Street Food Chiang Mai 2023

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Featured Image: Cowboy Hat Lady, Chang Phuak Market

   Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  8 May 2023

Articles in the series on food and restaurants in Chiang Mai are: 1 Akha Tribal Food, 2 Pho Vieng Chane, 3 Khao Soy, 4 French & Italian Restaurants, 5 Airport Plaza, 6 Update 2017, 7 Update 2023, 8 Street Food. Another article is about What Travel Costs in Chiang Mai, part of another memorable series.

Food in Chiang Mai 8: Street Food

Main Points

• Food Tours
• A Short History of Thai and Northern Thai Food
• Typical Chiang Mai Street Food
• 13 Terrific Places to Go for Authentic Chiang Mai Street Food
• Further Sources of Information

1 Preamble on Food Tours

This article the eighth on food in Chiang Mai is also a companion article to Street Food in Bangkok (my next article).

When we arrived in Bangkok in January 2023, we took a Chef’s Tour hosted by Nutth lasting four hours. This was a terrific and well-organised tour around Chinatown lasting around four hours.

I’d done some research on food tours in Bangkok before leaving Australia and there appeared to be quite a number. There were also plenty of blog articles recommending street food and cheap restaurants, indeed all types of restaurants some of which were excellent. This is a big change on only a few years ago.

We’d previously done a food tour in Bangkok on a visit for my nephew’s wedding in 2017 in the old European quarter of Bang Rak, which was also terrific.

However, although there seemed to be plenty of tours, closer investigation showed that the number of tours that focussed on better and more inventive food were actually limited. This may change as Thailand really comes out of Covid tourism. Our ad hoc estimate down south was that in January/ February 2023 numbers were around 40% of pre-covid levels.

Many popular tours that didn’t appeal to us seemed to be targeted at first time or relatively new visitors to Thailand. I’m not knocking these, as they are probably excellent, but we were looking at something more in-depth. A Chef’s Tour seemed to fill our bill and they made a clever marketing statement that they wouldn’t take us to a pad Thai venue. This isn’t to say there is anything wrong with pad Thai but a more discriminating palate wants something a bit more special.

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Food in Chiang Mai 7: 2023 Update

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Featured Image: The 46th Chiang Mai Flower Festival 2023, Parade Float

   Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  8 March 2023

2023 Food in Chiang Mai Update

1 Introduction

Tourism, Marijuana and Food

Certainly, it is time for an update on Chiang Mai. I was last there in 2018 — other travel then Covid-19 got in the way. In 2023 we spent two weeks in Chiang Mai in January/February. Three highlights of this visit were:

1. Birding. In many previous trips to Thailand we’d never involved ourselves in discovering Thailand’s amazing bird species;
2. We’d met Ron Simpson and Panya (Toy) Suwan previously through our Akha friends Phennapha and Phing Phing but we’d never been in Chiang Mai for their annual antique textiles (mainly Chinese and tribal) exhibition. In 2023 we were actually present for their Dragon and Phoenix Exhibition near Wat Ket and bought some Hmong (Miao) cloth and two bracelets.
3. We also attended the 46th annual Chiang Mai Flower Festival 2023 and parade from 3-5 February for the first time, which was fascinating. The parade begins at 8 am Saturday from the railway station, crosses Narawat bridge and proceeds up to and circuits the old city to the park. The floats, flower displays and stalls then remain at Nong Buak Haad Park until the festival ends on Sunday.

Times were tough for Chiang Mai and all Thailand because of Covid and because of the reliance of the Thai economy on tourism. Many shops, tourist venues and restaurants closed temporarily or permanently. Australian visas on arrival in Thailand are normally 30 days. From October 2022 to March 2023 a token by the government has extended them to 45 days. It gave us a few extra days on a month.

The Thais say that things began to improve from July 2022 and were good now. I doubt that as on the beaches of the west coast, Krabi and Ko Lanta, numbers were well down on normal. Similarly, in Chiang Mai. And, although parts of Bangkok appeared crowded — Chinatown after 6pm, Soi 4 Nana and a few other places at specific times, elsewhere wasn’t. The malls seemed relatively devoid of foreigners.

