Bangkok: Street chef in a city that

Bangkok: Street chef in a city that loves its food - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune

The world's great cities often lay claims to culinary excellence, but perhaps in no other place are the aromas and sights of food so ever-present, the residents so preoccupied with their next meal and casual conversations so frequently devoted to eating as in this massive, sweaty metropolis.
There are at least 43,000 street food vendors in Bangkok, the municipal government says, a legion of operators of food carts crammed into every available nook of urban real estate. Among them is Sompong Seetha, who for eight years has risen well before dawn to make his popular rendition of chicken rice, the specialty from the Chinese island of Hainan that combines tender boiled chicken with a spicy, ginger- laced soy sauce, served on a bed of rice and accompanied by a small bowl of broth.
"This is the only thing I know how to cook," Sompong said one day about 5 a.m., as he shoveled coals onto the lid of a giant cooking pot to steam rice.
Street stalls are the testing ground for Thai cooks, a Darwinian competition to win the hearts and sate the appetites of Bangkok's hungry - and often picky - 10 million or so residents.
Sompong, 38, was trained to be a sticky-rice farmer in northeast Thailand, a life he left behind because it was not lucrative enough. Today, the serpentine concrete alleyways of central Bangkok are his adopted home.
Bangkok alternately loves and hates its food vendors. The city government banned them from certain areas because they clog traffic, block sidewalks and encourage cockroaches and vermin to multiply in the putrid sewers that food vendors use for trash disposal. One recent article in The Nation, a Bangkok daily, described street vendors as "parasitic elements" whose presence spawns "organized beggars, street-children gangs and hooligans who are responsible for many of the petty crimes in the city center."
But it is difficult to imagine Bangkok without its vendors. Sompong's loyal customers flock to his stall like hungry children to their school cafeteria, an apt analogy because food vendors are known in Thai as "mae kha" or "phaw kha," which translate roughly as "mother trader" or "father trader."
Customers at Sompong's stall are served quickly, but this is not an anonymous fast-food experience. Although taciturn, Sompong connects with his clientele much more than the bored, pimply teenagers who stand behind counters at air-conditioned hamburger franchises do.
Sompong remembers his customers' preferences: dark meat or white. Some women forego the skin because they feel it is too fattening, he said. When he has not seen a customer in a while, he asks why.
Feeding his hundreds of loyal customers involves midnight trips to sprawling night markets, predawn deliveries, the clack-clack-clack of early morning vegetable chopping and the mixing and stirring of what Sompong calls his "secret sauce."
The near miracle of the process is that, for all the hustle and hard work, customers at his stall pay 30 baht, or 75 cents, for a full plate of chicken rice - cheap even by Bangkok standards.
Inexpensive but delicious street food fits into the mosaic of Bangkok's luxuries. To foreign tourists and wealthy Thais, this city represents cheap modernity: skyscrapers and swank hotels. Bangkok is the city of the hourlong, $5 foot massage; the $2 air- conditioned taxi ride across town; and the $7 golf caddy, tip included.
But all of this would not be possible without the razor-thin profit margins and long hours of Bangkok's service class, a stream of workers who, like Sompong, hail from Thailand's vast and generally poor hinterland.
Thailand has a population similar to that of France - about 60 million people - but income is distributed far more unequally than in the West. Nearly a third of Thais live on less than $2 a day, according to the Asian Development Bank, in a separate world from the Mercedes- driving Bangkok elite.
When Sompong left behind his family's small rice farm nine years ago, he arrived at Bangkok's main train station without any idea of what job he would get. He worked for a year at a beef-noodle shop, earning the equivalent of $2.50 a day. But he wanted to own his own stall. So from an Indian loan shark he borrowed 30,000 baht, which at the time was worth $1,200, and started his chicken-rice business. Slowly he built up his customer base and paid back the loan - at 20 percent interest.
Food stalls in Bangkok are a great social equalizer. A typical noodle stall, says Robert Halliday, one of Bangkok's premier restaurant experts, can feature shirtless manual workers eating beside well-dressed middle-class Bangkok Thais. "The noodles are good enough to draw the food nuts and cheap enough to draw the laborers," he said.
Sompong's rickety aluminum tables and plastic stools are set out along a small alley, or soi, connected to a dead-end street. It is not an ideal place for a food vendor, given the distance

