Japanese Food -- Thai Style

On Friday afternoon I met up with my friend for some more time eating and touring the malls. Our first stop, MK Restaurants. She said that I had to go here if I was in Thailand. It's not traditional Thai food, but the Thai people love this place so much that there are multiple on each block in some areas of the city (just like Starbucks!). It's a style of food called Thai-suki, which is basicallly the Thai version of Japanese hot pot. There are raw vegetables, tofu, fishcakes, meat, noodles brought to the table and you cook it yourself in the boiling broth at the center of your table. The most Thai part about it was the garlic chili sauce that you add to your cooked food once it's come out of the hot pot! Good fun, with a Thai twist.

Next, I got a bit of Thai fast food. Related to my previous Taiwan post on McDonalds, this item was from KFC. I had seen TV and poster ads for it: deep-fried sushi. Why would you do that? I'm not sure, so I had to taste it myself. It proved to be a lot of fried batter around a california roll. I really couldn't taste much other than the fry flavor. Maybe I tasted a bit of mayonaise? Not that great...

If that wasn't enough, when we went into a grocery store, my friend told me about deep-fried seaweed. The Thais took Japanese food and fried it again! It was the thin strips of nori seaweed, fried and packaged like potato chips. I bought a pack out of curiousity, but haven't actually had it yet. Maybe because it's more interesting than it is appetizing to me.

Funny what happens when cultures mix. Some successes and some... not-so-successes.