Postcard from McLaren Vale

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Autumn Vines, McLaren Vale

Featured Image: McLaren Vale Vineyards

Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  1 April 2022

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Other Postcards are from: Boudhanath Stupa, Dubai, Vienna, Rock of Cashel, Lake Tabourie, Tongariro Crossing and Tupare Garden.

Australian outsiders often don’t think of South Australia. But, South Australia is an amazing tourist destination.

We came to McLaren Vale to house-sit a vineyard, a dog and two horses in early May for 5 weeks in 2021 between Covid lockdowns. We have a big family reunion over Easter in 2022 and have returned to house-sit the same place for around 5 weeks from 24 March to near the end of April in 2022.

McLaren Vale

45 minutes south of the city of Adelaide. The McLaren Vale wine area is a unique protected region just south of the Adelaide suburbs. With the Onkaparinka Gorge and surrounding rural area on the north, the beaches of Port Noarlaunga, Maslin’s, Willunga and Aldinga to the west, the Adelaide hills or Mount Lofty Ranges to the east and the rest of the Fleurieu Peninsula to the south (Victor Harbour and Goolwa/Coorong about 40 minutes away), McLaren Vale is an idyllic gem of sustainable vineyards and native bush.

The size of McLaren Vale is slightly variable the official size is 59 sq km but doesn’t include Willunga. My estimate is about 75 sq km or 7500 hectares. McLaren Vale is small by comparison with other wine areas. The Barossa, for example is 912 sq km. Hence McLaren Vale is very manageable for visitors.

AA Gill British Pubs

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 Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 December 2020

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AA Gill & Jeffrey Steingarten

Two wonderful food writers are the late AA Gill, UK and Jeffrey Steingarten, USA. Both have a unique voice and have brought something special to ‘foodie’ writing. Both writers have created a persona, which whilst probably not true adds something immeasurable to their style.

AA Gill seems to be an angry, sardonic working or lower middle class intellectual with a ‘chip on his shoulder’. Although, this is not an adequate description. It is superficial, and certainly not true. He was upper middle class from a happy background.

What is true is that he spent his late teens and the whole of his twenties as a drunk.

Jeffrey Steingarten presents the persona of a New Yorker with obsessive compulsive behaviours. It is also probably not true, but adds an energy to his writing. I’ll cover him in a later article.

Steingarten tends to give you more information than you ever wanted to know, but in a very entertaining way. AA Gill gives you less than you want (fewer column inches).

I’ll concentrate on AA Gill, who wrote a few short articles on the British pub amidst a massive oeuvre of food and travel writing. Although he offended many people constantly, it was an integral part of his style. The quotations below are from Table Talk 2007 a collection of his column articles from the Sunday Times.

International Peasant Foods

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Featured Image: Ucayali River, Pucallpa, Peruvian Amazon 1974

 Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 30 March 2020

The idea for a restaurant called International Peasant Foods began in Winnipeg. The background is outlined in the previous article Winnipeg as the Center of the Food Universe in 1973. The article explains why only once in a lifetime can one be naïve about food and completely open to new dishes and taste experiences. Nevertheless, I still needed to experience more variety of ethnic or regional foods.

Beyond that the idea for an International Peasant Foods restaurant had a long-term gestation, which lasted through three long term relationships. The idea was freshest, however, in South Africa and in Australia in the late 1970s. The refinements later were small.

 

Cool Gay Men on Balcony, New York 1974

The International Peasant Foods restaurant idea, with a better restaurant name, didn’t ever eventuate. I knew all along, that creating and running a restaurant is a bone-numbing labour of love, which requires the dedication and physical hard work that has never been my style.

In my defence for never getting beyond the inclination, for most of my career I’ve earned more money by thinking and arranging, than by manual efforts. A character flaw in certain circles I’m sure.

I did engage in sustained physical effort for things that were deeply meaningful (such as zoological field work in natural environments), early on in my development.

International Peasant Foods evolved over twenty years. All my girlfriends who shared the idea with me in the two decades concerned, three of them, loved cooking and liked eating too, but it was only the last one who had talent to burn. She did cook for some years in an executive boardroom in London and thoroughly enjoyed it. But age caught up and made using her law degree a better option.

