 5y ago
Thankfully we don't have that Thai Restaurant mania in East Germany as elsewhere because we do have much better Vietnamese food. There is a large portion of Vietnamese immigrants. Some cities even have proper Cambodian street food, which is even better than Vietnamese. Most of the Thai restaurants in West Germany are run by Turks, whilst our Dutch restaurants are run by Bulgarians. They were reacting fastest to the trends. Our Vietnamese are running Sushi side businesses for the clueless, but you can always order the original food.
dang 5y ago
One past related thread: Why There Are So Many Thai Restaurants in America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17770707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17770707 - Aug 2018 (151 comments)
jononomo 5y ago
About a decade ago I began noticing that Thai restaurants just seemed to be better than other restaurants, especially Indian restaurants. I grew up in India so I would often try an Indian restaurant -- invariably it would be a white-tablecloth experience, not particularly pricey, have garish color schemes or artwork, be well-reviewed online, and mostly empty. Sometimes there would be a TV on playing a Bollywood dance scene at low or no volume. Thai restaurants, on the other hand, had a far more pleasing aesthetic (lots of warm wood) with interesting art, did not often have white tablecloths, were similarly priced, didn't have TVs, and were absolutely packed. I have never in my life had to wait to be seated at an Indian restaurant, and I have often been the only person in the restaurant. It was such a noticeable trend for me that I began wondering how Indian restaurants stay in business. I think they break even through takeout and deliveries. Also, I think that while people claim to like Indian food, the spice-profile of Indian food is just not as palatable to global tastes as the spice-profile of Thai food. Also, no one gives a *^&% about whether some food is "authentic" but everyone sure pretends to care. And another thing -- there is no such thing as "the best pizza" or "the best burger" in any city.

58 points by mortenjorck 5y ago

nont 5y ago

Padthai was newly developed in the past century as an internationalized quick dish and to unite people from different cultures: Chinese, Laotian, Indian, etc. I did hear that the government in early 2000s did try to promote Thai cultures, but I highly doubt it's still being continued as it was ousted in 2006 while many people from the cabinet were branded as evils/enemies. About the ingredients, that's so true. One notably example is most if not all Thai basil dishes aren't actually cooked with Thai basil leaves; they're cooked with holy basil leaves (in Thai, Thai basil leaves aren't even called basil). Holy basil leaves are in fact considered a rare item to be found in the states as most Asian markets don't carry them. Some Thai restaurants would sell them at a really high price like $8 for what you would buy $1 Thai basil leaves at an Asian market. As for restaurants, it's kind of a trend, sometimes a social status, for a person to have graduated in a developed country. While studying, they usually work at these Thai restaurants to earn pocket money and also socialize with the local Thai community. I would attribute the growth of Thai restaurants in the US to the fact that these students find it easier to earn much more money than having to work in the field they have studied for their whole life, or to a Thai housewife who finds a business opportunity - the same food they cook in Thailand can be sold for 6+ times more in the US (a papaya salad is sold at around $1 and the companion sticky rice is around 30 cents). Most dishes sold here are also considered easy dishes, meaning can be cooked quickly or without much effort. A larb dish is a quicky, but compare that to layered pandan desert... that takes hours while sold for 50 cents on the street in Bangkok. A tip from me, if you want cheap authentic Thai food, go to your local Thai temple on the weekend. The cooks usually bring their fresh cooked Thai food as offerings to the monks at lunch time. It's kinda Thai thing. Once the monks take parts of the offerings, the remaining food will be shared. You're expected to donate or participate during the prayer, but after that, we're talking about good Thai buffet here lol. $10 or $15 is already considered a lot for donation. If you're new, just tell you're interested in the rituals. Most of them are friendly and will try to guide you all the way through. You'll likely be fed as they want you to try their home dish.

askvictor 5y ago
Indeed, I remember reading about the Thai government's cuisine export plan; here's a paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237606213_Origin_and_Growth_of_the_Thai_Food_Industry_-_The_Kitchen_of_the_World https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237606213_Origin_an...
mdturnerphys 5y ago
> in Thai, Thai basil leaves aren't even called basil In Thai there are completely separate words for different types of basil. There's no word that just means basil, so holy basil and other varieties aren't called basil either.
- toastal 5y ago
  Yup, Thai basil (โหระพา, ho-ra-pa) is the kind of leaf you add to soups and Isaan salads. Holy basil (กะเพรา, ga-prao) is the kind you get in most stir fries. Lemon basil (แมงลัก, maeng-lak) the seeds are in deserts and and leaves used in some curries and soups but uncommon. Most words that were related in the sense would share the same noun before the adjective, but they look and sound like entire separate herbs.
- dangerbird2 5y ago
  That being said, from a taxonomic standpoint, Thai basil, lemon basil, and western Sweet Basil are both varieties of Ocimum basilicum, while Holy Basil or tulsi is a separate species Ocimum tenuiflorum

