When
you visit Thailand, which dishes will be considered a must-eat for you? If you
are not familiar with Thai food, dishes like tom yum, pineapple rice, phad thai,
green curry might come to mind. But if you are a seasoned traveler in Thailand,
surely your taste would have changed, and you would be enjoying other delicacies
like soup noodles, grilled pork, papaya salad, mango sticky rice etc.
As
a foreigner who has lived here for more than 5 years, I have my favourite Thai
dishes. For street food, it has to be stir-fried basil chicken/pork with rice
and omelette, and if you visit restaurants, my recommendations will usually be
steamed fish with lemon, claypot glass noodle with shrimp and fish maw soup.
Truth be told, I have always been a fan of fish maw soup, regardless of the
dish's Thai-ness. In my student years, I was already a frequent customer to
those 2SGD starch-laden brown bowls of fish-maw-less glue at the pasar malams in
Singapore. There is just something about the sticky brown sauce that draws me to
them, especially after the final infusion of black vinegar.
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|
Hands-down, the best bowl of fish maw soup in
Bangkok |
As
you can expect, I am naturally happy to live in Bangkok, since it's a city full
of fish maw soup that's of much better quality than what I was used to in
Singapore. That said, not many really impressed, until I finally got to try the
version Pings Thai Teochew Seafood has to offer last month, after winning a
prize in their Facebook lucky draw, and man was it spectacular. If I have to put
down the taste in words, I can only say that the soup is rich, yet extremely
light, tasty, yet not overpowering. Couple that with top-quality fish maw,
mushroom and crab (that's really what you want in this dish, not the chicken
drumlet, pig's blood and quail eggs you get on the street), this is simply a
perfect dish for me.
Of
course, Pings has much more to offer, especially the usual suspects that you can
expect from a good Thai-Chinese restaurant.
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|
Fried Thai fish cakes, full and
succulent |
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|
Stir-fried fish maw, another one of their
signatures |
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Oyster Omelette on hot plate. Look at the huge
oysters |
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Braised gooseweb yellow noodle, made with meepok and huge
webs flown in from Poland! |
What
I like most about the food here is that they do not taste complicated. Even if
not all dishes give you a "wow" when you taste them, they will always allow the
excellence of their specially-selected ingredients to take centre-stage every
single time.
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Absolutely not to be missed, the coconut jelly
dessert. |
Another
advantage of Pings Thai Teochew Seafood Restaurant is its accessibility for
tourists. As much as I do not think MBK is worth visiting, I cannot deny that
every single tourist goes there almost every trip. The restaurant is just
situated inside Pathumwan Princess Hotel, which is the popular 4* hotel that's
connected to MBK. If you are still thinking of going all the way to the rowdy
Yaowarat just to eat all the dishes I showed above, fret no more, as you can
enjoy them in the comfort of a conveniently located hotel at virtually the same
price.
Pings
deserves my stamp of approval because they have an X-factor. Their crown jewel,
their soup broth, is something that cannot be found anywhere else, and is
certainly something I can drink everyday.
Jacqueline,
the owner of Pings, told me that many of their customers usually have 1 entire
medium-size claypot of fish maw soup all to themselves. I am so going to do that
next time man, mark my word, this thing is really not suitable for sharing. No
sharing if you go with me ok?
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