The Best Places to Eat and Do in Thailand

Gaeng pa, the bracingly spicy coconut-free jungle curry, is the entire reason this Dusit district restaurant exists, and it shows: the menu runs through a whole roster of variations, from chicken and fish meatball to frog, snail, quail, and wild boar. Stir-fried catfish in chile paste and river snails with green peppercorn round out a meal built for people who find "mild" an insult. End with durian ice cream and sticky rice if that fruit's polarizing perfume is your thing.

Two tables. That's not an oversight, it's the whole point of this supper-club-style Thai restaurant tucked into a residential neighborhood on Bangkok's east side. The chef digs out obscure regional dishes and rotates menus often, so the crowd arriving with printed reservations never quite knows what's coming. The wok-fried smoky cabbage alone explains why people bother figuring out the soi number.

Round marble-top tables, condensed milk in the coffee, and a complimentary cup of Chinese tea that arrives before you ask: Hia Tai Kee has been running this routine for a long time and shows no signs of changing it. It's an old-school Thai-Chinese cafe, the kind where the Chinese Western breakfast, fried eggs and Chinese sausage in a pan, is the obvious move for anyone who shows up hungry.

A rickety shack perched at the edge of the Chao Phraya, with unobstructed river views and no pretense whatsoever. Jack's Bar is the kind of old-school Bangkok drinking spot that makes you wonder how the rest of the city got so serious, serving stiff drinks and kap klaem, the Thai snacks built for sitting around with a beer. The goong cha nam pla, raw shrimp in fish sauce and chiles, has some heat behind it.

The crispy crepes here are made with mung bean flour, which gives them a shell stiff enough to hold their own against the usual limp street-stall versions. This old-school Bangkok street stall does kanom bueang the traditional way, with sweet fillings of egg floss and candied persimmon or savory ones of dried shrimp and makrut lime. There's a row of chairs for the inevitable wait, which tells you everything about the queue.

A century-old rice porridge shop in Chinatown that keeps the lights on until the small hours, mostly for Bangkok's after-hours chef crowd. The setup is blunt and practical: whatever came in fresh that day sits out front, you pick it, you say how you want it cooked. Tea-smoked duck is a fixture. It's a hangover cure you take before the hangover arrives.

Southern Thai cooking sits on the spicier, funkier end of an already bold national cuisine, and this casual spot on the northeastern edge of the city leans into that without apology. Gaeng tai pla, the fermented fish organ curry that separates the curious from the committed, anchors a menu of regional specialties that the kitchen keeps fiercely flavored. A long trip from the center of Bangkok, but the food tastes like it couldn't have been made anywhere closer.

The neighborhood around Sam Yan Market was once famous for seafood restaurants run by Thai Chinese cooks who knew how to steam and stir-fry their way through the freshest local catch. Most of those old names decamped for flashier addresses long ago, but this seafood restaurant stayed, still turning out stir-fried curried crab and tom yum for a crowd that never stopped showing up. The fried rice with Chinese olives, chilies, and cashews is the order regulars protect.

The laminate tables and fluorescent lighting haven't changed in what feels like forever, and neither has the menu at this no-frills Thai canteen on Witthayu Road. Regulars say a generation of Bangkok's celebrated chefs cut their teeth here, which explains a lot about why the green curry and braised pork belly taste the way they do. Come March through May, the khao chae, a chilled summertime rice dish, draws its own devoted following.

A khao gaeng stall that's been around forever, opening before 7:30 a.m. so office workers can load up on curry rice before the day begins. The menu is tight: a few stir-fries, a handful of curries including the hard-to-find cassia leaf curry, and some chile dips. The flashier dishes turn heads, but regulars keep coming back for the salted pork and sweet pork, which says something about the place's priorities.