For years I’d disdained pad Thai, the ubiquitous Thai menu item of noodles, vegetables, meat and peanuts.
I believed pad Thai to be inauthentic Thai food. And I wasn’t alone: pad Thai is held in generally low regard by many food enthusiasts.
Then recently, Eating at King, I ordered a pad Thai (Yelp voted King and I’s version “best”) and posted a pic of it on Facebook with the question, “Why do people hate on pad Thai?”
Jeff Miller, a rock n’ roll buddy from Los Angeles, opined “Because it’s not “real.” But it’s delicious so who cares.”
Totally agree with Miller that deliciousness trumps authenticity (for everyone but the food anthropologist), but I’m not sure it’s not real…or inauthentic.
Pad thai is undeniably popular; it’s to Thai food in the U.S. what pizza is to Italian food in the U.S.: the most accessible and commonly ordered menu item of its respective culture.
I like pizza and I like pad Thai, but the main downside to pad Thai, for me, is that it’s stir-fried, which is not an inherently bad technique (of course!) but it can tend to homogenize the fresh bright flavors I love in Thai food. Also, because pad Thai seems to be America’s favorite Thai dish, it’s everywhere, which means it will likely be done poorly in many places.
David Thompson, in his magisterial and heavily annotated cook book Thai Food, provides a rather complex, ingredient-intensive recipe for pad Thai (including fish sauce, dried prawns and shredded white radish). Thompson, however, is the gold standard, and I’d expect few Thai restaurants to attempt his recipes which, though likely confirmed “authentic,” are just too complex, requiring ingredients either too costly or too hard to source.
Last week Thursday, I was the guest of the Thai Consulate and Oak Parker/Kendall College chef/educator Chris Koetke at a series of Thai restaurants in Chicago, including Aroy Thai, In-On Thai, Jin Thai, Rainbow Cuisine, and Spoon Thai. We spent the afternoon eating at these five restaurants, enjoying just incredible stuff: boat noodles in a rich pig blood broth, fermented northern Thai sausage, a fish mousse steamed in banana leaves and a dozen other memorable items.
On Friday, I was still in the mood for Thai, so we went to King and Thai, a place we hadn’t visited in some years.
We went with the lunch menu: $7.95 got me a salad, soup and pad Thai. Now, given the price, you know they’re going to have to cut corners and, alas, they did. There were some fresh but also some frozen vegetables in the pad Thai (I have never had a frozen vegetable in Thailand), and the flavors tended to mush together, though this is due in part to the stir-frying, which tends to homogenize the distinct flavors of the vegetables. I would think, though, that this dish, and the price, would please many, and it would certainly be just right for kids who probably wouldn’t appreciate the Thai tradition of subtly balancing the four big flavors of Thai food: sweet, sour, salt and heat
As to the authenticity of pad Thai, it depends upon what you mean by “authentic.” Pad Thai is heavily influenced by Chinese cuisine (the wok, the noodles), but there is no doubt that the dish is very popular in Thailand.
Nonetheless, pad Thai’s popularity – even in Thailand – seems to be of fairly recent origin.
Such declarations may very well have given rise to the perception that pad Thai was on par with Westernized Asian-type menu items like Crab Rangoon (which contains cream cheese, not common in a culture with high levels of lactose intolerance) or Egg Foo Young, which James Beard himself believes likely originated in California logging and mining camps.
Pad Thai is different than Crab Rangoon or Egg Foo Young; it’s authentically (and officially!), Thai and there’s no reason why it can’t be a respectable and delicious menu item. I believe there are many good versions of pad Thai out there, but you may have to look for them.
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