Bangkok, Thailand
We had an unexpected stroke of good culinary luck on our visit to Bangkok – the hostel we stayed at was right next to some of the most well-known food in the city. There was an amazing street food stall about 50 meters away (open until 2AM nightly), and even closer were two michelin-starred traditional restaurants: Jay Fai, serving crab omelets, and Thipsamai, serving pad thai.
We ate the street food several times, but unfortunately never got to Jay Fai – wait times were consistently several hours long, plus the food was outside our backpacker budget despite coming from a humble open-air kitchen. We did, however, manage to get into Thipsamai, and let me tell you it lives up to the hype!
First off, we had to line up outside the restaurant. This took about 30 minutes before we got in:
Next, you go through the entry doors and place your order. The menu isn’t huge; they are doing what they do – pad thai, spring rolls, and orange juice – and nothing else.
Once orders are placed, they take you back to a table. You pass by the open kitchen on the way:
Once seated, you wait for the food! The interior is very cool – decorated to look like a traditional place, with a video screen playing the history of the restaurant:
The food comes out fast – they are really turning tables here – and it is all amazing. We got two orders of pad thai with shrimp and shredded crab meat, a set of all their spring rolls (2 of each variety offered), and two freshly pressed orange juices. Everything was absolutely top notch:
To cap off the experience (I think because they can tell if you’re a tourist) we got a free sticker! It now lives on my laptop:
The Thipsamai food was so good, we went back for seconds. On our way out of Bangkok (waiting on the night train) we got some more pad thai, and more orange juice, from their takeaway window at the front of the restaurant. The quality was equally high.
We cannot recommend Thipsamai enough for any visit to Bangkok!
