(upbeat music) - Hey everyone, I hope
you're having an amazing day. It's Mark Wiens, I'm in Bangkok, Thailand, and one of the top questions I get asked is what are my favorite Thai dishes. So today, we're going on a Thai food tour. I'm going to share with
you five of the best of my favorite ultimate Thai foods. I'm meeting up with my
friend Greg from Travizeo. He's actually the one filming now. A huge thank you to Greg. We're gonna eat some incredibly good food and yeah, we're gonna
share it all with you in this video right now. (funky upbeat music) Alright, so we're gonna eat
our first dish right now and actually before we
even get to the restaurant, the restaurant's around the corner, but I met the owner here. This is some of the behind the scenes. This is where they're
preparing the braised beef. Oh, look at those giant pots of beef. She's slicing up the beef here. Oh, she's about to add
in all the cilantro, all the coriander. Oh, that smells so good. The aromas, you can
smell the Chinese spices, the star anise. Another thing that's very important is the coriander roots. In Thai it's called raak phak chee. It gives so much flavor to the broth. I'm so hungry now. Yes, there it is. Awesome, there it is. That is the male organ.
(funky upbeat music) Okay, we've moved over now. So they're cooking the beef in the back but at the front of the restaurant here is where the eternal cauldron, bubbling juicy pot of
braised beef is living. Okay, so she's fixing our fire pot. She adds in some pak boong which is the morning glory, then I got it with everything so that's gonna be mixed with the organs. There's some lung and
liver and tripe in there. This over here, Greg, is the (speaks Thai) that is the braised beef. Oh, and this is the tendon. Oh, those lumpy, beautiful, jiggly bits. This is the intestines. It smells so good. (laughs) So she's going to fish out
a selection of the beef and put it into the fire pot. Oh, and then final step is that garlic. I'm extremely hungry now. My mouth juices are flowing. (Mark speaks Thai) He's grabbing some of the charcoal that's going to go in our fire pot. Oh, can you see the blower over there? That's going to blow it from the bottom so that it heats the charcoal even hotter so flame comes out the top. Yes. (laughs) Greg, you gotta get yourself
on camera saying that, man. - It's the most beautiful
thing I've ever seen. Look, I'm crying. (Mark laughs) (uplifting orchestral music) (funky upbeat pop music) (speaks Thai) - And here it is. This is one of my favorite
dishes in Bangkok. (speaks Thai) So that's the braised beef, but it is the (speaks Thai), which is the fire pot of braised beef. It's a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful
things in the world. You can just see that garlic, whole cloves of garlic
floating around there. Here's the cilantro roots. I gotta just taste that broth first. Oh wow. That is unbelievable. It's so fragrant. You can taste the garlic in there, you taste all those Chinese spices, the star anise, the cinnamon. Oh, that's ultimate umami. But now I gotta mix my sauce. Okay, so what you do for your sauce, (speaks Thai) which is dry chili flakes, go in, this is vinegar, chili vinegar. But I might hit that with just
a little bit of fish sauce just to bump up the flavor. Let's try to get one of those good-- oh, for my first bite of beef you can see everything is in here from the tendon to the
tripe to the meatballs. I'm going to get one of
those pieces of braised beef on this first bite, though. So fish that out, and actually I will dip it into the sauce, just let that kind of scoop up beef. Oh man. It's so soft and tender. Oh, it's so good. And then you chase that with rice. The owner just walked in and gave us a whole plate of tendon. Tendon, this is one of the prized pieces. It's not fat, this is all tendon, just jiggly chunks of beautifulness. I got to have a bite of that immediately. Just let that soak in there. Wow, tendon. Wow. Greg, you gotta taste that, man. - [Greg] I'm ready. - That melts in your mouth. It just slides down. You don't even need to chew. (Mark laughs) - [Mark] That tendon, man. - Have a slice. (Mark speaks Thai) Right, right? It's so good. - This is one of my favorite
dishes to eat in Bangkok, one of my top Thai foods. But we have a lot more to eat today, so let's move on to the next dish. The next dish that we're
eating is called pad krapow and it's one of the best Thai dishes. It's a dish that everybody loves. It's one of those dishes that you would be very happy to eat every day of your life and the spot that we're going to, it's right across the street. Let's go. (jazzy upbeat music) And they have a seating section
