Where to Eat in Bangkok, According to Our Thai Cuisine Experts

A tourist mecca for gourmands and backpackers alike, the magical city of Bangkok is a gateway to Southeast Asia for many Westerners. Like many metropolises, it’s a place of vast diversity, where saffron-robed monks practicing centuries-old traditions serenely meditate alongside Alpha Gen hipsters tapping away at their phones on the way to school; where dragon-headed wooden boats glide serenely over mirrorlike waters as tuk tuks putter noisily along riverside streets choking with traffic and street sellers haul rough sacks bulging with cassava over their backs.

Thailand, known as the Land of Smiles for its people’s legendary hospitality, is a place where you’re almost always greeted with wide, warm smiles and treated as if you were a long-lost relative. It’s also a country of people immensely proud of their culture and their cuisine, and for good reason. Of course, if you’re reading this, then it’s the food scene you’re after, and Bangkok is a must for anyone who loves to eat—the flavors explode with every bite, from red-hot bird chile peppers that sear your taste buds to fresh fruits in every imaginable color whose sugary juices provide a sweet respite from Thailand’s notorious heat and humidity. Bangkok’s cuisine is known for scrumptious noodles bathed in rich broths and complex, layered curries; bright and punchy salads and intense, fiery dips perfect for crisp, fresh vegetables; sizzling satays and fragrant bowls of bone-warming soups, all typically available for just a few dollars—which is unbelievably low by American standards.

But Bangkok’s mix of colors, flavors, fragrances, and sounds can be hard to navigate for the uninitiated, so for this installment of our Global Eats culinary travel series we’ve asked two of Serious Eats’ go-to Thai food experts to let you in on their favorite places to eat in the city. You’ll never get your yum yum mixed up with your tom yum again!

For the best Bangkok tips, we called upon chef, cookbook author, YouTuber, and Serious Eats contributor Pailin Chongchitnant, a native of southern Thailand who lived in Bangkok from 13 until adulthood, and now lives in Canada. Her memories of growing up in Bangkok, learning to cook with her family, and her regular visits back to keep up with the city’s food developments are at the core of her writing and recipes; she’s a foremost expert not just on Thai cuisine but specifically the Bangkok food scene.

We also spoke with contributor Derek Lucci, a Brooklyn-based chef and food writer who has dedicated himself to perfecting Thai cuisine and bringing lesser-known Thai dishes to the US through online classes, supper clubs, and his recipes for Serious Eats. He fell in love with Thailand and its food almost a decade ago and continually explores the nooks and crannies of Bangkok via yearly trips to find the best the city has to offer, while honing and deepening his craft. Along with Chongchitnant, he’s revealing some of the hidden gems he’s found in the capital of the Land of Smiles. 

One Night in Bangkok

Bangkok—officially known as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, or Krung Thep, for short—has been around since the 1400s, first as a trading post on the delta of the Chao Praya River, and then as the capital of a rapidly modernizing Siam (Thailand’s official name until 1939). However, it wasn’t officially founded until 1782. Since the late 20th century, it’s been a major financial center drawing in people from around the globe.

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that the cuisine of Bangkok is the result of centuries of influences, melding ancient cooking practices of the post-classical Sukhothai kingdom with those of Chinese and Indian traders and immigrants and neighboring and nearby countries like Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, to name a few. And, then of course, there are the Westerners, especially the Portuguese, who brought the all-important chile peppers to Thailand in the 16th century, changing its food culture forever—a major milestone in a country where practically everyone seems to be a bona fide food lover.

“The diversity and availability of the food is overwhelming, even for me as a local, and every time I go back, it shocks me how much food there is everywhere—it’s an explosion of sensory input,” says Chongchitnant. “On the one hand, it’s exciting, but on the other, it’s overwhelming because you have no idea what to choose first, what’s good, what’s not good.”

Family Restaurants

Steve Cafe & Cuisine

21 Sri Ayutthaya Rd, Bangkok 10300

Meals are not normally a solo affair for Thais; instead, they’re usually eaten family-style, with everyone sharing from a communal table laid out with a fleet of plates and bowls of Thai soups (like the sweet and sour tom yam that’s likely a staple of your neighborhood Thai spot back home), curries, stir-fries, salads, and so on. This is great if you want to try a variety of new dishes.

The best place to get these kinds of sit-down meals are at general Thai restaurants—most street vendors specialize in specific foods, as do restaurants for certain kinds of foods, like noodle soups or some regional cuisines (like Isan). 

Among the best “local-approved,” “general-purpose” family Thai restaurants, Chongchitnant says, is Steve Cafe & Cuisine—and yes, that’s the real name. 