dhosek 5y ago

I remember first encountering Thai food around 1990ish and it seeming pretty exotic then. In the Chicago suburb where I live there are four within the boundaries of the suburb plus another nine in the adjacent suburbs. When I lived in the near north side of Chicago there were easily a dozen Thai restaurants in the area bounded by the river, North Avenue and Wells Street, all of which had really nice decor, locations that couldn't possibly be cheap and menus at ridiculously low prices. I'm still not convinced that they weren't part of some sort of money laundering operation. The big thing that I think Thai offers is that it feels light and satisfying and healthy and delicious all at once in a way that other ethnic cuisines generally don't. The Bohemian cuisine that I grew up with was satisfying and delicious but definitely neither light nor healthy.

tayo42 5y ago
> Thai offers is that it feels light and satisfying and healthy and delicious Can agree but after spending some time learning thai dishes, there are a lot that are really not that healthy. There's a lot of sugar in dishes to offset the bitterness of fish sauce and other ingredients. Coconut creams, milk and oil add tons of calories.
- nont 5y ago
  >Can agree but after spending some time learning thai dishes, there are a lot that are really not that healthy. There's a lot of sugar in dishes to offset the bitterness of fish sauce and other ingredients. As a Thai, I can confirm this. Not really to offset, but make the dish more flavorful. They sometimes use a lot of palm sugar, but... maybe that's a tad healthier than cane.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    A someone who enjoy the cuisine but isn’t deeply steeped in the methods, I would say it aims for balance in individual dishes in a way the some cuisines do not. There are certainly other culinary traditions that look for balance but they may approach it across a multi course meal, and think of it in different terms. The balance of salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and fattiness in some Thai dishes is quite remarkable though.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

Been sampling plenty of Thai food in California over the past couple of decades. I have been told by a friend who has been back and forth between California and Thailand that the Thai food in California is better (his Thai wife agrees). Why? Fresher ingredients. (Don't flame me, please, it's just what I had heard — it made sense to me though.)

zem 5y ago
the one thing i've never been able to find in california is a roasted duck in red curry as good as the one i had in bangkok. not sure what the difference is, but the one in bangkok was seriously one of the best thai curries i've ever had and the local versions are just okay, even in restaurants that make other things really well.
- nont 5y ago
  Did you mean this https://youtu.be/WrJs0pZtKBU https://youtu.be/WrJs0pZtKBU ? It's a quite effortful dish to make. Ducks here are not easy to find and not fresh, usually frozen. After defrosting, they will have to properly roast it while in Thailand, you can source good roasted ducks from somewhere else. I also suspect that they use canned red curry instead of making it themselves. If you have some expat Thai friends, they would sometimes make it. Befriend these people! Some good food would drop from time to time.
  - zem 5y ago
    yes, that one! i even tried making it myself a couple of times (from bottled curry paste) but as you say it's quite an effort and i wasn't really satisfied with the results. i'll have to try making the curry paste from scratch at least once and see how it goes.
PakG1 5y ago
You need to watch Netflix's Chef's Table, specifically the episode about Bo Songvisava and her restaurant Bo.lan. It's really interesting. She said that before she started Bo.lan, no Thai people who went out for dinner ate at Thai restaurants because there weren't really any high-quality Thai restaurants. Thai food was considered cheap street food or stuff you made at home. If you go out for dinner, you go to a nice classy western restaurant or something like that. So apparently, she was working at a western restaurant and wanted to learn how to make Thai food, but nobody could teach her because everyone had forgotten how to make it. All the pastes and whatnot were made in factories at the time. She actually had to travel all the way to the UK to learn how to make Thai food in a high-class Thai restaurant (David Thompson's Nahm). Then she eventually made her way back to Thailand and opened up Bo.lan, making everything the traditional way from scratch with natural fresh ingredients. When you see the episode, it's really astonishing. I never would have considered the idea that a professional chef would not be able to find anyone knowledgable about one's own ethnic cuisine in one own's country and would have to travel around the world to learn about one's own ethnic cuisine. REALLY interesting.