right here on the corner, but we're going to go talk to Lun, who is the (speaks Thai) who's making it. (speaks Thai) Oh, here goes in the minced pork. And that is a generous amount of oil, or lard, that goes in there. He actually shallow fries that but I ordered a dish called (speaks Thai). So it is minced pork
stir-fried with holy basil. It's one of the top
comfort foods of Thailand. If you ask any Thai person
what they would like to eat as like a good meal that they come back to Thailand to eat,
this would be the dish. So he fries the minced
pork first in a lot of oil, then drains it. Now he's tossing in
the chilies and garlic. Oh man, the fragrance of
that garlic immediately. A handful of chopped long beans and then the final step,
the final ingredient is that toss, that's the
holy basil right there. He adds in a little bit
of broth. (chuckles) A little bit of dark
soy sauce goes in there, a little bit of sugar. Oh man. You see that sizzling away? (laughs) It smells so good. (speaks Thai) You smell those chili
beans, Greg? (laughs) And that goes right
onto your plate of rice. And this came out of the wok literally about 10 seconds ago. She walks it over here, out of the wok, onto the rice, walks it to your table. You can smell the peppery
aroma of that basil. I got the kai dow on
top which is mandatory. Well I mean, you could order
it without the fried egg but believe me, you're
gonna want the fried egg. Yeah, it's mandatory, it's mandatory. You can smell the garlic. Okay, for my first bite here, yeah. I'm just going straight in. I'm just going straight in for that egg. And the egg, you can see, it's kind of crispy on the
sides but look at that yolk. Oh. (laughs) That's also another food
sensation that never gets old, breaking yolks. Okay, I'm gonna grab a bite,
get a little bit of everything. See how that yolk is just
melted in the mixed pork. You can even see the whole
chunky cloves of garlic. Oh yeah. Oh, it's so awesomely good. Yeah, the peppery basil. It's so garlicky. You've got that chili heat. And what you notice is just how freshly stir
fried it is, you know? I mean, that's right out of the wok. It's still hot. And his unique touch is where he actually deep fries the meat and then drains it, so it
almost has a crunchy edge to it. Wow, that's good. Let me get another bite. Oh. It's perfect. You could not want anything else on a single plate of food. One more thing I forgot, and it's essential when you eat this dish. And that is prik nam pla, which is fish sauce and chilies. I'm gonna make this bite count. A little bit of fish sauce on there, a good dollop of sliced chilies with the egg, with the basil. (motorcycle thrums) Oh, oh. Oh wow. That even bumps up the flavor. Yeah, (speaks Thai) knows what he's doing when it comes to pad (speaks Thai). He has just perfected his recipe. (women speaking Thai) Just walking down the
street and we stumbled into a lady who's selling khanom bueang, which is a very popular and
very good Thai sweet snack. It's like a little crepe that
she fries on the hot plate and then she adds in some meringue and you get your choice of topping. But the one we really
like is called foi thong, which is the yellow egg yolk candy. So we got it here. That's candied egg yolk strands, the meringue in there, and all wrapped up in
a little crispy wafer. It's great. It's crispy, it's sweet. It's got that egg white
kind of flavor to it. And then that sweet, rich egg yolk candy. Great sweet snack. We're at the next stall now, and this is just a small little typical Isaan stall serving Isaan food, which is food from the
northeastern region of Thailand. This is a great little spot and I'm about to order the dish. (speaks Thai) I ordered a dish that's
called (speaks Thai) which is a green papaya salad with fermented fish sauce, spicy. Oh look it, a whole handful of chilies. (speaks Thai) She adds in a whole handful of chilies. A little bit of salt in
there to get it pounding, and then she's gonna pound up
all those chilies right now. She adds in just a tiny
little bit of palm sugar, and here it is. This is the (speaks Thai), this is the fermented
fish sauce right here. This is the good stuff. That's the flavor. Oh yeah, and you can smell
that, that cheesiness. Oh it smells so good. This is a lao olive, which also adds some crazy flavor. Chinese longbeans go in. She's squeezing the lime, but also she puts in the entire lime too and she's going to kind of pound that up so it gets all mixed in and gushy. And here comes in the green papaya. That's shredded green papaya. And that's the crab. That's thebpu right
