Pad Thai is one of Thailand’s best-known dishes. What’s not so well known is that some noodles sold to tourists under that name isn’t Pad Thai at all, and this is especially true with what you’re liable to find sold from cart vendors around Khao San Road. Let’s take a look at what Pad Thai is really all about.
/// Thailand ///
Story: Samutcha Viraporn /// English Version: Peter Montalbano /// Photography: Rithirong Chanthongsuk, Supawan Sa-ard
In fact 99% of the restaurants in Thailand sell authentic Pad Thai with only slightly varying recipes, and all with the same ingredients. The basic recipe calls for kuai tiao rice noodles stir-fried with tofu, chopped garlic chive, chopped sweet radish, dried shrimp, bean sprout, flavored with mandarin juice, sugar, and roasted peanuts, and eaten with fresh vegetables like garlic chive, raw bean sprout, and banana blossom. Another very popular variation includes the addition of big shrimp into the stir-fry mix. Pad Thai sold from Khao San tourist area carts, though, has quite a different taste. If you gave some of that to a Thai, that person might say, “this is actually pad si iw (soya-flavored stir-fry) with skinny noodles, more like.”
Of course, if you aren’t yourself too familiar with Pad Thai you probably won’t suffer much, because whatever noodle dish it is probably won’t taste too horrible, but if you’re looking for the real thing, this is not Pad Thai. Starting off with the flavor, they use dark soy sauce instead of the delicate tamarind juice with its hidden sour and sweet flavor. They follow up by putting cabbage, khana (Chinese kale), and carrots instead of those pungently fragrant garlic chive leaves. Done that way, Pad Thai becomes a completely different kind of stir-fried noodles.
So, then, what is that real Pad Thai all about? In the early days of the Thai republic, around World War II, Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram was Prime Minister, and he wanted to create a Thai dish which would express Thai national identity. The following video clip, produced by the Thai Tourism Authority, does a good job explaining the origin and composition of Pad Thai: