In praise of Thai food, except for chicken feet

I have a personal stake in spreading the gospel of Thai food to my fellow foreigners, because Thai food has made me what I am.

Yes! When I arrived here on the hallowed date of May 10, 1986, I weighed a gaunt 65 kilos. Now, over 22 years later, I have ballooned - that's not quite the right word; let's say, rather, blossomed - into a majestic 92 kilos. And it's all thanks to the beneficent influence of Thai food. If scientists were to do a biometric study, I believe they would discover that my blood is 5 per cent naam plaa, my ruddy complexion is caused by massive consumption of red chillies, and my total body mass (especially the fat) is 90 per cent "made in Thailand". For this they should give me citizenship.

Indeed, so great is my fondness for this superb cuisine that I have composed a song in its praise. It goes to the tune of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling In Love With You," is called "Eating Some More Thai Food", and it goes like this:

Wise men say

That to feel real good,

You've got to try

Eating some real Thai food.

Please don't fear

It will make you fat,

For wise men say

There's nothing wrong with that.

Try some khao pat gai!

Me oh me oh my!

Makes you want to fly

Right up into the skyyyyyy!

Dig right in!

Join the eating mood!

For I can't help

Eating some more Thai food.

Try yam plaaduk foo!

It's so good for you!

And when you are through,

You'll have a loverly poooooo.

Fill my plate! Fill my rice bowl too!

For I can't help eating some more Thai food.

Now, you will grumble that some of the wording is pretty awful, and I concede the point. I call on the Thai food industry to get cracking and bring in some professional wordsmiths to fine-tune the lyrics for world-wide advertising purposes. 

How can we promote Thai food among foreign nations, huddled as they are in gastronomical darkness? First, let's steal an idea from the Japanese, who, as Khun Kavi noted, promote their cuisine through an advertising campaign called "Oishi" (Japanese for "delicious"). Let's start an advertising campaign called "Aroy" (Thai for "delicious") with a cute little cartoon mascot called Aroy Boy. We can have him sing a catchy jingle.

Second, we have to deal with a few hard realities. As a foreigner myself, I can tell you that Thai food has one great advantage and three minor shortcomings. (Call them, in the Chinese fashion, the One Yes and the Three Nos.)

The advantage is that once foreigners try Thai food, they're bound to come back for more. To prove it, I cite the following anecdote.

When I was working in Saudi Arabia, I took an American friend, R C Pearson, to eat at one of the several Thai restaurants in Al-Khobar. There he discovered tom yum gung. He immediately became an addict. Every time we went into town, R C had to stop at that restaurant and gorge himself on tom yum gung. It got to the point that the waiters started calling him Khun Gung. Indeed, his complexion began to morph into something remarkably like a shrimp's. And when he visited Thailand on vacation, he ate tom yum gung for every meal. Last time I saw him, I could have sworn he looked as if he was beginning to grow a shell. His fingers were starting to look like shards of lemongrass.

That's the big advantage of Thai food. Once people try it, they're hooked. The trick is to get them to try it.

That brings us to the three shortcomings. These are the names, sometimes the looks, and the fear of chillies.

When I first arrived here, friends took me to eat at a Thai restaurant. There I perused the menu and was taken aback by the weird English names of some of the dishes. As Khun Kavi pointed out, foreigners are not likely to be attracted by dishes with names like "crying tiger" beef salad. One of the worst-named dishes on that menu was called "fried morning glory". Where I come from, morning glory is a flower. The Thais ate fried flowers? I silently resolved to steer clear of this deviant dish. But a Thai friend did the ordering, and with numerous dishes on the table, I dug into a plate of delicious greens. "Gosh, this is good," I remarked. "What is it?"

 "That's fried morning glory," he said.

I was amazed. "But it's GOOD!" I exclaimed.

Indeed, pak boong fai daeng is super-delicious. But you'd never know that from its English name. What should we call it, then? The term "Thai spinach" comes to mind, but pak boong is not exactly spinach; and besides, spinach has a bad reputation among Western children, which decades of Popeye movies have done little to dispel.

So what to call pak boong fai daeng? No words can capture the superb deliciosity of this wonderful dish. The Thai food authorities need to bring in some clever wordsmiths to invent an appealing name. They can do the same for other dishes of dubious nomenclature.

The second shortcoming is the looks of some Thai dishes. My least favourite in this category is any dish containing stewed chicken feet. To me, chicken feet look like babies' hands with claws. Since babies' hands are not normally part of my diet, the psychological effect is distinctly off-putting. 

One of my favourite foods is gaeng khiao wan gai, chicken in sweet coconut curry. But the greenish hue of the curry sauce, with its uncanny resemblance to vomit, may put foreigners off. (Note to reader: If you're eating breakfast as you read this, I sincerely apologise.) I suspect that some may taste it tentatively, if they're brave enough to taste it at all. Once they taste it, of course, they'll become lifelong fans. It's getting them past that "first taste" hurdle that's the tough part. There's really no way to get foreigners past the looks of some Thai dishes except to tell them, "It tastes better than it looks," and urge them to boldly go where no foreign tongue has gone before.

The third and final hurdle is the conviction of most foreigners, who are generally averse to spicy-hot food, that Thai dishes are always loaded with chillies. Unfortunately for them, this is sometimes true. The solution, which Thai restaurants in the West have discovered, is to leave the chillies out, but to put some on the table for the benefit of chilli addicts. The only way to allay the trepidation of chilli-fearing foreigners is to make sure there are no chillies in the food and tell them so.

If these challenges can be successfully met, there's no reason why Thai food shouldn't become even more popular among foreigners than it is already. Just don't try to make us eat chicken feet.