Restaurant reviews by Justin Tanner, our retired food critic who knows for a fact Starmer’s only going after the farmers so he can repossess their land to build luxury houses for migrants.
NEVER fancied Thailand. Too hot, scary wildlife that can kill you with a single poisonous bite, and most of the women are packing cocks.
Ladyboys, they call them. Blokes tarted up to the nines thinking they’re women. Unfortunately there’s plenty of that in good old Blighty these days, except ours are usually munters. Still, no coincidence the capital’s called Bangkok, if you ask me.
And people do bang on about how good the food is. There’s a restaurant nearby that claims to serve the best Thai food in Birmingham, so I thought why not? It’s probably like Chinese. They look pretty similar.
However I’ve been warned about a big cultural taboo. Never point your shoe or foot at another person. Feet are an unclean part of the body apparently. Are they too primitive for showers? I’m guessing you have to walk in sideways like a bloody crab to avoid offending them. And you thought modern Britain was full of snowflakey bollocks.
Having safely negotiated my way to a table without insulting anyone with my feet, I peruse the menu.
There’s pad thai, or stir-fried noodles with vegetables and roasted peanuts. Giving that a miss. If I wanted peanuts with noodles I’d open a bag of KP and sprinkle them over a pot of Pot Noodle chicken and mushroom.
Then there’s tom yum, a clear soup with galangal – which is just a posh name for ginger – and lemon grass. A bowl of spicy water with twigs in it, then.
Running out of options, I order the laab, a spicy, salty salad with fish sauce. I’m morbidly fascinated as to how exactly you make a sauce out of fish, but decide not to ask. Some things you’re better off not knowing. It’s hot as f**k and comes with raw vegetables. Must remember to look up the recipe, because it sounds like a perfect cure for my constipation.
Green Thai curry I’m familiar with. Tesco do it. But there’s no point ordering something I can pick up in the chiller aisle whenever I feel like it. So I go for ‘pad kra pao moo’, which from the name you’d assume is beef, but turns out it’s minced pork stir-fried with Thai basil, green beans and garlic and shit. Topped with, of all things, a fried egg. It’s passable, to be fair, with plenty of plain white rice to smother the taste of the spices. But it’s no chicken tikka masala.
I finish with ‘Thailand’s most popular dessert’, mango sticky rice. Basically, rice cooked in coconut milk topped with sliced raw mango. Fruit and rice. I ask you. That’s the trouble when you let foreigners come up with their own cuisine. During the British Empire we had cakes, which take a bit of effort.
Finally it’s duty done. Would I come again? Unlikely. And I’ve still got to work out how the f**k I’m meant to get out of the door without my toes giving anyone a funny look.