there, that's the crab, the little patty crab. (speaks Thai) She's going to make
also some (speaks Thai) which is an Isaan soup. So we got a few assorted dishes because you can't come to a little stall like this and just get one dish, but the main dish on this list, one of my favorite dishes, which is tam bpu (speaks Thai), which is green papaya salad. You can see that murky fish
sauce, that's the (speaks Thai). You've got the crab in
here, that's the bpu. You've got tomatoes in here and something that also is cool. Something you got to notice is, the shreds of green papaya, she chops it up with a knife, just chops chops chops, and then slices it off
rather than using a grater so you can see how all
the shreds of papaya are all in different sizes. Let me just get a good
bite of this real fast. Oh man, that looks and smells incredible. Oh. Oh, the dribble. Oh. It's so much flavor. It's such a depth of flavor. It's so complex. And then you've got that
crunch of the green papaya. It's sour, it's citrusy. It's spicy, it's fishy. It's everything. Then what you do is you take sticky rice which is called (speaks Thai), you can make a little ball, then what you do is you
then dip it into the juice. That completes it. Yeah, it's spectacular. That's the dressing. We've got some sub no mai, which is a bamboo shoot mixed salad and also some larb, which this is a minced pork version. There's some skin in here. There's some minced pork, there's some dried chili, she adds in some lime. Yeah, this is just a good dish too. Mm, mm. The dried chilies in there. That just has a smoky taste. Grab a little ball of
sticky rice, dip that in. Fantastic. We've eaten three of my absolute favorite Thai dishes in Bangkok. So good, and there's two more to go. Have some very, very exciting, very mouthwatering dishes to come so let's go to the next spot. (quirky upbeat music) I didn't even mention this to you, but we're eating all five
of these dishes in one day, so it's a packed day. We're moving from place to place. We drove over now to Bhangkapi and this is where the next restaurant is. This is one of the best southern Thai restaurants in Bangkok, it's called Janhom, and we're going to eat
a southern Thai dish that's mind-blowingly flavorful. (upbeat jazzy music) I'm always excited to come eat here, even after eating three meals already. We're going to grab this table all the way in the corner
here 'cause it looks cool. Look at these giant wooden booths. This is just a huge wooden table. (speaks Thai) - Hello. (laughs) - Okay. This is not the main dish, but this is another delicious
dish that's rolling up, that's coming right now,
which is the fried fish. It's called pla tod kamin, which is the fried fish with turmeric. And it comes with a sauce. This is delicious, check that out. (upbeat jazzy music) We also got some melinjo
leaves stir fried with egg. This is another one of my absolute favorite dishes in the entire world called goong pad ped sataw, which is shrimp stir
fried with stink beans and you can see all that
shrimp paste in there, a lot of shrimp paste in
there. You can smell the aroma. It's coming right now, the main dish, the main curry that we came here to eat. Oh yes. (speaks Thai) Oh, there it is. There is the gaeng tai pla. It is a curry, a southern Thai curry flavored with fish viscera, like a fermented fish
entrails, the insides of a fish and if you can take a good look at that. There's chunks of fish in there. There's that beautiful dark color. There's pumpkin in
there, there's eggplant. There's lots of kaffir lime used, there's the pea eggplant,
pieces of grilled fish as well. And that's just that intense, intense curry liquid. Oh, I gotta put some of
this on my rice immediately. You stick this on your rice, add a little bit more of that curry gravy. Oh, this is fresh right out of the pot. Oh, it's hot. No doubt one of my favorite
dishes in Thailand. It's such a potent flavor. It's so sharply salty. But you can also taste the
smokiness of the fish in there. You got the little pea eggplants that sort of pop, explode in
your mouth with those seeds and then you've got the creamy pumpkin. One of the greatest dishes of Thailand. Southern Thai. Oh, mm hmm. It's hot. (laughs) It's so hot. That was a big bite. Next dish is the stink
beans with the shrimp, and you can see there's
some chilies in here and you can see that pink color which is all from the shrimp paste, which is like krill paste. That's a beauty and
actually I'm just going straight in for this bite
without even going to the rice. Oh wow. That shrimp, it's perfectly cooked. It's so meaty and succulent. There's onions in there actually, which give it some sweetness
