Thai Snacks and Street Food

Visiting Bangkok, you’ll be overwhelmed by the number of food carts on the streets and the aromas of cooking wherever you go. Thais love food, enjoying regular snacks and eating street food often. You’ll find a huge assortment of foods available to eat as you go even in small provincial towns, where street vendors often assemble in car parks or squares at dusk to transform them in to bustling food markets.

Some of the wares offered as street food are full meals, usually one-dish meals to satisfy workers and travelers who can’t cook at home: curries served over rice, noodle dishes stir fried with egg and vegetables. Noodle dishes such as Pad Thai and Rad Naa are popular street foods, and often you’ll find a street vendor selling just one signature dish, with a queue of eager customers who know them well, from years of eating that same dish. You’ll find a charcoal grill set up at a night market, grilling skewers of satay to be served with a peanut sauce. Or a vendor who just cooks the most delectable fried rice.

Other street vendors will specialize in snacks that are labour intensive and harder to prepare at home: savoury and sweet snacks to tempt people as they visit the markets before going home to prepare their meal. Portable deep fried snacks that are easy to eat with your fingers such as spring rolls, thai fish cakes, Toong Tong pastries filled with minced chicken and prawn, are all delicious morsels that if you’re lucky you can also find served as appetizers in Thai restaurants here in Britain.

Crispy golden crepes, coconut pancakes, sweet sticky rice with jackfruit or mango, Thai street food offers a host of sweet treats as well as savoury ones. Leaf wrapped parcels of sweet meats are on offer among the scents and aromas of all sorts of street cooking.

If you want to taste many of these treats you’ll have to travel to Thailand yourself with an adventurous spirit, prepared to plunge in to taste your way around this wonderful cuisine. But even if you are stuck at home you can get some idea of the vibrant tastes and flavours of Thai street food at your local Thai restaurant. Sample the appetizer menu in search of different textures, herbs and spices, order a main meal comprised of several different dishes to share with friends and you’ll get an idea of the richness and variety of Thai food, where lots of small mouthfuls of different flavours are preferred to the monotony of a large plate of just one dish.

Have you visited Thai Sabai in Melton before?