Everywhere you go there, you can spot one-room restaurants called kedai tomyum on street corners or down alleys. That's where people go for breakfast, lunch and sometimes supper. It's where the local gossips rendezvous and the chit-chat can get political. With tom yum on the table, the conversation goes on.

The tom yum soup served in these places is very sour thanks to the generous use of tomato. Some add sambal - chilli - but you won't find kaffir leaves. Most are heavy on coconut cream. Sometimes these soups look like the creamy laksa mee that's also popular in Malaysia.

In November the kedai tomyum were in the news when Prime Minister Surayud Chualanont claimed that some of their owners and employees were helping finance espionage and terrorism in Thailand's troubled southern provinces.

The contention was a bombshell, catching both Malaysian authorities and the average Thai-Malay off guard. For most people, of course, frequenting the local kedai tomyum is a matter of getting a good meal, not fomenting revolution.

Some Thai officials exaggerated the number of tom yum restaurants in Malaysia to paint a negative picture of Thai-Malaysians working across the border. There aren't 200,000 outlets - it's more like 35,000 on the entire Malay Peninsula.

At least 50,000 Thais from the three southernmost provinces are employed in these places as cooks, waiters and dishwashers. The number does pose a problem for Malaysia's immigration offices because few of them have work permits.

In Kuala Lumpur and Penang, restaurants serving "fine Thai cuisine" have multiplied in the past five years. There are at least 100.

Thanee Lai, who also owns Bangkok Jam, operates a dozen busy eateries in the capital. Malaysians love Thai food, he says, because it's healthier and tastier than that of other Southeast Asian countries, and the price is reasonable. His Malaysian restaurants get plenty of tourists as well.

Trained as an architect, Thanee designed all his restaurants so he could put into practice what he learned in college. And being Thai, he knows how the food is cooked in the family kitchen. Thanee knows exactly what he wanted at each of his restaurants.

The trendy Nuddles in the Petronas Towers has been making money since it opened several years ago. New customers never fail to point out that the restaurant's name is "misspelled", but as he says, "What they don't know is that I deliberately misspelled it so that people would remember the place!"

To survive in the city's increasingly competitive market, Thanee says, even a Thai restaurant needs international appeal, by which he primarily means the presentation. At his places the food is served in Western fashion, and without the usual carved fruit.

But the ambience is genuinely Thai.

As if to return the favour, Malaysians visiting Hat Yai can now dine at halal food stalls and find claypot dishes, bak kuet te and laksa. The price is cheap and the food good and spicy.

Some restaurants in the southern city even serve tom yum Malaysian-style, with lots of tomato.

And a set breakfast of nasi lemak - coconut rice with curry and fried fish - is now widely available on Hat Yai street corners, along with milky tea - teh tarik - which Thais have happily adopted.

Cookman Redux

The Nation

The writer can be contacted at cookman@nationgroup.com.