Up Close at the Grand Palace, Bangkok
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Phuket Food Market
Phuket has a gigantic open-air food market, Naka Wat market, filled with more kinds of Thai food than you ever knew existed. It’s not a tourist trap. The tourist to local ratio is probably 20:1. The market is an orgy of colors, smells, and tastes. Some are exquisite, while others are rather unappetizing. Yes, Phuket has beautiful beaches and nature, but I’d rank the food market just as unforgettable.
There are many things you can conveniently eat on a stick. 串 eat your heart out.
Sure there is a fair bit of overlap between the stalls, but still the variety is amazing. There’s definitely nothing in Beijing that compares in terms of variety, scale, and quality.
However, not everything looked safe. Case in point, the sushi above.
It started to pour for a while. The tarps covering the stalls left more holes than cover, which meant the rain created a lot of fun dodging waterfalls bursting through the “roof.” And there was a lot of chicken.
Things that didn’t look spicy were spicy. Things that looked spicy were atomic. (There was plenty of non-spicy stuff too.)
Looking at the people who made the food was just as fun as looking at the food. There were all types, including a white girl from the US who spoke perfect Thai.
The tents were very low. Chi-Chi could touch the top easily, which meant most non-Thais and non-Chi-Chis had to duck.
Everywhere you looked were beautiful colors.
So those fish are being cooked on half a barrel, i.e. a metal barrel sawed in half. There was very clearly a label on it warning against something dangerous. Anyway, fish looked good.
More yummy stuff on sticks.
Braised pork shoulder…uhhhhh sooooo good. It melted in your mouth. Seriously, imagine the most tender succulent pork you’ve ever had. Yep, that’s what this tasted like too.
Happy vendors. They were all so nice, even to us dumb foreigners who had no idea what anything was.
The pork shoulder chopped up over rice with an egg. Pure heaven.
Chicken wings being roasted in a metal barrel.
Fresh ground coffee.
Squid and something being seriously deep fried. There was a serious amount of frying going on. We weren’t brave enough to try those balls of fried interesting-ness.
Bright things that looked nuclear in color.
These colors were a lot more appetizing, and so was the food.
Mercante
Apologies for the long Potatosky silence. You shouldn’t neglect doing things you love. Hence, Potatosky is back! (I hate using exclamation marks, mind you.)
Down the alleys of Gulou, just east of Nanluoguxiang, lies an unlikely Italian restaurant nestled in the maze of hutongs. Mercante, opened by a local with dishes authored by an Italian, serves up delightfully light and tasty food. Nothing feels heavy or over-seasoned, yet nor does anything lack that savory kick. It’s good cooking, not just home cooking.
The atmosphere is intimate, but not pretentious. It’s simple, woody, dim, and looks intentionally casually thrown together. With less than 10 tables, you feel that wow-we’re-so-awesome-for-finding-this-place feeling.
This guy adds a lot of credibility to the place. Not that you couldn’t have an authentic Italian place without someone like this, but I mean it helps, right?
Duck rague. The chef is from Bologna, so it makes sense that this dish is perfect (I just looked up “define: rague” and the internet tells me it’s a staple of Bologna, though now I’m confused on how to spell ragu(e)?).
Organic beef and some pasta ball thingy that I can’t remember the name of. The steak might just be one of the best I’ve had in Beijing. Seriously. Chalk it up to the quality beef, perfect execution of medium rare, and drizzling of sea salt. It’s bloody bloody good. The pasta ball thing was surprisingly light, almost like a starchy dessert.
This happy camper wanted to order another steak after we finished the first one.
I’m sure this isn’t an original idea, but somehow putting bread in a wrinkled brown bag worked. I think it’ll work for anything brown, like brownies, cookies, pretzels, etc…(no, not that brown thing, but that’s what I was thinking too).
The Italian mother of a friend of mine once made me tiramisu. In my mind, that tiramisu has reached ambrosia-level status. So of course this tiramisu wasn’t as good. However, it’s the best I’ve had in Beijing, no questions asked. The wet, rum-soaked ladyfinger was just the right consistency.
Before going to Mercante we were contemplating just eating one of those I-need-to-eat-to-live meals, so perhaps our exuberance for its food is slightly exaggerated by our non-existent expectations. So if you can just stumble upon Mercante one night, I’m sure you’ll love it. If you go there intentionally with high hopes, then I think you’ll be satisfied. You just might not be blown away. And that’s my non-emphatic emphatic endorsement.