“Steve Cafe & Cuisine is right on the Chao Phraya River, and I know a Thai place called Steve may seem suspicious, but trust me,” she says. 

It’s an airy, gaily decorated wood-framed place right on the water, where you can dig into a sweatingly hot curry from behind red-and-white-striped shades flapping in the wind to the same rhythm as the white-roofed ferry boats bobbing up and down across the river.

This is a good place to try a number of Thai dishes, including a bright-green gaeng khiao waan gai (green chicken curry), punchy gai pad king (chicken and ginger stir-fry), or a rich and savory moo palo (pork-belly stew with eggs), which you can wash down with mouth-puckeringly sour and spicy tom yam pla (fish soup). The great thing about family-style places like Steve Cafe is that if you don’t like one dish, you can help yourself to the next plate with no repercussions!

Soei Restaurant

Soi Phibun Watthana 6, Samsen Nai, Phaya Thai, Bangkok 10400

Though farther out from central Bangkok and not quite as charming in terms of décor as Steve Cafe—don’t be surprised if you end up sitting down on a folding chair at a folding table on linoleum under a backlit gallery of the dishes for sale—the food at Soei is the real thing, and it has an impressively comprehensive menu of Thai dishes, Lucci says.

“Must-tries include the lemongrass salad, jungle curry, crispy fried mackerel heads, and their standout yam khai dao [fried egg salad]—my recipe is practically a copycat of theirs!” he says. The spot is well known amongst locals and food lover’s alike, and it’ll definitely give you something to write home about.

Supanniga Eating Room

Riva Arun Hotel River Front, 392/25-26 Maharaj Road, Phra Borom Maharajawang, Phra Nakhon, Bangkok 10200

Thailand’s distinctive temples, with their symbolically significant, ornate intricacies and soaring towers, are muses not only for artists of the canvas, but cooks of the stovetop. When she’s in need of inspiration herself, Chongchitnant gazes at Bangkok’s most important and beautiful, Wat Arun, or Temple of Dawn, right from a table at Supanniga Eating Room in Tha Tien Chong. The sleek, modern dining room would fit in perfectly in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, and spills out onto a deck over the water. Wat Arun towers over the opposite bank, and you can hear the pilots calling out to each from their long, spear-nosed boats as they take passengers from shore to shore.

Inside, the restaurant is a showcase for casual and friendly service and traditional foods taken straight from the owner’s grandmother’s own recipes. The colorful presentation—brightly colored dishes blooming like flowers on playfully patterned plates and bowls—is almost enough to distract your eyes from those amazing views, but it might take the enticing scent of dishes, like their florally fragrant crabmeat fried rice, rich grilled prawns, and gaeng massaman (a rich, coconutty beef curry with peanuts), to finally bring your attention to the succulent dishes in front of you. It’s meals like these that have earned Supanniga Eating Room repeated Michelin Guide nods.

Noodle Shops

Talat Phlu Beef Noodle Soup 

1117 Thanon Thoet Thai, Talat Phlu, Thon Buri

No Website

Noodle soups occupy a different category in Thai minds than family sit-down restaurants, so if you’ve got a hankering for noodles, you must head to a noodle soup shop. Lucky for you, Bangkokians love noodles, so there’s no shortage of options to choose from.

“Noodle soups are everywhere in Thailand, but they’re especially common in Bangkok, thanks to the city’s deep Chinese roots,” says Lucci. “My recommendation? Try as many noodle stalls as you can. You don’t need to hunt for them—they’re right in front of you.”

That said, a great place to start is Talat Phlu Beef Noodle Soup, one of the places Lucci calls “the backbone of every noodle soup recipe I’ve developed for Serious Eats. They specialize in clear-style beef noodle soups, but the process behind their broths is similar to what I use in my duck broth and boat noodle recipes.”

It’s far from fancy—you hunch over stainless-steel tables in a space with the ambience of a cafeteria among locals and workers lugging steaming bins of broth and noodles to and fro—but it’s at the heart of recipes like Lucci’s guaydtiaao moo nam sai, in which tender pork meatballs swim with garlic-fried egg noodles in a fragrant broth.

Thongsmith Noodles Shop

Multiple Locations

Lucci’s not the only one singing the praises of Bangkok’s noodle soups—Chongchitnant has fallen hard for a particular restaurant’s take on boat noodles, which have a long history in river-centric Bangkok.

