Eating in Chiang Mai
THAILAND · CHIANG MAI · JOURNAL
The food of northern Thailand is not the food most people think of when they think of Thailand. The immigrants who settled in northern Thailand hailed from Yunnan and Guangxi in southern China, and established the Lanna Kingdom — the Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields — in this rainy, mountainous region. Northern Thai cuisine shares dishes with Shan State in Burma, northern Laos, and Yunnan Province in China. It was shaped by mountain passes and monsoons, by trade routes rather than sea routes, by the cool highland air that demanded warming food and kept the body close to the fire.
The Lanna Kingdom was not part of Siam until the nineteenth century. For over five hundred years it governed itself, developed its own script, its own architecture, its own way of eating. The sticky rice is rolled into small balls by hand — always the right hand — and dipped into dishes rather than eaten with a fork. The herbs are wilder, more pungent. The fermented flavours are deeper. This is food built for sharing.
All three restaurants below are within walking distance of the Ping River, in the old Wat Ket neighbourhood — where teak traders, Chinese merchants and Western missionaries once lived side by side, and where the colonial wooden houses are still standing along the water.
These are places to eat that I know from my own table. Chiang Mai has many more — the city is full of them, hiding in plain sight down alleys and behind unassuming doors. My tip: open the Michelin Guide, filter for northern Thai, look for one or two dollar signs, and choose the place that looks least like a restaurant.
Withee Laab
Down a narrow alley in Wat Ket, a wooden building that has been serving laab for years. No frills, no design concept, no cocktail menu. The spicy minced buffalo is the reason people come. The bitter laab is the signature. Order several plates, sticky rice, sit with friends, stay longer than you planned.
94-120 Charoen Muang Road, Wat Ket
Kiti Panit
The family turned their great-great-grandparents’ 1880s mansion on Tha Phae Road into a restaurant. The hang le — northern Thai curry, slow-cooked, rich with dried spices — is the dish to order. The building is beautiful in the way that old things are beautiful.
19 Tha Phae Road, Chang Khlan
Ekachan
Chef Ake’s terrace restaurant on Charoenprathet Road, where the service is gloriously chaotic — dishes arrive in their own order, sometimes the wrong ones — and none of it matters once the food is in front of you. The daily specials on the blackboard change with what the market has.
95 Charoenprathet Road, Chang Khlan
You might also love
SEVENTY METERS FROM WAR PHRA SINGH – RACHAMANKHA – CHIANG MAI