Thai Street Food.....Outside Thailand

[bust]

Been seeing a lot of local restaurants lately promoting themselves as "Thai Street Food" or "Authentic Thai Street Food"

Hardly delivering. While one of the restaurants I've been eating at for years, it's a shame we don't get the traditional food carts. Unfortunately our food and beverage regulation are strict, for a good reason, but there's nothing quiet like pull a plastic stool on the footpath an scoffing down a noodle soup. for around a $1 This is close but really just a sweet stand and TukTuk outside a restaurant.

What's the scene like elsewhere

[Old Hippie]

The closest thing to “authentic Thai street food”  here in the USA is maybe down in LA on the weekends. While San Francisco is widely touted as a “restaurant town” or “foodie paradise,” I trend to disagree. Thai food up here, other than what my wife makes, is mostly garbage cooked for farangs who don’t know any better, it’s mostly food Thais generally speaking don’t eat. In general, I am tired of spending money on bad restaurant food. Prices here are just insane to begin with, adding bad food and bad service with an expected/almost demanded 20-30% tip is a no go.  Pad Thai gong here is about $25USD all in…small portion and usually terrible…hamburgers can set you back $30+ in some places…but not to worry, the dump promised to lower the price of everything…

[Coss]

On Vietnamese flavours - I went to a "brand new" Pho shop in Middle Earth on Sunday.

It is our custom to take the old fella, (me) to  lunch after Tak Baht at the local Lao temple, and MLG found this Pho place, so we went.

As we stood in the long cold 8°C queue on the pavement outside, I asked MLG how she found the place, she said Tik Tok. I said, you just want to stand in the cold 'cause you found it on Tik Tok and want to post about it. At which point about half the queue's male members turned and gave me the "I've got one too" look.

However, two big pots of soup, plenty of prep and they were churning through them at about 4 pax a minute, The Pho was good, the plastic stools and little tables authentic, price OK.

I'll wait for Tik Tok to lose interest, before I go again.