“On my last trip, I fell in love with boat soup, which is thickened with liquid beef or pork blood,” she says. “Historically, they were sold on boats,” hence the name, “but recently there have been places that use high-quality beef for the foundation of a good boat soup, and you can taste the difference. If you have one soup in Thailand, you should have boat soup.”

Chongchitnant recommends Thongsmith, a chain with several location, as the best place to get boat soup shops are tidy and comfortable—think earth tones, padded booths, and wall sketches of Thai boats plying their trade on the Chao Praya—and the soups really stand out, with one particular dish that was so rich and flavorful that it changed Chongchitnant’s whole way of thinking about shop-bought boat soup.

“Most noodle soup shops are cheap and cheerful places—they’ll be on the cheap side but won’t show you the maximum potential of noodle soups,” says Chongchitnant. “But Thongsmith has a wagyu beef soup. The first time I was there, I was like, ‘This seems gimmicky.’ But then I tried it and I was like, ‘Wow, now I get it.’ And it’s going to be like $10, so I’m not asking you to splurge here.”

Isan Cuisine

Som Tom Jay So

Phiphat 2, Si Lom, Bang Rak, Bangkok 10500

No Website

The 20 northeastern Thai provinces that make up the region of Isan on the border of Cambodia are geographically, culturally, and culinarily distinct from Bangkok and the rest of the country, but the food—known for its bold, bracing flavors and incorporating ingredients like lime, fresh fruits and vegetables, dried shrimp, and peanuts with sticky rice in savory and complex salads—is extremely popular with Bangkokians. There’s an entire genre of Isan restaurants that are unique from other Thai eateries and that you can find almost anywhere in the city.

“Bangkok Isan still delivers big flavors with the usual suspects like laab, papaya salad, and all sorts of grilled meats,” says Lucci.

Though it may look like a shopworn grocer from the street—complete with a dingy plastic water cooler, open boxes of cut coconuts for sale, and a fading, sagging awning that has clearly seen better days—Som Tom Jay So, in the Silom area, is a dependable place that honors the Isan palate, says Lucci. Pull up a plastic red stool to one of the folding metal tables and order one of the aforementioned sour, sweet, salty, and spicy regional favorites or an Isan dish less known to Western diners, like gaeng om gai, a brothy dill chicken curry that’ll likely upend what you think you know about Thai curries. It’s a tried-and-true Bangkok restaurant where Lucci can refresh his concepts and palate for Isan cuisine and come up with ideas, like that laab papaya salad recipe of his.

“They nail the classics every time and have a style that’s all their own,” says Lucci. 

Phed Phed Bistro

Multiple Locations

Phed Phed Bistro is a restaurant specializing in Isan food that has earned Michelin Guide recognition and, more importantly, raves from locals, who swarm it every lunch and dinner. It has an unique aesthetic—like the decorator had to use a massive, expiring Container Store coupon for wire-mesh shelving units, and the rigid stone booth partitions and padded benches sit at harsh 90-degree angles that make your spine ache just looking at them—but the focus here, of course, is on the food.

And that food easily transports diners to the realm of pleasure, with spartan but brimming bowls of Isan salads and other dishes, which emphasize textural contrast—like the heaping fruit matchsticks of a papaya salad sopping with sour-sweet juice and punctuated with firetruck-red peppers, then topped with a hoard of crunchy-salty light green Thai pumpkin seeds that look like a jumble of jade teardrops. 

That papaya salad is among the dishes Chongchitnant gets at Phed Phed, but she’s also a big fan of the laab, a simple ground pork dish that is somehow simultaneously salty, sour, spicy, nutty, and full of umami; and the khao niao mamuang (mango sticky rice), a popular glutinous, salty-sweet confection that’s complexly tropical and not just your standard American-style after-meal sugar delivery system.

Markets and Food Courts

Chatuchak Market

587, 10 Kamphaeng Phet 2 Rd, Khwaeng Chatuchak, Chatuchak, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon 10900

Bangkok is a city of street merchants, whether they line a congested thoroughfare with fleets of seemingly daredevil tuk tuks or crowd one of the city’s countless, scarcely more sedate markets.

Lucci recommends those curious about Bangkok’s street food scene to wander down Banthat Thong Road, “which has everything from stalls selling pork satay to sit-down restaurants.”

The sprawling weekend Chatuchak Market, though “super touristy,” Chongchitnant warns, is a good place to find one of the small, two- or three-wheeled carts selling coconut ice cream as you weave through endless rows of stalls strewn with cookware, artwork, and knick knacks. 

“Coconut ice cream’s going to come with sticky rice, and it’s a must-try while you’re in Thailand,” she says. “And you should make sure you get the coconut ice cream from a cart, because the fancier places like to add milk and cream, which isn’t as good and takes away from the taste of the coconut.”