Winnipeg Center of the Food Universe

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Featured Image: Front of La Vielle Gare Menu

 Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 21 February 2020

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Winnipeg Center of the Food Universe, 1973

Background

I moved to Winnipeg as a PhD student in zoology at the University of Manitoba in 1973 and lived there for about 14 months. I have many memories of this time, but memories of food are particularly strong though the details are vague. Preliminary contact with Winnipeg newspapers and historical societies to verify my memory of restaurant names were fruitless. No helpful strangers. Memory is unreliable as I showed in False Memories & the Mill on the Floss, an article also set in Canada in 1973.

I’ll therefore take the Christopher Isherwood approach from Lions and Shadows 1937.

To the Reader, Christopher Isherwood, Lions & Shadows 1937

Christopher Isherwood’s autobiography of his school and university years is perhaps reminiscent of my situation in Canada. My recollections are not indiscreet and perhaps not entirely true.

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Author, Manitoba Stampede, Morris 1973

Why was Winnipeg the Center of the Food Universe?

I use ‘was’ rather than ‘is’ because it was a very long time ago and entirely personal.

Winnipeg in 1973 had a population of around half a million. It has grown very slowly since. The population in 2019 is 808,419. Winnipeg has more restaurants now but they don’t look unique on the net. One feels that they’d be typical of any English speaking small-city anywhere, nowadays. They were perhaps more culturally distinct then.

The Humble Percent & Food Labels

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   Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  24 November 2017

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The Humble Percentage and Food Labels

Introduction

Percent or (percentage) used to be spelled per cent (and sometimes still is). It comes from the latin per centum meaning by the hundred.

What percent means is changing any list of numbers that add up to an irregular total into a modified list that adds up to 100. Once you get used to it reading a table of percentages becomes familiar and comfortable. Percentages can also be expressed as fractions and odds (think racecourses).

For example, 50% is a half, or odds of 2 to 1 in racecourse parlance (still meaning 1 chance in 2, but expressed this way because you get $2 profit for every $1 bet). 33% is about one third, 25% a quarter, 20% one fifth and 10% one tenth.

Food in Chiang Mai 6: 2017 Update

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Featured Image Muang Mai Wholesale Market

Featured image:Muang Mai Wholesale Market, March 2017

   Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  4 May 2017

Denise and I left Australia on 16 January and returned on 7 March 2017. We stayed in Chiang Mai from 24 February to 5 March (10 days) a much shorter time than usual. We’d previously spent four weeks in Burma, attended a family wedding in Bangkok, and spent a few days at a resort in Hua Hin (not my favourite style or place, but family).

It is always nice to come back to Chiang Mai. It is one of my favourite places in Thailand — much cheaper than Bangkok, but more manageable also.

Chiang Mai has been changing rapidly over the past five years with continuing development. Chinese tourism is having a major impact (especially at Chinese New year) and will continue to expand. As in many places, the provincial government is not always making sensible decisions with regard to development.

Food writing 3: More Articles I liked from Choice Cuts

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   Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  7 October 2016

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Food writing 3: More Articles I liked from Choice Cuts by Mark Kurlansky

Writing about food some fine writers and articles

Introduction

In Food writing 1, I analysed Mark Kurlansky’s anthology Choice Cuts: A Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History, 2002. The book contains 234 articles, which covers the range of food writing from 500 BC to roughly the last thirty years.

It is my task here to continue the descriptions and commenting articles in the book that I feel worthy of following up on.

The Continuing List

This is the continuing list of the remainder of the 32 articles I liked in Choice Cuts. They are in the order they appeared in the book.

I’ll also cover the 40 others I felt worthy of mention later.

Food writing 2: Articles I liked from Choice Cuts

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   Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony,  11 September 2016

Food writing 2: Articles I liked from Choice Cuts by Mark Kurlansky

Writing about food some fine writers and articles

Introduction

In Food writing 1, I analysed Mark Kurlansky’s anthology Choice Cuts: A Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History, 2002. The book contains 234 articles, which covers the range of food writing from 500 BC to roughly the last thirty years. I said that I thought Kurlansky had done a good job of covering the breadth and depth of food writing. I then looked at the range of writers involved and gave a brief description of those who had four articles or more in the book.

My only qualms with Kurlansky’s range had to do with my wish to be entertained and informed through good writing. On these subjective criteria I chose 32 articles that I admired and another 40 I found of interest.

It is my task in this and the next article to give some descriptions and at least acknowledge articles in the book that I feel worthy of following up on. A somewhat daunting task I now realise.