What you eatKhao soi
ข้าวซอย · khao soi
Soft noodles under the broth, fried ones on top, and the crunch is the point.
Takeaway · CC BY-SA 3.0What it is
A coconut curry noodle soup of upper northern Thailand, Laos and the Shan States. Chicken or beef, pickled mustard greens, shallot, lime, chilli paste on the side.
The long version
The name means cut rice, from the way the fresh sheets of noodle are sliced. It belongs to the Tai Yai and to the wider Burmese-border kitchen as much as to Chiang Mai, which is why it is on the board the whole way round this loop.
Inference — the practical fact for a rider is the hour. This is breakfast and lunch food. Many of the best places sell out and close by early afternoon, so it is a reason to be on the road by seven and off it by one — which happens to be the same advice the smoke and the heat give you, for entirely different reasons.
Tradition holds — the four things on the side are not a garnish. The pickled greens and the lime cut the coconut, the shallot is raw and sharp, and the chilli paste is where the heat lives, so the bowl arrives mild and you build it.
Runs with
- dishThe morning market — Where to find it before it runs out.
- dishKanom jeen nam ngiao — The other northern noodle bowl, and the Shan one.
- personThe Shan — Whose kitchen this also is.
Named here by
- dishThe morning market — Often the best bowl in town is in here.
- dishKanom jeen nam ngiao — The heavier bowl, and the one that sells out.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | cited | Khao soi — Wikipedia (en) | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Khao soi — Wikipedia (en)
- Thai cuisine — Wikipedia (en)
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there