Bangkok might just be the best street food city in the world. The best food here does not come out of a restaurant but off a cart on the pavement, and it costs you less than two euros. From single stalls by the roadside to whole streets packed with carts, you never have to look far.
That is exactly the problem for a lot of people. On your first night you are standing in a street where fifty carts are steaming away, you have no idea where to start, and you end up buying a pad thai from the first stall with an English menu.
Such a waste. Below are the five dishes to start with in Bangkok, plus where to find them and how to tackle a night of street food without being full after two plates. What else to do in the city is in the things to do in Bangkok.
1. Pad Thai
We start with the famous one. Stir-fried noodles with egg, bean sprouts, peanuts and usually chicken, prawns or tofu, and you can get it on almost every street corner.
Precisely because it is everywhere, this is the dish to ease your taste buds in with. Not too spicy, familiar, and easy to make your own: a squeeze of lime over the top for freshness, or chilli flakes if you do like it hot.
Try it at a small stall where you see plenty of locals eating, not the one with the biggest photos on the menu. The gap between an average pad thai and a good one is bigger than you think.
Our verdict: the safest start to your street food night, and from the right cart still one of the best
2. Pad Kra Pao
This dish does not look like much, and it is brilliant. Stir-fried meat, usually chicken or pork, with Thai holy basil, chilli and garlic, served on rice.
Order a fried egg on top, khai dao, and as far as we are concerned you have the best simple meal in Thailand. This is what people here eat on an ordinary weekday, and you can taste it.
Go easy on the chilli, though, because Thai spicy is not what you call spicy at home. Say nothing and you get the Thai version. If you want it milder, say mai phet when you order.
Our verdict: the dish you will miss most once you are home, and the one you see least often on a menu
3. Moo Ping
See little skewers lying on a grill by the road? That is usually moo ping: marinated grilled pork on a stick, often with sticky rice on the side.
It is not a meal, it is the perfect snack on the go. Cheap, quick and dangerously easy to order five of at once, which is exactly what is going to happen.
Breakfast is a great time for it too. A few skewers and a little bag of sticky rice on the way to the Skytrain is how half of Bangkok starts the day.
Our verdict: the best snack in the city, and the cheapest way to try something without filling up your whole evening
4. Mango Sticky Rice
After all that heat you need something sweet. Sweet sticky rice with coconut milk and fresh mango, which on paper sounds like an odd combination until you have had it once.
It all comes down to the mango. With a fresh, ripe Thai mango this is the best dessert in the country, which is exactly why you buy it from a cart where the mangoes look good rather than a stall where they have been sitting in the display case all day.
Our verdict: the dessert you go looking for halfway through your trip, and then order every week
5. Roti
In the evening you see the little carts everywhere where the dough is stretched thin right in front of you and fried crisp on a hot plate. The classic is roti with banana and condensed milk, but most carts also do chocolate or Nutella.
This is not refined cooking and everyone who buys one knows it. It is the late-night snack after a night out in the city, warm, sweet and far too much, and that is why it is just right.
Our verdict: the best thing you can eat at two in the morning
Also try these if you stay longer
Staying more than a few days? Then these are the next three on your list. They are not in the top five because they take a little more getting used to, but they belong here all the same.
Som tam, spicy green papaya salad with lime and peanuts. Fresh, sour and often properly hot. This is the dish where mai phet really makes a difference.
Tom yum, the sour, spicy soup with lemongrass and prawns. On a hot day hot soup sounds like a bad idea, and it works better than you would expect.
Green curry with coconut milk. Gentler than everything else on this list and a good choice when you need a break from chilli.
Where to find it
Chinatown, around Yaowarat Road, is for us the most fun place to spend a whole evening walking from cart to cart. Go at around seven, because that is when the carts open and the street comes to life.
You will also find good street food around the local markets and scattered through neighbourhoods like Banglamphu and Silom. You do not have to hunt for it: walk down a side street and there it is.
And then the only rule you really need: if there is a queue of locals at a stall, you are in the right place. In this city that works better than any list, this one included.
How to do a street food night
Do not look for one place to sit all evening. The whole point of street food in Bangkok is that you can try a bit of everything, and that does not work if you order a full meal at the first cart.
Order small, share everything, and keep walking. Start with a few moo ping skewers, move on for a pad kra pao, grab a fresh juice on the way and finish with mango sticky rice. That is four things tasted in one evening for the price of a single restaurant meal.
And if you see something and have no idea what it is: that is usually exactly what you should order.
Got time to spare?
Walk one street beyond the stalls with big photo menus in four languages. They are fine, but you pay roughly double there. One street further on the city itself is eating, and that is where the difference is.
Wondering whether the street food is clean? Just check whether the stall is busy. A cart with plenty of customers is cooking fresh all night, so the queue is the best hygiene rating there is.
Where to sleep in Bangkok, what a day there costs and which tours leave from the city is all together on our Bangkok page.
Which dish should you start with in Bangkok?
Pad thai on your first night, and pad kra pao on your second. In that order. The first one eases you in, the second shows you what is really on offer here, and the gap between the two is exactly what people mean when they say you eat well in Thailand.
Go to Chinatown for both at around seven, and pick the cart with the longest queue. Count on less than two euros a plate, so you can easily guess wrong and just try again at the cart next door.
That, in the end, is the whole trick with street food here: it is so cheap you do not have to choose. Order small, share everything, keep walking, and eat three things you do not know the name of. That is a better night than any restaurant in this city can give you.
