🇹🇭Thailand

Old-school Ploenchit lunch canteen serving home-style Thai curries and stir-fries to office crowds. Brusque, cheap, and steadfastly traditional.

Long-running shop known for fish-ball noodles and hand-made fish dumplings in a clear, clean broth. Simple, precise, and consistent.

Old Town pad thai institution on Maha Chai Road, famous for noodles wrapped in a thin egg blanket and a glass of fresh orange juice on the side.

Restaurant specialising in fiery southern Thai food, above all khua kling — a dry, intensely spiced minced-meat curry. Heat with real depth.

Charoen Krung restaurant taking pad thai seriously, with house-made sauce and quality ingredients in a stylish heritage-shophouse setting.

Family-run Thai canteen in Dusit beloved for stir-fried crab with yellow curry powder and a fluffy crab omelette. Home-style cooking, decades deep.

Late-night Chula-district legend whose tom yum 'mama' noodles — instant noodles loaded with seafood, pork, and a creamy, sour broth — draw queues after 11pm.

Chinatown stall celebrated for hoi thod — oysters or mussels fried into a crisp-edged egg batter. Cramped, smoky, and worth the wait.

Phaya Thai shop that helped make tom yum kung noodles famous, ladling out intensely spicy, creamy prawn-soup bowls crowned with a giant river prawn.

Ekkamai beef-noodle shop simmering a 'perpetual' braising broth that's been topped up for decades, yielding deeply rich beef and goat noodle bowls.

Century-old Charoen Krung shophouse famed for Cantonese-style roast duck and crispy pork over rice. Marble tables, ceiling fans, old Bangkok intact.

Sukhumvit 26 noodle shop known for clean, punchy pork and fish-ball noodles. A no-nonsense breakfast-and-lunch fixture with a devoted following.

Yaowarat night stall serving guay jub — a peppery soup of rolled rice noodles with crispy pork belly and offal. A Chinatown institution after dark.

Yaowarat Chinatown stalwart spanning dim sum, braised goose, congee, and bird's-nest. A reliable, all-hours Chinatown standby.

Unassuming Phaya Thai restaurant prized for Thai-Chinese cooking and fish dishes — the fried fish 'kidney' and the tom yum are local legends.