Food Stall Pork Leg

Outside of the north gate of Chiang Mai's old city is an area with night time food stalls.

One was made famous by a) having great food and b) being featured on Anthony Bourdain's episode about Chiang Mai. If you haven't seen that episode, find it online.

It was probably the best street food and perhaps one of the best dishes we have had this trip. Braised pork leg with an egg, pickled cabbage, garlic, chilies, and extra sauce of who even knows what. The accompaniments were already sitting on the tables in the 85+ degree day. I know. For how long? Who knows but the sauce was fantastic! And several hours have passed so I think we are safe.

The stall is easy to find, as the woman running it wears a white cowboy hat, which she apparently donned one night to shield herself from the stall's fluorescent lighting. When she realized that people could better recognize her stall because of her garb, she just rolled with it.

Cost of a large portion served over rice is about $1.50. We splurged and went for 2. Bought our water and 2 Chang beers from the 7-11 nearby for about a dollar all in. You can seriously feed 2 adults delicious dinner with a beer for under 5$.

Interesting fact: there are nearly 9,000 7-11 stores in Thailand. They are practically on every block in the cities, and even ubiquitous in the countryside. If you live in the US you assume they are almost out of business, right?!

I am sure Mike and Sarah who were with us in ANZ are wondering how they drew the short straw on the food side of this trip - in ANZ, every stinking meal started at 25/person local currency - so more like 19/person USD but that was for a crappy sandwich or omelette or whatever. You couldn't get out under 100$ for 4 people. Of course that usually did include some huge order of fries :) included or otherwise. And it just went up from there for better food. Even grocery shopping was little relief. Everything was just costly.

If you like food (and you don't have to like the Thai food with fish sauce kind of food) race here. The food is northern Thai style, so different spicing and less seafood as they are in the mountains. Their food styles evolved differently, reflecting more herbs and spices, with heavy Burmese influence.

One word: YUM.