Lately I have been on this mission to try to find Thai restaurants that are not only acceptable for Farangs but for Thais as well. In my past columns I have often mentioned that I have many Farang friends visiting me and every time they have asked me to recommend a Thai restaurant. That would not be too much of a problem but now I have Thais who wanted my recommendations on where they should take their Farang friends to eat.

             Each Thai his favorite Thai restaurant but deciding to take foreign guests to eat there may not be such an easy decision. There are many factors at play here. Does you Farang friend like spicy food? Does she have any kind of allergies? Is she very hygienic? It all boils down to how well you know your guests. I am always mindful when recommending a restaurant to foreign guests, that they get to taste the real Thai food.

             Thai food tells us a lot about who we are as a people. The way we eat, our food culture also adds insights into what we are. There is some truth in the saying “ you are what you eat”. So many people only take foreign friends to see the packaging, the way the food is served, the well dressed waiters and waitresses, the plate presentation, the Siladon china and the flatware but totally missed out on the taste of the food. So this week again,

             I am going to write about a Thai restaurant where you can take foreign friends to eat and actually enjoy the food. It is clean. The menu has a mix of the old and the new. The food is simply presented and speaks for itself. I am sure some of you have heard of Taling Pling restaurant on Tanon Pun, you know, the soi off Silom road that has the Indian temple on the corner. If you turn into the soi from Silom road and go down about 200 meters, the restaurant is on your right. It can also be access through Sathorn road. It is not a very big restaurant; brightly lit with floor to ceiling windows facing the street.

              There is an upstairs area, which seats another 40 to 50 people. The menu is very simple and well written in English. The owner graduated from Cordon Bleu School in London a long time ago. On the day that I went, I took two ladies from The United States with me. They loved to eat but were a little afraid of germs. They kept on asking me if they could drink the water, which had ice in it! Then two days later they were chowing down on bowls of noodle on sidewalk stands! At any rate, I reassured them that it was safe but if they really want to be sure they should stick to chilled bottled water, whose name brand my father had shares in the company.

              I did the ordering. They had put us by the window so that passerby could see that us and we could see them. I ordered a few appetizers starting with deep-fried chicken knuckles sprinkled with sesame seeds. It was chewy and crunchy, not greasy when eaten with a spicy chili sauce. There is added aroma to the pieces of chicken knuckles because they fried then with kaffir lime leaves, which were served with the chicken pieces.

              Then came the Yum Pla Salid, which is a crispy fried fish salad. Small morsels of fried fish, tossed with shaved fresh lemongrass nuts and herbs and fired dry chili peppers. It is dressed with a lime fish sauce dressing with no oil. I actually felt very healthy eating this salad. Not only was the salad good for you but it was refreshingly delicious. We had a new version of the old, Tod Mun Tong Muan, a curried fishcake roulade.

              Tod mun is a very common Thai menu item eaten with a sweet and sour cucumber salsa and usually serve like a fish cake. Here, at Taling Pling, they make thin sheets of omelet and spread the curried fish cakes over it and make it into a roulade. When they want to fry it they slice the roulade crosswise and dip it in egg wash and fry it. A very interesting dish and quite delicious. Then came the main courses, I felt very Thai that night, so I ordered L

              on Pla Kem, a dip made from coconut milk, salted fish, shallots and chili peppers, seasoned with coconut sugar and tamarind juice. This is one of the many traditional Thai dips, which are eaten with accompanying fresh vegetable and rice. It was so good and the smell of the salted fish permeated through the sauce giving a wonderful aroma. There was a stir-fry Tum lueng that is a local vine. It taste like spinach but more delicate.

              I had the traditional beef green curry with Roti. It was good but I would have been happier if there was more whole chili peppers in the curry. The soft-shell crab deep-fried and done with garlic, chili, and Thai basil. It was very unusual but has to be eaten with rice or it would be too strong for Western palate. We completed the meal with the standard Thai ice cream which is hard to find in Bangkok these days,