Tracing His Menus Back to Chiang Mai
David Hagerman for The New York Times
At the busy Muang Mai market.
By J. J. GOODE
Published: November 4, 2011
TO drive around Chiang Mai, Thailand, with the chef and restaurateur Andy Ricker is to experience a particular sort of hungry man’s torment. That place, he said, pointing at a storefront or street stall, is known for stir-fried noodles, that other one for fish-head soup. We would pass right by. Elsewhere, he nodded toward a busy restaurant that he called the most famous place in town to get khao soi, a Chiang Mai specialty. Again, we drove past. By this point in his career, his standards are set. “Too sweet,” he said.
Mr. Ricker, a 47-year-old, six-foot-tall native Vermonter now based inPortland, Ore., has become an unlikely ambassador for Thai food in theUnited States. Your only visual clue that he is someone who knows his nahm phrik noom from his nahm phrik ong is a glimpse at his right arm, which is tattooed with a mortar and pestle, bird’s eye chiles, and the holy trinity of northern Thai herbs — cilantro, green onion and phak chi farang (the last often known in the West as sawtooth).
Chiang Mai Travel Guide
Shopping:
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Airport Transfer Arrival and Departure: Private car 200 Baht/car 3-4 Person or Private Big Car 250 Baht/car 5-7 Person
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I have followed Pok Pok, his first Portland venture, since it opened in 2005, tracing its transformation from a takeout shack in his garage to a sprawling, perpetually packed restaurant. I was struck by his refusal to pander to Western tastes. Instead of pushing pad thai and peanut sauce, he serves hoy thawt, an egg-and-mussel crepe found at Thai night markets, and northern-Thai-style laap. Rather than the tart, spicy minced-meat “salad” from the northeast that most adventurous American eaters recognize, this version is spiked with blood and offal, and fragrant dried spices that give it a beguilingly bitter edge. Mr. Ricker now presides over a mini-empire in Portland with four restaurants (including Ping and Whiskey Soda Lounge) that serve food you rarely see outside of Southeast Asia. (By early 2012, he plans to open two restaurants in New York City, one on the Lower East Side and one in Brooklyn.)
Eager to learn more about Thai cuisine, I arranged to meet him during a trip to Portland to discuss the possibility of writing a cookbook. He had already been considering it, so we agreed to collaborate. Our first order of business, he insisted, was a trip to Chiang Mai to eat at the places that inspired the food at Pok Pok. While he makes food from all over Thailand, he is especially enamored of the food of the north.
It was there that he first encountered a bowl of curry — devoid of coconut milk, but full of local wild mushrooms — that convinced him there was an entire universe of Thai food unknown to Westerners. And it is where he has returned most often during the past two decades to meticulously research the dishes that end up on his menus. So in May we made the trip, hitting a few of the dining spots that provided some of his earliest revelations. I discovered dishes that were staggeringly tasty, but also humbling reminders of how little even a self-appointed Thai food fanatic like me actually knows about the country’s cuisine. And none of our meals cost more than 200 baht (about $6 at about 29 baht to the dollar) for two people...Read More the New York Times
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