Cuisine

Isaan

อาหารอีสาน

Sticky rice is the utensil. You pinch it, scoop grilled meat, and use it to tamp down the heat of a pounded salad. Isaan cooking on the Thai side of the Mekong is close to Lao food: lime, fish sauce, dried chilli, toasted rice powder, raw herbs. Coconut milk is not the default. Som tam is green papaya bruised with garlic, chilli, lime, fish sauce and palm sugar until the shreds drink the dressing. Larb is minced meat tossed with toasted rice, lime and herbs while it is still warm. Both dishes should make you reach for more rice.

Northeastern Thailand was not an afterthought kitchen that Bangkok later discovered. The region has its own glutinous-rice agriculture and a taste for grilled offal, sour sausage and pounded salads. National Thai restaurant culture exported som tam and larb as 'Thai spicy' without always saying Isaan. The cooking shares more with Vientiane than with a central coconut curry. Migration turned these plates into the chilli-and-lime face of Thai food, then sometimes folded them back into a single national flavour profile.

Less coconut, more smoke and sour. Toasted rice powder adds nuttiness and grit to larb; skip it and the dish becomes a lime mince. Som tam is a mortar job: the papaya should be bruised, not julienned into a polite slaw. Heat is dried chilli as much as fresh. Grilled meats and som tam share a table with raw vegetables and a little nam prik. This is not milder Thai food or 'Isaan-style' central cooking.