Street Food Mountain - CHILI OIL YELLOW NOODLES + Tea Leaf Salad! ⛰️ Ban Rak Thai (บ้านรักไทย)

hey everyone good morning hope you're having an amazing day it's mark queens i'm in the beautiful village of banrak tai which is in the mountains surrounding a lake in the mehongsan province of northern thailand and this is a chinese yunnanese village which was founded by kmt uh fighters who fled communist china in 1949. it literally looks like you are in yunnan in a chinese atypical chinese village a beautiful chinese village they brought with them their cultures traditions architecture and they also brought tea from yunnan and so you'll find tea plantations throughout the mountains but most importantly for you and i they brought with them traditional yunnanese food so today we're going to go on a yunnanese chinese food tour we'll be eating everything from yunnanese noodles to a yunnanese hot pot to a salad made with tea to pork which is cured with the morning dew so i'm excited to be in this beautiful village and i'm gonna share all of the food with you today starting now [Music] so i woke up this morning in bangrak thai a blanketed in fog over the lake and i believe that the lake is a man-made it's a reservoir lake uh water storage it was in 1949 when the komintang or the kmt fighters they fled communist china and they came south we're actually very well relatively quite close to yunnan china here if you just head straight north so they fled communist china in 1949 they came south through burma and ended up in northern thailand settling in this village in the mountains here and also additionally we are just i think we're less than one kilometer oh i'm like i think we are less than one kilometer uh from the border of myanmar man this lake really looks like a like a painting like a watercolor with all the reflections the mirror glossy top of the lake it's it really is beautiful spectacularly beautiful when the chinese community they settled in this village they brought with them their customs their traditions of yunnan they brought yunnanese tea which is the origins of tea and so they planted tea on the sides of the mountains they brought with them eunini's authentic food and many people especially the older generation still speaks chinese in this village as well and then one more part of the history of this village is that historically well not so long ago historically this was a strategic village in the drug trade and drug trafficking as well as the trade of jade from myanmar but luckily now the village has really turned to tourism and so it is really one of the most popular places in me hong kong it's an extremely famous place to visit especially for thai tourists okay so that was a lot of history wrapped up really briefly and that has made me hungry uh we're gonna go straight to eat yunnanese noodles for breakfast [Music] you guys already started yeah with monto micah how's the montage yummy [Music] okay i'll pit so this is the the eunice noodle restaurant right here on the corner auntie is so friendly the menu is here you order at the front here she has a variety of yunnanese noodles and she's gonna prepare them right now [Music] oh man that gets the mouth juices watering in the morning uh but it's served as a dry style noodle so what she does is she just blanches some vegetable i think it's mainly choy sum or yuchoy along with some of the egg noodles she blanches them real fast in the hot water uh then she puts it into a bowl she adds all the seasonings some salt a little bit of sugar i believe those are crushed sesame seeds garlic oil chili oil [Music] and then when she hand mixes it gets all the juices flowing coats all the noodles oh that looks tasty in the morning then she puts it onto a plate she adds minced pork she adds a half a boiled egg a sprinkle of seasoning herbs coriander and green onions sprinkles it with some lime juice and then serves it with a hard-boiled egg and they do have a full dining room right here in the main section but they also have a couple of tables some seating over here in the empty lot over here so i think we'll sit over there [Music] auntie is so friendly and the noodles smell and look extraordinary especially definitely some locals are here for breakfast in the morning and she did like fully mix it you could see oh look at the juiciness and all the chili oils and all the seasonings that she added to those noodles on the bottom oh yeah oh that's going to be flavorful oh wow okay that is tasty the chili oil the fragrance of the sesame in there and she did add a sprinkle of sugar so it does have kind of a tangy sweet and sour taste to it but it's so balanced all that flavor is just coating the noodles oh man yes that is warming and tasty in the morning that sauce is just a harmony of flavor the black sesame the sticky coating qualities of that sauce and let's follow that bite with a spoonful of the soup which looks thick and rich and porky [Music] oh wow that soup is really good and then finally yunnanese tea local from the mountains here oh it's really good to you too ah yeah very fragrant very floral [Music] it's very good next up we also got the yampak which is a vegetable salad which is mainly i believe chayote leaves or i think chayote shoots she added in chaos she added in also the same seasoning plus slices of pork there's chili oil there's sesame seeds in here i think it's like a tomato sauce this looks