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Even those who have just arrived in Bangkok are most likely already familiar with Thai cooking. In recent years, Thai restaurants have proliferated the world over, with pad Thai now as familiar a takeout dish as chow mein. But what we think of as Thai food is really a tapestry of culinary influences from throughout Thailand and beyond. And the best place to unravel and understand all these delicious strands that make up Thai cuisine is Bangkok’s oldest neighborhood, Ko Ratanakosin, a man-made island where the city and its cooking were born. We’ll kick off our day in a little-visited fresh market that also functions as a microcosm of Bangkok, with Thai, northeastern Thai, Muslim-Thai and Chinese-Thai vendors. We’ll taste sweets and snacks made by these groups, as well as stop in at a traditional coconut milk maker, a Chinese-Thai dry goods vendor and stalls that sell the vegetables, herbs, fruit and more that make up Bangkok’s cuisine. From here, we’ll weave through a neighborhood known for making Buddha statues before paying respect at a Chinese shrine. It’s at this point that we’ll dive into the cuisines of the Chinese diaspora, one of the biggest influences on Thai cuisine, at decades-old shophouse restaurants. After a stop at some Hindu-Buddhist monuments, we’ll sit down at a nearly 150-year-old former mansion that also doubles as a restaurant preparing classic Bangkok/Central Thai dishes that have largely disappeared from the city. Recent immigration from Thailand’s northeast has brought a different culinary influence to the city, and we’ll taste spicy papaya salad and sticky rice, two of the region’s most famous culinary imports, at a decades-old lauded restaurant. Continuing our walk through Ko Ratanakosin, we’ll take in the area’s English- and Portuguese-influenced secular architecture, and see the canals that shaped the early city before ending the tour at a locale that may have the largest selection of traditional sweets in the country. By the end of our tour, you may never look at the food in your local Thai take-out place back home the same way again.
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