and the stink beans. I love gaeng tai pla, but as far as single ingredients go, stink beans, sataw, that is one of my favorite
ingredients of the entire world. Okay, the fish. And I think
this is called (speaks Thai), which are sand fish, deep fried. You can see this is
all turmeric and garlic and actually, fully deep fried. You can even eat the entire head. I'm just gonna eat this
like a fry. (laughs) This sauce, by the way, is award-winning. There's garlic in there, there's chilies, it's vinegary. Just kind of let that head soak. (laughs) Oh, that sauce. And you can eat the whole head, it's crispy all the way through. The turmeric almost gives
it kind of a mustardy taste. It's awesome. Awesome. And finish with the melinjo leaves. They have some of the best texture of any leaf and have
a nutty taste to them. Okay, we're rolling. Greg and Pam behind the scenes. - [Greg] Get the sauce
inside the fish head. - [Mark] Yes, that's right. (laughs) - [Greg] Can I tell you I'm
gonna cheat a little bit. (Pam laughs) - [Mark] Yup. You want to drown it. (Pam laughs) (Mark laughs) Yes. - Alright, I gotta say, to all those people that
think Mark's faking it when he does his face, it's 'cause you've never
eaten food like this. (Mark laughs) You kind of like have a
little moment to yourself. - [Mark] It's emotional. - When you eat stuff like this. (upbeat electronic music) - We made it. This is the last restaurant. It was about an hour to get here, so I'm going to go ahead
and tell you straight. This restaurant is way
off the beaten path. It is only for the serious
food lovers, even Thais. Like it's really the guys that are hardcore for
food come to this spot and at the moment, this is one of my favorite
restaurants in Bangkok and this is where we're
going to eat the final dish on this list of five of
my favorite Thai dishes. Let's go inside and let's order this dish. I cannot wait. (chill drum and bass music) Let's sit over on this side over here. You walk into this
restaurant and I like it, it almost has like a barn feel to it, it's like this really old
Thai house, wooden house. It's beautiful, actually. It's the perfect setting
to just have a feast. This is the restaurant,
it's called Pla Mae Nam. Which actually means river fish, so they specialize in river fish. Most of the dishes on
their menu are river fish, but the chilies are fiery, the chili pastes just
explode in your mouth. (chill electronic music) Sitting down for the final meal and I could not be happier in
my life at this very moment. They're so cool back in the kitchen. The chef, he is a master
at spicy Thai dishes and again, at this restaurant you can't go wrong on the menu. Everything is incredibly delicious and although we're
focusing on the main dish as the top five of my favorite dishes, there was no way we could not order a whole table full of food, so we did. But the main dish, it's
called gaeng pa in Thai, which directly translates to jungle curry. And so it is a curry,
it's a water-based curry, but it's called jungle
curry because it makes use of lots of wild herbs and
just jungle ingredients that you might find just foraging around. In order to make this, he boils some water and then he put in not just a spoonful but like a spatula dollop
full of chili paste, which is literally like
just pure solid chilies which he dissolves and a
mix of herbs and spices which are pounded into a paste so all the flavors are released. That's pounded in a mortar and pestle so all the flavors are
just completely maximized, even the chili oil is exposed and he dissolves that into the water and then in the meantime they have a plate with all of the ingredients. The fish, the finger root, which is also a very important ingredient and kind of gingery. Some of the longbeans, some
of the different eggplants. He tosses that in into the cauldron with the bubbling chili paste and that just boils away for a little bit and finally when everything is cooked, when the fish is cooked, he tosses in a handful of
kaphrao, which is holy basil, which is what we ate earlier today. That finishes it off and you don't want to cook that very long so he just tosses it
and turns off the gas, dishes it into the bowl and that is it. Okay, everything we've eaten today is one of my favorite dishes in Thailand, but this. This is beyond spectacular. It's a life-changing dish. This is my ultimate
favorite dish in Thailand. I'm gonna grab a bite of the fish and this is all freshwater fish. Actually in Thai it's
called (speaks Thai). I'm not totally sure what
the English version is, but I'm going to get