and smells delicious as well oh wow yes it actually has almost the same flavor same dressing components as your noodles just instead of noodles it's the blanched crispy vegetable [Music] and for me what really makes it the sesame seeds back to the noodles i'm going to have ying just quickly season and definitely when there's chili oil on the table adding more chili oil is the right thing to do a little more chili oil goes on and also a little more lime juice oh wow you can never have too much chili oil [Music] oh yeah the hard boiled egg is a nice addition as well [Music] so ah that was delicious an extremely tasty way to get this yunnanese food tour started in bangraktai the noodles a little bit on the sweet side but the balance of flavor was so incredibly good the harmony of flavor highly recommended auntie is so nice this is the perfect way to get your morning started in ban raktai from here we are walking down the lake and we're going directly to the next restaurant to continue this food tour in bandraktai okay so a quick walkthrough i guess this could be considered one of the main streets especially the touristic streets red chinese lanterns there's a variety of restaurants there's a number well the entire side is lined with gift shops selling preserved dried fruits tea which is grown here overlooking the lake and surrounded by the mountains [Music] and we're just passing by this rare famous for eunini's hot pot and we are gonna eat here but first we're gonna go to another restaurant which is right next to it and i love her restaurant here open tables open air kitchen right next door here one of the things that she specializes in is a tea leaf salad but then she has a variety of thai she has a variety of chinese yunnanese dishes and she also has some things drying at the front of the restaurant including some herbs including some pickled vegetables [Music] [Laughter] she was just talking to me and i told her that i'm half chinese my mom is chinese but i don't speak any chinese unfortunately i ended up ordering the tea leaf salad as with fresh tea leaf salad as well as pickled mustard greens i believe uh which she's gonna fry up stir fry up with minced porks uh so she's chopping up some tomatoes some coriander goes in he has a bag full of tea which are picked from the bushes right here but it's fresh tea it's not pickled tea tea leaves and she's just mincing them up really mincing them up you can see the oils the juices coming out of the leaves if she chops it up it doesn't have a strong aroma but you can you definitely can smell it so then she also has some boiled chicken uh which she also minces up adds to the leaf salad to the tea leaf salad uh chops up some dried chilies those go in and now she's chopping up some green onions [Applause] oh my god [Music] one of the things that's very common to eat in yunnan and something that you'll see all the time in yunnan is preserved vegetables pickled preserved a variety of different vegetables especially mustard greens and so it's very common in this village to find preserved mustard greens so she makes the preserved mustard greens herself she grows the vegetables herself she pickles them kali [Music] aromatic sour preserved aroma of the pickled mustard greens the chilies and garlic sizzle down the seasonings oh that smells so good that's gonna be extremely tasty with layers of flavor from the fermentation [Music] and i love this restaurant her style and her friendliness as well two main dishes that we got and then mike also got some fried rice which she stir-fried up but i cannot wait to try the tea leaf salad and then to finish it off she garnished it with some coriander and some more fresh chilies right there so it's a straight up mince of tea leaves bringing out their oils bringing out their juices oh man with all the other ingredients with the minced chicken in there with chilies dressing and then for the dressing she added sugar she added salt and msg she added in dark soy sauce and light soy sauce she added oh shallot oil that was one of the cool things that she added is shallot oil [Music] that is amazing it's so green and herbal and crisp the tea it doesn't have like a really strong herbal taste but it kind of has a a little bit of a chalky crunch to it but so fragrant so good and especially mixed with all of the the dressing and the seasoning oh and lime juice a lot of lime juice in there too and garlic just to balance if you just chewed on for instance a tea leaf like yeah it kind of has a a little bit of a chalky astringent it's astringent is what it is but then when it's minced up like that when it's mixed with all of those dressing ingredients that's what really makes it and it lessens the astringency and just balances the entire mix and the amazing green taste okay and next up for the pickled mustard greens which again she fried up with garlic chilies and chopped up chicken and you can smell the aroma of those greens [Music] oh yeah that's tasty a little bit of a sweet and sour preserved taste the chicken chopped up in there the fragrance of the garlic she added in some shallot oil there as well that's just like simple comforting food [Music] written in chinese but you will notice this restaurant because we're right across the street from the lake and just her bubbly personality her friendless friendliness is what stands out and just yet so far the two places that we've gone the