Culinary

Phew, I finally managed to get my lazy butt up and continue writing about our favorite places.  Okay, it’s not really like that. I’ve just finished re-designing the rest of thaiwonders.com and it looks great! I gonna show it to you guys in another post, but for now, let’s continue with…

Our Favorite Eating Places, 3-5
Usually we don’t think of a school cafeteria as a source of delicacies, but Fai restaurant really deserves to be mentioned here. It’s located at one of CMU’s cafeterias, blissfully hidden from Farang backpackers. Its speciality is moo-yang Isaan. At first sight, it’s nothing special, just fried pork with rice and a bit of som-tam. But the sauce! Whoa. I couldn’t describe it well, you gotta have a taste to know why it’s so special! This sauce compliments the meat well, brings out a special flavor, making this simple meal a unique delight to savor!  Mmmmm… can’t wait to have it again!

Farang food without Farang mood or Farang prices
Cherry and I usually eat Thai meals, but when we occasionally decide to taste western food, we always have to put up with lousy company and high prices. That is, until we’ve found out about a quite little place near Wat Umong, the forest monastery of Chiang Mai. Pai Sabai set up a small eatery in the beautiful garden of a private home. Eating there is a very atmospheric experience. They specialize on Farang food, with very acceptable prices and excellent service.

Cherry and I stumbled up this little place completely by accident. After doing dtak baat in the city at dawn, we went to Wat Umong, but it was too early for the monastery to be open. So we just strolled along the forest-covered walls of the wat, when we got to this little soi with a sign advertising Pai Sabai. We followed it to the garden, and had a great breakfast there. We ordered blueberry pie, Yellow Label tea, muffins and strawberry jam. So yummy!

Little Hungary in Thailand
Yeah, I skipped Hungarian food from this list… why? Because I am blessed with a grandmother and mother who love to cook and have the skill to cook great food too! So, we almost never dine out in Hungary. On the rare occasions when we do, we choose exotic food, like Chinese. Yet, there is one Hungarian place that I can mention here: Kalacs & Tea in Airport Plaza Chiang Mai.

This Thai-Hungarian joint venture imported machinery to make the unique Hungarian delicacy called kurtos kalacs. What is it? Hmmm… kinda difficult to describe. Its taste lies somewhere between sweet bread and donut, and it has a cylindrical shape. They make the dough first; it’s rolled on a cylinder and is baked over fire with the cylinder rotating. When it’s done, it can be coated with different condiments, including walnut, cinnamon, poppy-seed and vanilla. They made a new Thai variety that had dried-shrimp coating, but we skipped that. 

Kalacs & Tea, as its name suggests, also served tea along with the dessert. What made this special is that they imported their tea straight from Hungary as well! Along with the Hungarian decoration of the place, this was really a trip back home. Sadly though, they couldn’t keep up with the increasing cost of mall 

rental fees, so they folded last year.  Too bad, because Cherry and I spent some precious moments there.

So, this concludes our short list of our favorite places to eat at. I hope you found it interesting; give them a try when you get the chance!