Restaurants in Bangkok
Bangkok is the best eating city in Thailand and it is not a close contest. The range runs from a plastic stool on a pavement to a dining room with a waiting list, and the gap between them in quality is much smaller than the gap in price. The useful question here is not where the good food is — it is everywhere — but which neighbourhood you want to eat it in.
Getting your bearings
Three areas cover most of what you need. Yaowarat is the Chinatown street, south of the old city and best after dark. Sukhumvit runs east from the centre with the BTS above it, and the eating changes completely between one soi and the next. Ari is north on the same line, residential and quiet. All three are on the train, which is the only sane way to move between them at meal times.
Yaowarat, the Chinatown street
The obvious place to start, and it gets better after dark. Grilled seafood, dim sum and mango sticky rice sold from roadside carts, along a street that closes in around you as the evening goes on. Come hungry, walk slowly, and eat in several places rather than one.
Sukhumvit
Both ends of the range on the same road. Soi 11 leans international — trendy cafés, upscale rooms, cuisines from everywhere. Soi 38 is the street-food end. The BTS runs above the whole thing, so moving between them costs nothing.
Ari
North of the centre, residential, and much less touristed. Stylish cafés, Thai bistros and fusion kitchens aimed at the people who live there rather than at visitors. This is where to go on a second or third trip, or on any trip where you want the version locals kept.
Restaurants worth planning around
Jay Fai
Michelin-starred street food, which is a phrase that sounds contradictory until you have eaten there. Crab omelettes and wok-fried dishes cooked over charcoal by a chef who has been doing it for decades, in a room with no pretension whatsoever. Expect to queue and expect to pay more than the surroundings suggest.
Bo.lan
Fine-dining Thai built around authenticity and sustainability rather than around invention. A long meal, and the best argument on this page that Thai food belongs in the same conversation as any other great cuisine.
Cabbages & Condoms
Thai food in a garden setting, attached to a social cause, with décor that will make sense once you are there. Unusual in a way that is worth experiencing rather than explaining.
Issaya Siamese Club
Modern Thai cooking in a colonial-era villa with a garden around it. The setting does half the work and the kitchen does the rest — the easiest of these four to book and the most comfortable to linger in.
What to order
- Pad Thai — the one everybody knows, and still worth having properly
- Tom Yum Goong — hot and sour shrimp soup, the benchmark of any kitchen
- Som Tum — green papaya salad, ordered as spicy as you honestly want it
- Grilled satay with sticky rice, from anywhere with a queue
- Fresh fruit and Thai iced tea, which cost almost nothing and fix the heat
Practical notes
- Street food is a normal way to eat here. Choose stalls with a queue — high turnover is the whole safety argument.
- Many kitchens run late, and some market food streets go past midnight.
- Book ahead for the fine-dining rooms, particularly at weekends.
- Cash is easier at street level, cards are fine everywhere else.