food has been delicious but they've added a huge heaping spoon of sugar to both dishes which for me was a little too sweet so definitely next time at both places i would just kindly ask to omit the sugar so just depending on what you like but maybe because of the tourism because especially popular as a thai tourist destination where uh bangkok tourists enjoy a little bit on the sweeter taste they've adapted to that taste okay next up conveniently on this food tour literally right across the street is the yunnanese hot pot restaurant which we're gonna eat next [Music] you know something good has to be happening at this restaurant when there's a literally a hot tub sized oh it is you could actually use it as a hot tub a hot tub sized uh hot pot at the front of the restaurant and this restaurant is called jili uh it's a legendary yunnanese hot pot restaurant and when i was looking for places to eat this is probably the number one restaurant i was looking forward to eating there's no way you can miss it do you hear anything like that i think we just kind of wait here and wait for somebody to come that being said oh oh yes the seats are really comfortable for waiting and i do love the look of this place oh that tea is really nice very floral sweet naturally sweet like floral sweet the jazz jasmine you taste jasmine in there i think along with tea oh yeah it's really good [Music] hot pot the tsuki yunnanese style suki has arrived it's a beautiful traditional steamboat style with the charcoal in the middle boiling away and this is something i don't think i've i've had this before it looks like kind of a meat roll-up but i think that's an omelette a thin omelet which is then wrapped with pork looks like a pork minced meat mixture on the inside wrapped up into a roll and then sliced into pieces smells really good smells porky smells meaty and then it's served the set comes with all the different vegetables there's some pea sprouts there's some napa cabbage i'm not sure if these are what are these in here these uh and then also some maybe some uh could these be noodles from the like sweet potato noodles maybe i'm not totally sure or mung bean noodles uh and then it's also served with a sauce but the main event is the bubbling fire pot so i think we can explore here first let's dig a little bit oh there's bones there's bean curd pieces of tofu maybe pieces of oh there's even taro down in the broth oh that's going to be some flavor through mushrooms chicken i think there's chicken oh it's like a mix of everything and i definitely did see yeah there's some taro the unity's ham i believe okay but we gotta try that meat roll first egg meat roll i should probably dip this in the sauce first you can smell the sesame oil in that or the sesame seeds in that dressing yeah i probably am going to want to let this blow this a little bit before taking the bite that's going to be flaming hot it's in a boiling boiling pot [Music] oh yeah the sauce and the sauce is not sweet at all just sesame oil and tangy oh and that's like a egg roll meat roll-up omelette around the outside i think pepper in the meat i'm gonna add some of these next and again he said that they're all home-grown vegetables and i'm just oh yeah it smells like peas or some kind of pea pod sprouts but this is a broth of many proteins definitely some chicken and pork and taro and ham a rich meatiness but not too herbal not too spicy just pepper in there i believe maybe i'll add this to my bowl and then i want to scoop up some of that taro some of the other goodies below there maybe some of the noodles you can feel the elasticity of these noodles as you pick them up quick dip in the soup broth and then they should be pretty much immediately ready i don't know if they're sweet potato noodles yeah all right that's a nice little bowl going i'll add some of the sauce the sauce is amazing tangy spicy sesame but not sweet oh yeah that sauce is fantastic that is awesome i love the simplicity of it the meatiness of it and just like the the home comforting aspect of it flavor of it and those vegetables those pea sprouts are delicious noodles have a really nice chewy texture to them kind of gummy and elasticy really good noodles and then i love those pea sprouts which i'm guessing they're pea sprouts uh they're crisp they're crunchy refreshing they're organic they're local really green [Music] says i need to add more broth and they give you the entire kettle yeah that stock you can taste the richness of the the bone stock i'm honestly not totally sure what that is some of the chinese broccoli going i believe let that simmer over on this side and maybe move in some for some more of the bean curd while we're at it [Music] oh it's hot i love the texture of those the snap of [Music] them what an ultimate relaxation of a hot pot i think actually the vegetables are my favorite part of the hot pot they're so natural tasting so sweet you can just tell the freshness the locality of the vegetables from the garden 100 meters away or even 20 meters away highly recommended a classic restaurant [Music] and cooked in that meaty broth just for a smoky wok taste i also really love the chunks of tarot in there those pea sprouts are my entire my favorite part of the entire hot pot okay but then she was telling me that they actually grow the tea that we were drinking they grow it themselves they added uh it's oolong tea oolong green