Top
Bangkok food tour with Taste of Thailand

Eating around BANGKOK with Taste of Thailand Food Tours

Bangkok is, quite probably, one of the greatest cities to eat around in this world. As such, one can expect quite a lot from a food tour in this city.

I joined Benz and Taste of Thailand Food Tours for a half a day walking around Thailand’s capital, tasting its food and talking about its culinary traditions.

We started the morning like many residents of Bangkok do: by grabbing an iced Thai milk tea to go, along with a sample of roti, filled with smooth chocolate and raisins. I learnt my lesson from previous food tours we’ve joined (like the one in Porto, Portugal) , and skipped breakfast all together before I joined this activity. And I am so glad I did! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with all the sweet and savory samples that were about to come…

Tea and coffee street vendor near Saphan Taksin

Tea and coffee street vendor near Saphan Taksin

Sweet Thai milk tea

Sweet Thai milk tea

 

After breakfast, we walked to a small shop that specializes in making curry pastes. Small in size, yet very relevant as this is the house responsible for the tasty curries served in some of Bangkok’s top restaurants and hotels. After learning how the curry ingredients are freshly blended into a paste every day, we headed to learn more about everyday Thai ingredients at a local wet market. With fragrant Fish cakes on a stick in hand, we walked among the different vendors making a living stocking the kitchens of a city that truly loves to eat.

Thai curry paste shop

Thai curry paste shop

Ingredients for different Thai curry pastes. If photos could capture smells, you'd be hungry by now!

Ingredients for different Thai curry pastes. If photos could capture smells, you'd be hungry by now!

 

At one of the most popular sweet shops among locals in the area (the type of place you’d be quite unlikely to stumble upon as a tourist), we tried a variety of desserts. We learnt that although tourists often indulge in sweet sticky rice with mango, it’s more common for locals to enjoy it with custard or toppings of other fruits (durian, anyone?!). I am glad that I got to try five different Thai desserts in one go here, as this is the the type of item I’m more unlikely to buy a full serving of for myself. Truly sweet as I thought they’d be, I’d stick with the banana and rice steamed pudding, which was flavorful and wholesome.

5 authentic traditional Thai desserts

Traditional Thai desserts

 

At a smaller street market this time, we tried a variety of seasonal fruits, right before Benz walked us towards the fountain of eternal youth. At a typically Chinese dried goods and tea shop, we sipped herbal beverages that, might have not made us younger and stronger as sugested (I guess you have to keep coming back for more for this to work…), but went down smoothly with a generous add-on of sugar.

Benz shows us a variety of Thai fruits in season

Benz shows us a variety of Thai fruits in season: mangosteen, rambutan, longan and more!

Sipping herbal drinks in a 80-year-old shophouse

Sipping herbal drinks in a 80-year-old shophouse

 

Thankfully, the next stop focused on a savory exploration of different dishes from a small restaurant specializing in duck. Packed with locals, this small restaurant served a truly tender duck (I am not even a fan of duck, but this wasn’t the greasy type) over steamed rice, duck noodles and duck soup.

Thai Duck Rice

Thai Duck Rice

Duck Noodles

Duck Noodles

Everybody wants duck!

Everybody wants duck!

 

At this point, after eating breakfast, lunch and dinner in the span of a couple of hours, nothing like taking a walk around the neighborhood. Walking past by small alleys, seeing how people live beyond the main roads and exchanging smiles with locals, can be as interesting as sampling their food.

Back alleys of Bangkok

Back alleys of Bangkok

 

The next stop was my absolute favorite in the entire food tour. By then, it was lunch time and street stalls as well as restaurants were full of working people enjoying their midday meal. And so we joined in, with a gorgeous spread of Tom Yum Soup, Green Papaya Salad and, the one item that for me was a revelation during this tour, this tangy salad featuring lemon grass and crispy peanuts:

A crunchy and tangy Thai salad with spring onions and peanuts

A crunchy and tangy Thai salad with lemon grass and peanuts

 

One would think there was no room for more by now, but when you put a bunch of foodies together, there’s no limit to how much food you can try and, above all, how you can keep on talking about food through it all! And so we walked towards our last stop, a fancy restaurant where we tried some of the best Green Chicken Curry I’ve truly ever had, and closed on a sweet tone with coconut ice-cream.

Thai Green Curry with Chicken

Thai Green Curry with Chicken

 

Even though I am fairly acquainted with Thai food, I found the tour enjoyable and a good intro to the local cuisine, particularly for those who may be new to it. I wish we would have talked about the cultural context of the dishes and use of ingredients a little more in depth though. If you are a big time foodie, you might think that this aspect of the tour is somehow incomplete. Thailand has such an immense culinary tradition, that I understand it’s difficult to cover everything. Still, I wished that we would have talked more about the distinct foods from different regions of the country even if, naturally, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to try them all.

Taste of Thailand tour group

All girls Taste of Thailand tour group

 

At about USD33 the tour offers a good value for money experience. And, more importantly, as far as food selected for the tour goes, the dishes we had the opportunity to enjoy were truly impeccable.

 

More info:
tasteofthailandfoodtours.org
Food tour costs ฿1200 Thai Baht (aprox. USD33)
Bangkok – Thailand


Subscribe to the Backpack ME Newsletter

Tips, fun stuff, and TONS of inspiration! Straight to your inbox!

5 Comments

  • Looks delicious. Does the tour price include the food you sampled?

  • Mehvish Jamil Says

    Hi. I really appreciate the effort you guys put in writing almost everything . I am planning to visit Thailand in couple of months. It is suppose to be my Honeymoon but since I am not a Honeymoony person i want to explore Thailand like a regular tourist. All I want to say is I want nothing fancy but I want to explore most of the things. I am planning to visit Cambodia or Taiwan too. I am just curious about the Visa ….like Schengen Visa do they check you bank statements for last three months or its just the tickets,resrevations and some handful of amount is enough for Visa.

  • Great post, I have seen the curry pastes in this article, Is that too spicy? and thanks for introducing these foods to us.

  • Thanks and wonderful post !!

Comments are closed for this post.

Subscribe to Backpack ME