Guest Blog Post: Nate Kresh's Thai Food Power Ranking

Hello, dutiful readers of Mel and Matt on the Move. As part of the Faustian bargain undertaken to relieve me of any responsibilities for room and travel bookings, I’m here to provide some guest commentary on my two weeks joining the Levines in Southeast Asia. Melanie nailed down a lot of the nuts and bolts of the trip in previous posts. So, I will instead use this space to break with the format, and offer a culinary ranking of our five stops in Thailand. I’m realizing now I perhaps should have taken even a single picture of the meals I ate, but that would’ve required forethought, and so there will be no photos.

Number 5: Krabi

Krabi comes in last, largely through no fault of its own. One can only eat so much of a cuisine, even a very good one, before they develop a sort of cabin fever. For me, that fever set in in our second to last stop of the trip. Part of this is due to eating many of our meals at the restaurants within our resort. There, even the Thai food was underwhelming (and overpriced). So, when faced with the prospect of a curry half as good and twice as expensive as those that have come before it, a man can snap. That led me down a dark path: fried chicken sandwiches lacking in actual meat, burgers akin to hockey pucks, a ham and cheese and tomato sauce sandwich that had neither ham nor cheese, and French fry platters (Ore-Ida at least tastes the same everywhere). My lowest moment was the curry egg on “toast”, a strange concoction of untoasted bread, butter spray, cucumber slices, cold scrambled eggs and cherry tomatoes. Was it insane to not only order this, but also finish all five pieces? Perhaps, but at the time, it made sense.

That’s not to say there were not great meals to be had in Krabi, though. Thanks to the beachside McDonald’s, I was able to fulfill some of my curiosities about region specific menu offerings like the corn pie (and satisfy my burger lust). It would be an oversight to not also single out the dinner at Hilltop as a standout meal, not just of the time in Krabi, but the trip as a whole. While they may need to tinker with how they define a “small” order of soup (this bowl was at least a gallon), the sizzling shrimp and stunning view were true highlights.

Number 4: Phuket

Phuket narrowly fell to No. 4 thanks, again, to my own terrible decision-making. It’s a beach town, and we’re sitting in the restaurant for lunch on the first day, and the place has good reviews according to Melanie. I see a picture of pizza, and it looks like that beach town pizza you’d get on the east coast, and I had to have it. Now, a large part of me knew that there was no chance that 1) this pizza would be good or 2) that the picture was even real. But what if it was? That’s a gamble I was ready to take. I lost, and it was the worst meal of the trip.

Outside of that pizza, each meal was a hit. We never did make it the much-hyped Pad Thai House, as we first learned it closed at 7 and then learned it was closed on Fridays (the apparently widespread custom we all know and love). However, the meals we had instead were fantastic curries. The second of those curries was also the first time my request for “spicy” seemed to be at least acknowledged, if not completely granted. It was easily the best green curry of the trip. Not all of the Western food was bad, either. The café next to our room provided an eggs breakfast you’d recognize anywhere in the U.S. I’ll have to tip my hat to Steve, that British expat runs a tight ship.

Number 3: Koh Lanta

I’ll be honest, there’s not much to make Koh Lanta more worthy of No. 3 than Phuket. On a meal-by-meal basis, Phuket performs better (maybe not including the pizza that would make any man clamber for another round of curry egg toasts). Phuket had the better breakfasts, even though I certainly pushed the complimentary all-you-can-eat toast breakfasts to the limit in Koh Lanta. The dinners in Phuket were also marginally better, with the two green curries of Phuket narrowly edging out the green and red in Koh Lanta.

What seals the deal for Koh Lanta, though, is the lunch we were served at the end of our island-hopping boat tour. It’s not simply that the meal was fantastic. Omelets, stir fried vegetables, and a great massaman curry (why does only one curry there have potatoes in it? Thailand, up your potato game!) would be delightful on its own. Coming at the end of a trip filled with snorkeling, cave swimming, and an awe-inspiring cove? Nestled on a beach, looking out over crystal clear water and a horizon dotted with islands? Can’t be beat. Unbeatable.  If it weren’t for the overwhelming strength of the top 2, Koh Lanta might be higher on the strength of this meal alone.

Number 2: Bangkok

Bangkok would be my first impression of the Thai food on this trip, and it delivered. Well, technically, the green curry served on my flight from Doha to Bangkok came first, but thankfully everything on the ground was much better.

Bangkok delivered some truly transcendent meals, encapsulated by our third day there. It began with our sojourn to Chinatown, and oysters over crispy omelets. When the dish was placed in front of us, I almost passed on the meal entirely. From the fact that I spent much of the morning downing Pepto tablets, to my leeriness over an eggs and oysters combo, to the fact that the entire dish appeared to be covered in an unidentifiable goo, it all seemed like an enormous mistake. My reluctant first bite became a crazed, lustful second, third, fourth and fifth bite. Plunging each morsel into the best sweet and sour sauce I’ve ever had, I regretted that we didn’t get a second or third plate. Moving on, we found ourselves again at a street-side table, this time for crispy pork and rolled noodle soup. After my first taste, I was instantly enraged; why are we wasting our time in the States eating pho and ramen when crispy pork and rolled noodle soup is so clearly superior? Mind boggling. Our next trip, to a food market in the Old Siam shopping center, allowed me to inhale a sack of dumplings. What’s not to love about that? The day’s eating closed with a trip to Soi Pollo. A friend, who lived in Bangkok for several years, said the garlic roast chicken was beyond description. Considering all I can say about it is “damn, that was incredible,” he was right.

A whole day bouncing around from place to place, eating strange and fantastic dishes, was the Platonic ideal for this trip going in, and I loved every bite along the way. This should’ve been enough for Bangkok to be No. 1, but that goes to…

Number 1: Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai felt like that day in Bangkok, but for every day we were there. I won’t lie, my impressions of Chiang Mai may be skewed. After the nadir that was Krabi, I came into our final stop with a renewed resolve to enjoy Thai cuisine to the fullest, while I still could. Even without the memory of curried egg toast lingering, though, Chiang Mai would be tough to beat.

Stewed pork belly with roti left me muttering about pork belly being easily our most sinful, profane meat. Two nights at the open air market, bouncing from stall to stall buying up skewers of meat, satisfied all of my street food cravings.  There was the plate of beef, garlic and chilies, served up by the grill master a few feet away, that was so good I wasn’t even jealous of Melanie’s whole fish (okay, only a little jealous). Finally, the panang served up for my final lunch came with the question I had been dying to hear: “spicy or Thai spicy?” Was it wise to eat my spiciest meal of the trip right before I embarked on 40 straight hours of travel? No, it was not. Was it worth it? Absolutely. While I still think they took it easy on me spice-wise, I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I didn’t make one last effort at getting steam to shoot out of my ears like a Looney Tune. Getting a dynamite panang, my favorite Thai dish at home, was the perfect cap on the trip.  

So there you have it, my (far too exhaustive) review. Thanks again to Matt and Melanie for the idea, thanks to you all for reading.