MBK Food Legends

444 Phaya Thai Rd, Wang Mai, Pathum Wan, Bangkok 10330

No Website

Though Americans in search of “authentic” food experiences often go to Southeast Asia with fantasies of finding an “exotic” hole in the wall in the middle of a steaming rainforest, the truth is that the real Bangkokian experience is less “hot tropics” and more Hot Topic.

That’s right: When Bangkokians go out to eat, they’re probably going to their favorite mall food court, Chongchitnant says. And besides the fact that the food in almost any Bangkok food court will put Panda Express and Chick-fil-A to shame, these climate-controlled courts are also  a practical choice in a country where you can essentially paddle down to the equator. It’s also where Chongchitnant goes to get her fill of one of her favorite comfort foods, Hainanese chicken rice, a dish that reminds her of her Hainanese grandmother.

“Food court food is basically street food brought into AC,” she says. “It’s perfect for a quick one-dish meal such as noodle soups, fried rice, and rice-and-meat combo dishes such as Hainanese chicken rice (also a must-have in Thailand). Malls to us are the equivalent of going downtown.”

Chongchitnant’s go-to food court for lunch is the centrally located MBK Food Legends, which she describes as a spot that’s “not overly fancy but has all the basic fare you’d expect”—including curry, stir-fry, noodle soup, salad (or “yum” in Thai), and Isan stalls. With luck, you might be able to find freshly made examples of her favorite Thai dessert, kanom krok, little coconut milk-rice pancakes that have a crispy, hemispherical shell and luscious, custardy innards

Sure, going to the mall for a meal might bring up memories of your “hot” weekend nights in seventh-grade suburbia—reinforced by the neon lights and ‘80s-style décor of many a Bangkok food court—but this is the real Bangkok local food experience; the food is usually amazing, and you might even go home with a Day-Glo fanny pack. It’s a win-win all around!

Tips for Eating Out in Bangkok

Thais are renowned for their hospitality, but navigating Southeast Asian customs can be intimidating to Westerners who are visiting for the first time or aren’t well versed in the culture. Here are a couple tips for first-timers who want to enjoy Bangkok’s wonderful food scene with the least amount of fuss.

• Look for places locals eat. “Because Bangkok is extremely touristy, if you don’t see any locals eating where you’re eating, that’s a bad sign,” says Chongchitnant.

  She blames that on some Thais being too hospitable and not taking enough pride in the Thai palate, changing menus to make Western tourists more comfortable instead of challenging them to try anything remotely novel or authentically Thai.

  “Thai vendors are very accommodating, so if the clientele is mainly foreigners, they’ll make it more palatable for foreigners,” she says. “You can tell if the guests are local if they’re wearing flip-flops and carrying their purses and not bags for travel.”

• Explore outside the city center. Bangkok has been one of the top tourist destinations in the world for a long time now, and it shows in how much the city center has changed over the decades. Don’t bother trying to remember where one neighborhood begins and another ends—the city grew over centuries in a haphazard way that confuses even the locals. Instead, think of it in terms of its skytrain lines, which basically radiate out from the biggest station, Siam BTS station, in the Pathum Wan District. 

  “Everything within a six- or seven-stop radius of the Siam station is pretty touristy,” says Chongchitnant. “If you venture a little off the core downtown, you will find malls that are accessible through the skytrain and less touristy.”

• Don’t be offended when you’re given forks. No, the waiter didn’t give you a fork because you’re Western, and you don’t need to ask for chopsticks to blend in with the locals. Thais have primarily eaten with forks for nearly two centuries, thanks to the Westernizing and anticolonialist edicts of King Mongkut (still best known to many Americans as portrayed by Yul Brynner in “The King and I”). Still, you don’t bring the food-laden fork directly to your mouth—it’s used to push the food onto a spoon, which is what you actually eat from. 

  “I don’t know how you’re going to eat curry on non-sticky rice with chopsticks,” says Chongchitnant. Chopsticks, on the other hand, are still used for noodles in Thailand.

Thai Optional

From the moment you step out of the airport in Bangkok, you’ll likely be embraced by a place where hospitality is ingrained in the bones, the mouthwatering fragrances of floral jasmine rice and prickly curries fill the streets, and every meal offers the opportunity to try one of the many genres of Thai cuisine. The capital of the Land of Smiles is the best kind of adventure—go ahead and  take a bite.

Special thanks to Boat Paveenaorn Duangoen for her production assistance and support in Bangkok for this photoshoot.