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Bangkok: Street đầu bếp tại một thành phố rất thích thức ăn của nó - Asia - Pacific - International Herald TribuneCác thành phố lớn trên thế giới thường đẻ yêu cầu bồi thường đến ẩm thực xuất sắc, nhưng có lẽ ở nơi nào khác có mùi hương và các điểm tham quan của thực phẩm vì vậy bao, các cư dân quá bận tâm với bữa ăn tiếp theo của họ và các cuộc hội thoại không thường xuyên như vậy thường xuyên dành cho việc ăn uống như trong này đô thị lớn, mồ hôi.Có rất ít 43.000 nhà cung cấp thức ăn đường phố ở Bangkok, chính phủ municipal nói, một legion của vận hành của xe chở thực phẩm crammed vào mỗi nook có đô thị bất động sản. Trong số đó là Sompong Seetha, người cho tám năm đã tăng trước khi bình minh làm ông rendition phổ biến của cơm gà, đặc biệt từ các Trung Quốc đảo Hải Nam mà kết hợp đấu thầu gà luộc với một cay, gừng - tẩm xì dầu, phục vụ trên một giường của gạo và đi kèm với một bát nhỏ của nước dùng."Đây là điều duy nhất tôi biết làm thế nào để nấu ăn," Sompong nói một ngày khoảng 5 giờ sáng, như ông shoveled than lên nắp khổng lồ Nấu nồi hơi nước gạo.Đường phố các quầy hàng có mặt đất thử nghiệm cho các đầu bếp Thái, một học thuyết Darwin đối thủ cạnh tranh để giành chiến thắng trong trái tim và sate thụ của Bangkok đói - và thường picky - 10 triệu hoặc hơn cư dân.Sompong, 38, được đào tạo để là một nông dân gạo nếp ở đông bắc Thái Lan, một cuộc sống mà ông bỏ lại phía sau bởi vì nó đã không được sinh lời đủ. Hôm nay, ngõ serpentine bê tông của Trung tâm thành phố Bangkok là quê hương nuôi.Bangkok alternately loves and hates its food vendors. The city government banned them from certain areas because they clog traffic, block sidewalks and encourage cockroaches and vermin to multiply in the putrid sewers that food vendors use for trash disposal. One recent article in The Nation, a Bangkok daily, described street vendors as "parasitic elements" whose presence spawns "organized beggars, street-children gangs and hooligans who are responsible for many of the petty crimes in the city center."But it is difficult to imagine Bangkok without its vendors. Sompong's loyal customers flock to his stall like hungry children to their school cafeteria, an apt analogy because food vendors are known in Thai as "mae kha" or "phaw kha," which translate roughly as "mother trader" or "father trader."Customers at Sompong's stall are served quickly, but this is not an anonymous fast-food experience. Although taciturn, Sompong connects with his clientele much more than the bored, pimply teenagers who stand behind counters at air-conditioned hamburger franchises do.Sompong remembers his customers' preferences: dark meat or white. Some women forego the skin because they feel it is too fattening, he said. When he has not seen a customer in a while, he asks why.Feeding his hundreds of loyal customers involves midnight trips to sprawling night markets, predawn deliveries, the clack-clack-clack of early morning vegetable chopping and the mixing and stirring of what Sompong calls his "secret sauce."The near miracle of the process is that, for all the hustle and hard work, customers at his stall pay 30 baht, or 75 cents, for a full plate of chicken rice - cheap even by Bangkok standards.Inexpensive but delicious street food fits into the mosaic of Bangkok's luxuries. To foreign tourists and wealthy Thais, this city represents cheap modernity: skyscrapers and swank hotels. Bangkok is the city of the hourlong, $5 foot massage; the $2 air- conditioned taxi ride across town; and the $7 golf caddy, tip included.But all of this would not be possible without the razor-thin profit margins and long hours of Bangkok's service class, a stream of workers who, like Sompong, hail from Thailand's vast and generally poor hinterland.Thailand has a population similar to that of France - about 60 million people - but income is distributed far more unequally than in the West. Nearly a third of Thais live on less than $2 a day, according to the Asian Development Bank, in a separate world from the Mercedes- driving Bangkok elite.When Sompong left behind his family's small rice farm nine years ago, he arrived at Bangkok's main train station without any idea of what job he would get. He worked for a year at a beef-noodle shop, earning the equivalent of $2.50 a day. But he wanted to own his own stall. So from an Indian loan shark he borrowed 30,000 baht, which at the time was worth $1,200, and started his chicken-rice business. Slowly he built up his customer base and paid back the loan - at 20 percent interest.Food stalls in Bangkok are a great social equalizer. A typical noodle stall, says Robert Halliday, one of Bangkok's premier restaurant experts, can feature shirtless manual workers eating beside well-dressed middle-class Bangkok Thais. "The noodles are good enough to draw the food nuts and cheap enough to draw the laborers," he said.Sompong's rickety aluminum tables and plastic stools are set out along a small alley, or soi, connected to a dead-end street. It is not an ideal place for a food vendor, given the distance