You will get lost finding Klang Soi Restaurant. It’s seemingly inevitable. Even with a business card with a map and an address on it, I got lost. I asked 5 people for directions. Three pointed me in incorrect directions. One had no idea. The other took me around to as many other people as she could find in the hopes that one of them would know. They didn’t. Turns out it was just down the street a bit farther. But apparently maps are tough for some people. Actually, I found that a lot in Bangkok. Show a map to a taxi driver and you will surely get lost. GPS is non-existent.
The trick to finding this place called Klang Soi Restaurant, or Krua Klang Soi, located on Soi 49 (also called Klang Alley on Google Maps), directly off Sukhumvit Road just a little west of Thong Lo BTS. There’s a fork in the road about 5 minutes walk north of Sukhumvit Road. Turn left onto Soi Klang, then right immediately back onto Soi 49. Keep walking another 7-10 minutes until you pass a hospital. Just past the hospital there’s a parking lot on your left. That’s Klang Soi Restaurant. There’s a big sign with an American Express logo on it. Breathe a sigh of relief. You made it. Did you get lost in a ton of alleys like I did? No. Good. Did you have a businesswoman run out after you in the street to ask if you were the expat lady for the interview for the magazine? No. I wasn’t the expat for the interview, but it almost got me a job in Bangkok. Almost.
If you happen to come in the afternoon when the restaurant’s closed because you got lost for so long that you dind’t make it for lunch, fear not! There’s a Tokyo Cream soft serve ice cream place down the street (keep walking the way you came). Order a plain cream or one of their over-the-top sauced and jellied and syrup-ed confections and you’ll feel less frustrated at life. Promise.
But if you made it to the restaurant during business hours, yay! And now that you’re here at the restaurant, you need to know what to order. The menu is massive, and it’s not all great. How can a restaurant do everything amazingly when there are hundreds of menu items?
So here’s what you order:
Eggplant Salad (Thai Style)
Minced deep-fried fish
Red curry duck (either with steamed rice or fresh rice noodles if you’re making a “light” meal of just curry)
Anything called “yum” except the fish
Yum just means in this light salty, sweet, and a little bit hot dressing. My favourite was the eggplant, which is roasted on a smoky grill and the pulp is shredded into the pool of sauce. It’s amazing. Not too sweet or sticky or cloying. Perfectly balanced. The only problem with the catfish was it was overcooked, and the sauce couldn’t save it. I also didn’t love the fried rice (too oily, too bland), but my friend did.
The minced deep-fried fish is just something you have to try for the texture. The fish is minced first, then fried, so the little bits that come out are crunchy and oily and salty and like nothing you’ve had before, unless you’ve had this before.
I ate a lot of curry in Thailand, and the red duck curry here is one to remember. Again, it was all about the balance. It wasn’t too sweet or too greasy from coconut milk, and that’s saying something with duck, which is often naturally overly fatty. The meat was separated from the excess fat before cooking, and then the braising rendered whatever was left sticking to it, adding all that flavour to the red curry sauce. A little fresh cilantro and it was heaven.
Did I trust the fresh greens at this neighbourhood restaurant? Not really. So I actually skipped the cilantro. It wasn’t a fancy restaurant catering to foreigners. It’s a local, neighbourhood establishment that gets lots of business from the nearby hospital, and the UNESCO building where my friend works (she took me there the first time I went). They weren’t washing their herbs in purified water. It was definitely tap water, which you definitely don’t drink or even brush your teeth with in Bangkok…
But the service is friendly. One server even spoke amazing English, and understood that I couldn’t have soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin or soybean sauce because of wheat. If only I’d know that some fish sauces have wheat in them too, I might not have felt awful afterwards. But I wouldn’t have eaten that great curry, that interesting fish, or that amazing eggplant.
And they sell local, gourmet products at the front: Thai honeys, dried fruit and some sweets. The crowd is a mix of older ladies coming in for fresh rice noodles and a curry, families coming for a whole spread of salads, soups, rice dishes and meats, and business lunches. It’s great people watching, even if you’re the only tourist in the place. Especially if you’re the only tourist in the place…
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