Oh god!” said the American expat, rolling her eyes disdainfully, when I told her I was here in Bangkok to write about pad Thai, the noodle dish found in almost every Thai restaurant around the world.
I understood her aggrieved response. Pad Thai is the first dish most newcomers to Thai cuisine try. And going to Bangkok to find the perfect pad Thai is, to a Thai food aficionado, the culinary equivalent of wearing a Nickelback concert T-shirt. It’s just not cool.
But pad Thai was my introduction to Thai food some 20 years ago, and I was immediately hooked. I loved how the flavour of the crushed peanuts interacted with the prawns and rice noodles. I’d never tasted anything like it before. I’ve since moved on to more regional Thai fare, but I wanted to revisit my roots, however uncool that may be.
Besides, underneath those wok-fried rice noodles is an intriguing history – one that suggests that pad Thai, the country’s national dish, might not be very Thai at all. This, I confess, was also fuelling my interest. Not only did I want to find the best pad Thai in Bangkok, but I wanted to learn the truth about this ubiquitous dish’s past.