petilon 5y ago

The sad part is that many Thai and Chinese restaurants serve a highly Americanized version of their cuisines. Sometimes so Americanized that it has little to do with the original other than the name. For example a Chinese restaurant I went to recently put sugar in all dishes. I asked them about it that and they suggested Kung Pao Chicken if I don’t want sugar. They put sugar in everything else.

treme 5y ago
nothing sad about this. People grow up being used to different taste tone / palettes depending on local region, so businesses choose to cater to benefit of both customers and the business.
kcb 5y ago
When people bring this up it always reminds me of this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo59LlkTDe4 All the older first gen immigrants are like, it's not all authentic but it's pretty similar and tasty would eat it again. While the later gen kids are acting like its dog food.
- c21h30o2 5y ago
  Old Chinese people have experienced starvation. Young people have not.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  It's also hilarious to act like there is one authorative version of a Chinese dish. China is 1 billion people over a large geographic area that has culturally exchanged for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years; at this point, the same dish can have many regional variations in preparation. The mapo tofu or kung pao chicken you find in its homeland of Chongqing is going to be very different from the versions of the dish served to locals in Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou. In that sense, American preparations of the same dish are adjusted to local taste and ingredient availability.
  - 5y ago

known 5y ago

Transparency begets Trust

silverpepsi 5y ago

I just spent 5 months in Thailand and I don't know that I have any concept whatsoever what real Thai food is. I was staying close to Nana station and frequently eating at restaurants that I thought were what Thai people eat, not fancy places, and they were super economical. My Thai teachers were asking me about how sweet it was, and I reported back "not very". They said - ah-ha - as if I confirmed something they were already sure of. They said that entire section of Bangkok is fake Thai food adopted to foreigners. Really Thai food would be much, much sweeter and it is common for foreigners to complain about it. In fact, the way my teachers describe it, it sounds like the goal is almost always to maximize every flavor attribute simultaneously, as bizarre as that sounds. So it would be delicious to a Thai if it were super spicy, sweet, and salty.

clairity 5y ago
> "...sounds like the goal is almost always to maximize every flavor attribute simultaneously, as bizarre as that sounds. So it would be delicious to a Thai if it were super spicy, sweet, and salty." from what i heard, the goal is to balance these flavors (plus sour, iirc), not maximize them. that's why there's often the 4 spice jar set at each table, to adjust to taste.
Spionbil 5y ago
>My Thai teachers were asking me about how sweet it was While I haven't had really sweet thai food. I have bought a large variety of snacks at thai grocers. Something that always strikes me is how sweet they are. Whether it's prawn crackers, crisps, seaweed, dried fish or corn snacks. It's all so very very sweet. It's rarely to my western tastes as you say. Though that won't keep me from tasting every variety I can get my hands on.

rurban 5y ago

Thankfully we don't have that Thai Restaurant mania in East Germany as elsewhere because we do have much better Vietnamese food. There is a large portion of Vietnamese immigrants. Some cities even have proper Cambodian street food, which is even better than Vietnamese. Most of the Thai restaurants in West Germany are run by Turks, whilst our Dutch restaurants are run by Bulgarians. They were reacting fastest to the trends. Our Vietnamese are running Sushi side businesses for the clueless, but you can always order the original food.

dang 5y ago

One past related thread: Why There Are So Many Thai Restaurants in America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17770707 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17770707 - Aug 2018 (151 comments)

jononomo 5y ago

About a decade ago I began noticing that Thai restaurants just seemed to be better than other restaurants, especially Indian restaurants. I grew up in India so I would often try an Indian restaurant -- invariably it would be a white-tablecloth experience, not particularly pricey, have garish color schemes or artwork, be well-reviewed online, and mostly empty. Sometimes there would be a TV on playing a Bollywood dance scene at low or no volume. Thai restaurants, on the other hand, had a far more pleasing aesthetic (lots of warm wood) with interesting art, did not often have white tablecloths, were similarly priced, didn't have TVs, and were absolutely packed. I have never in my life had to wait to be seated at an Indian restaurant, and I have often been the only person in the restaurant. It was such a noticeable trend for me that I began wondering how Indian restaurants stay in business. I think they break even through takeout and deliveries. Also, I think that while people claim to like Indian food, the spice-profile of Indian food is just not as palatable to global tastes as the spice-profile of Thai food. Also, no one gives a *^&% about whether some food is "authentic" but everyone sure pretends to care. And another thing -- there is no such thing as "the best pizza" or "the best burger" in any city.