Lunch at Chatuchak Market

Our dinner at Baan Klang Nam was our favorite restaurant meal and our lunch at Chatuchak was our favorite cheap meal.

After our fabulous massage at Wat Po we took a taxi to Chatuchak Market.

It was huge. I don’t think we even covered 10 per cent of the market.

I didn’t expect so many food choices in the market. I thought it was all dry goods. That’s big vat of water chestnuts for dessert with coconut milk.

There was a covered open air area with several vendors cooking made to order food. It was so, so hot with all the cooking going on.

We looked around several stalls offering similar food and finally chose one that looked the cleanest. We lucked out. Their food was fantastic and cheap too.  Nothing cost above 50 baht.

The succeeding pictures were taken with my iPhone since Rochelle’s camera ran out of battery and I didn’t bring my camera thinking we would be shopping only. Silly me. There’s always food!

green papaya salad

Why haven’t I ever heard of Tom Yum fried rice? It reminded me of paella. It was a bit wet, slightly sour, slightly spicy and the flavors simply exploded on our tongues. The rice wasn’t even finished and we already ordered a second one.

I wonder if this is available in Manila? We loved this even more than the crab fried rice I raved about here.

Tom Yum fried rice

I just had to order a Pad Thai since it’s my favorite and I haven’t had any really good ones on the trip so far.

How amazing is it to find the best ever Pad Thai in an open market? Even Rochelle who doesn’t like Pad Thai loved it. The noodles were chewy and perfectly al dente. That alone was a rare treat. The flavor was a perfect combination of sweet, sour and salty. I didn’t need to add sugar or anything else. What a wonderful all carb lunch!

Pad Thai

More batter than oysters but not bad at all.

fried oysters

The usual spices on the table. Check out the sugar.

While the others were still looking for more to eat I went back to the ice cream stand that was calling my name. There was a sign that said coconut ice cream. On the table were puffed rice, sugar palm (kaong), nata de coco, roasted peanuts and evaporated milk.

The steel container where the ice cream was reminded me of our taho.

While it looked interesting it wasn’t really anything different from our own macapuno ice cream. It was cheap though. All that for only 15 baht. 

coconut ice cream sundae

While eating my ice cream I walked around to look at more food.

candied lotus root

Can anyone tell me what fruit this is?

Talk about fresh! Jumping prawns picked straight into the grill basket.

If I still had room in my tummy I would have bought a container of those grilled prawns.

grilled prawns

grilled fish

I was fascinated with these tiny fried quail eggs. I have never seen such tiny fried eggs.

fried quail eggs

This is how they fried those eggs. Can I have mine sunny side up?

We tried to do some shopping but it was too hot and there were many, many sections we didn’t know where to go. We went in indoors to the clothes section but the aisles were narrow and crowded we couldn’t even stand and look without getting bumped. We cut our trip short and went to an air conditioned mall instead.

I loved the food at Chatuchak but not the shopping. Maybe I’m just getting old. Sigh.