everything on this bite. Yeah, and you know I do have rice, but I'm not even going to
touch the rice on this bite. You can just see the herbs just exploding and chili seeds throughout
just folded through everything. Oh wow. That's just like, it's literally, it's liquid chili but infused with herbs and there's so much basil in there, or the basil has such a wonderful pungency that you can almost feel your
tongue tingling a little bit. Okay, this one is the pad pet which is basically just a chili stir fry. It's actually kind of
similar to the jungle curry, just in stir fried format,
a little less soup, and there's green peppercorns in here too. This is another one of my
favorite dishes as well. I'm going to stick this onto the rice. It is beyond stunning. Okay, next dish here. This is deer which is stir
fried with black pepper. In Thai it's called
gwang pad phrik thai dom, so we got some deer here, slices of deer. There's some onions in
here, there's some peppers, and he literally tossed in, that was not just a tablespoon. That was like a mountain
tablespoon of black pepper into this single dish. There's a lot of pepper, okay. Oh wow, oh wow. You don't even need to
second guess yourself, that is just pure pepper. Another dish that's famous
here is their tod mun, which is the fried fish cakes. And these are literally like burger sized and they are bouncy. You want to give this
a little bit of a dip. You gotta see the interiors of this. That is just like pure fish sponge and it's all 100 percent
fish and chili paste. It's so good. We have completed five of my favorite, five of the best Thai dishes. This has been one of the most amazing Thai food days of my life. How was the day, Greg? (laughs) - (groans) Can't speak, no words. Too amazing, too good. - (laughs) So we began
with the braised beef, we moved on to the pad kra pao, which is the holy basil stir fry. Then we had the (speaks Thai), which is the green papaya salad
with fermented fish sauce, then we had the southern Thai food, the gaeng tai pla, which is that curry, that whole southern Thai meal. - [Greg] And my favorite side dish-- - [ Mark] Yes, melinja leaves. - [Greg] Melinja leaves, wow. - And then finishing
off with the gaeng pa, the jungle curry, one
of the greatest dishes. That's just straight up liquid fire and what a meal to end with. But the entire day. I mean, for me I cannot
choose a favorite dish because those are my favorite dishes but that's just a sample. The best thing about Thai food in Thailand is that there's so many dishes and I gotta say my favorite
dish depends on the mood. - At the moment. - Yup.
- Yep. At the moment-- - These are five of my favorite dishes. Greg, what was your
favorite dish of the day? - Definitely I would say, oh, the fried fish that we had, the Southern Thai fried fish. - [Mark] Oh yes. - [Greg] That was amazing. The sauce that came with
it, that was incredible. - Oh yes. - Plus the melinja leaves
with the fried egg, oh. (Mark laughs) Yeah, I'd
have to go with those. Those were the two things
there that for me just like phew, amazing.
- Awesome. - This was pretty
incredible. (Mark laughs) I still can't feel my mouth (Mark laughs) which is kind of cool, but yeah. So this was all really good. I can't, it's hard. You can't choose a favorite. - You're right.
- You can't choose a favorite, but thank you so much for letting me into your favorites of the time. I have such a different
understanding of Thai food now. - Cool. - Absolutely incredible. This
is a dream come true for me. Like, I've wanted to eat with you for as long as I could
remember, like years, dude. I've been following you for years and I always said, I want
to eat with Mark Wiens. So thank you so much, Mark. - Cool, thank you.
- I really appreciate it. - And I want to say a
huge thank you to Greg and Pam from Travizeo. Greg, they make amazing
cinematic travel videos. I'll have all their links in
the description box below. Check out Greg and Pam and yeah, that was just so much fun to
eat with you all day today. - Thank you so much, man. That was great. - Well that wraps up the
five best Thai dishes. Thank you very much for
watching this video. Please remember to give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment below,
we'd love to hear from you. - And do the bell thing. - And if you're not already
subscribed, click subscribe, click that little bell icon so that you get notified of
the next video that I publish. Thanks again for watching. We'll see you on the next video. - Ciao! (upbeat music) (claps) - [Mark] Can you smell those
chili beans, Greg? (laughs) (air whooshing) (popping) (crunching)
