A while back, I blogged about the stalls and restaurants serving kuaytiaw khua kai, wide rice noodles fried with chicken and egg, near Bangkok’s Phlapphlachai five-way intersection. I mentioned three places in that post, but was aware at the time that there were a few more vendors selling the dish. In particular, I’d noticed one vendor selling kuaytiaw khua pet, a previously unknown variant using duck.
Eventually I made it back, and after a few visits, this version of the dish might now be my favourite.
The dish is sold at the head of the narrow and nameless alley that leads to Nay Hong (my former favourite):
Kuaytiaw khua kai is undeniably a noodle dish, but in this part of town it’s prepared a lot like a pancake: after cooking the noodles on one side (in lard, over coals, of course), with a minimum of stirring or mixing, the vendor flips the entire thing over in one go:
allowing the other side to cook, again, without stirring or breaking it up. The result is a crispy, fatty, salty and smokey disk of noodles and egg. For the duck version, the meat is cooked in advance by frying it in lard; it’s then prepared the same way as the chicken version, except that crunchy preserved squid — thankfully, if you ask me — doesn’t feature. (Andy Ricker has fantasised about a decadent duck version using duck fat and duck eggs — keep your eyes peeled at Pok Pok Phat Thai.)
Adjacent is a stall that does pretty good fruit shakes; I recommend the watermelon.
Kuaytiaw Khua Pet
Off Th Yukhon 2, Bangkok
5-10pm Sat-Thurs
View Thai Eats in a larger map
No comments:
Post a Comment