Wearing a T-shirt and a straw hat, he stands behind the bar, surrounded by glass candy-shop jars filled with shallots; heads of garlic; peanuts and cashews; granules of white sugar and little cakes of palm sugar; blistered sticks of fried pork skin; and, crucially, dried bird’s-eye chiles. When an order comes in, he grabs a wooden bat that would come in handy if he were caught in a riot and pounds it against the bottom of a deep wooden mortar. He looks as if he is churning butter. What he is doing is making tart, salty, crisp and exhilaratingly spicy papaya salad.