What is a taste memory?

It is food, but more than that. It is the environment, the friend you shared the food with, the person who made it, the location, the people around you, and the person who served it to you.

It is a moment in time captured. Sometimes one element stands out and at other times it is like a stew with different components stirred into a big pot and sitting on the back burner of your palate and mind.

I believe for a taste memory, the best ones, it is given that there is joy. It is the other emotions that make it unique and memorable. The joy can be accompanied by feelings of comfort, wonder, excitement, and even sadness that you may not eat this thing again.

Have you ever eaten something that you love quickly and then wish you could start over again so you could eat it more slowly and savour it more fully? I do that all the time!

I had an amazing street food feast with my friend Yuki before she caught her plane back to Tokyo and then New York.  We are alike in that she adores eating local food here on the street and in the local cafes by the street. We think it’s better than anything we’ve had in the more formal restaurants here.

The cafes are rudimentary, non-descript, simple, with often chopsticks  and spoons and forks in boxes on the table, condiments, always chile combinations on the table or brought to the table with the meal, and also on the table cheap napkins or a roll of toilet paper disguised in a colourful plastic container where you can grab the tissues you’d like.

Many cafes are make-shift in that they are in garages, parking lots, or have other uses during the day, and at night they are transformed into gathering places to eat good food with family and friends. Perhaps these are in fact the original “pop-ups”.

As often is the case, we found our dinner place accidentally.

We saw a canteen area during the day that we thought we would return for dinner to but when we went there it was all closed up. We started looking at street vendors and happened on a large make-shift cafe (near soi 1 and Ploenchit BTS). It specializes in fresh fish and seafood that could be grilled, cooked to order, or cooked at your table in  a hot pot or mini grill. There was station with someone making sum tom (green papaya salad) and a bar with alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks.

We were seated by one of the staff who encouraged us to come in to eat.  I noticed at the back there were large trucks, signalling that it may be a garage of sorts during the day. The place was filled with people, young and old, locals and foreigners, with a common love of good food.

Yuki ordered. She used to live in Bangkok some 20 years ago and has missed dearly the dishes here that she loved so much and ate regularly. She still remembered their exact names and pronunciation without notes. These are taste memories embedded in our minds and hearts.

I accompanied her with much curiousity, excitement and joy in her food journies. It gave me new vigour and excitement to try more dishes in a city that I believe has one of the best foods in the world and cheap by our North American prices. Last night’s dinner of five dishes, including one with fresh local crab, and drinks was 400 baht or less than $15 Canadian.

Yuki, a great chef with over 10 cookbooks published in Japan, and I agree that the food on the street is better than the food we’d had in many of the high end restaurants here, where prices can be similar or much more than at home.

The street vendors are independents who bring their fresh food, skills and hard work to market, understand what people want to eat, and have a direct interaction with the people eating it. You can see and taste the pride and love in the food that they make, often to order for people standing right in front of them.

It is a similar approach to the independent chef-owned restaurants back home vs the larger big box restaurants where the main goal is profit and the bottom line. For the former, of course there is the need and desire for money, but the main thing is providing good food for customers with love and pride, and behind this is a lot of hard work and passion.

Walking along the narrow sidewalk earlier in the day, I came across a man on the corner sitting on a low chair in front of a large hot hibachi grill with banana leaf parcels. It was very hot and humid, like most days here, and he sat there patiently waiting to sell the parcels he had remaining after the lunch rush. I passed him but had to return. I asked him for some. He took took his time as he looked at what he had left, felt each one, found the right ones to give to me, and carefully placed them in a bag.

These are khao tom and contain sweet steamed sticky rice carefully wrapped in a banana leaf and kept warm on the grill. They were delicious and 7 baht each or 25 cents Canadian. This is a taste memory.