tea but then they also added some jasmine flowers and that's why it's so flour that's why i could taste the jasmine it ended up buying a bag of tea from here we're gonna take a little walk around we're gonna maybe take a little rest this afternoon and then we've got one more restaurant that we have to eat at to complete this yunnanese food tour of ban raktai and oh man again it is something i am looking forward to eating [Music] welcome to what i believe is the main square of banrak thai and you get more of a feel of the local community here uh specifically there is one restaurant here uh right off the side of this roundabout area that has some pork hanging up at the front of the restaurant which in thai is called munam kang which actually means do drop or do pork [Music] this restaurant is amazing she has mustard greens turnips drying in the sun the pork is hanging from the rafters the dew drop pork and the whole kitchen there's some pot smoking you smell ginger there's tea laying around there are supplies there's uh all sorts of ingredients here but you can tell oh call call my cup oh and she brought up the scale maybe you have to order it by weight before you eat it i need they basically said that she takes the the dew drop pork and just fries it with nothing and so it's kind of like a snacking pork i believe uh so we're gonna get half that and then i also wanted to try well we've already had some pickled mustard greens but she looks like the the master of pickled greens of vanrak thai what a cool shot though i love it and auntie is amazing this this is the real deal [Music] auntie also makes noodles which you can order here too specializes in noodles [Music] i love everything about this place it's kind of half warehouse half restaurant but you're not even totally sure if it's a restaurant they have just a couple of odd tables here and there and to be honest the i guess i mean i ordered a whole half it was a whole half a stick of dewdrop pork like this long but i guess it kind of when she fried it she sliced it thin and then fried it maybe a lot of fat came out so it's not that much but that's actually kind of good because i'm still pretty full from the hot pot let's try some of the dewdrop pork first just on its own oh yeah she fried it to a crisp well it only took like five minutes but it's crispy [Music] smells and looks like bacon aged [Music] oh wow yes you taste that age and again it literally does sit in the morning dew to get that moisture but then dehydrates again within the sun i believe throughout the day it's like dry aged ham okay and then on to the pickled mustard greens with the pork as well with that same dewdrop and i think that auntie here must be well known for her preserved greens uh her pickled vegetables because even some other uh ladies came by buying just bags of the pickled vegetables and she makes it definitely not just i mean for the family but she makes a lot more a bigger batch to be able to sell as well [Music] oh wow yes fermentation in the pork the vegetable the crunch [Applause] both dishes are delicious that pork is really tasty yeah salty and very rich and oily so you really do need rice to eat this with wow without a doubt one of the ultimate bubbly beverage snacks that is a snack food [Music] a little bit on the oily side i mean even the pork is at least fifty percent maybe eighty percent fat but it is extremely tasty [Music] and auntie is like blending spices and she's really i think she's making a batch of some type of pickle or something cardamom oh they said that's the spice that goes into the pickled mustard greens as well as the munam kang oh and then also i learned that the pork hangs in front of here uh for one month so it's aged for one month that's why it has a very dry aged complexity to it is it good [Music] that age of the pork oh man and i guess the dewdrop the dew does make it even better the controlled fermentation rotting pork mold wow yeah that pork that hint of sourness and on that bite of just ultra flavorful pork fried pork i'm gonna end the yunnanese food tour of the beautiful ban raktai yunanese village right now uh it's been an amazing day and definitely being here has brought back some amazing memories of visiting yunnan and the incredible food and cultures of yunnan a few years ago i'll have those videos in the description box that you can a link to those videos you can check out if you have some time definitely check out some of the yunnan videos and i want to say a big thank you to you for watching this video please remember to give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it leave a comment below i'd love to hear from you and if you're not already subscribed click subscribe and also click the little bell icon and that way you'll immediately get notified of the next video that i publish thanks again for watching goodbye from bandra thai in me hongsan and i will see you on the next video

Channel: Mark Wiens

Views: 1,111,363

Rating: 4.9130502 out of 5

Keywords: Ban Rak Thai, บ้านรักไทย, Mae Hong Son, แม่ฮ่องสอน, Chinese food, Yunnanese food, Chinese street food, Thai food, Thai street food, Mark Wiens, Amazing Thailand, things to do in Mae Hong Son, things to do in Ban Rak Thai, KMT, Thai village, mountain village, Kuomintang, Thailand travel guide, Thai food guide

Id: wHTg5gRXn5s

Length: 32min 21sec (1941 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021