Phat Thai at the ghost gate

I have been wanting to go to a phat thai place in Bangkok, which my Thai friend told me about some long time ago,,, where they put big shrimps and wrap the noodle in a thin omelette.

I forgot which friend told me and didn't remember the name or location.

With my blurry memory, I googled around and decided it was probably Thipsamai.

I wrote it down before I was headed to Bangkok to see off my Thai friend who was departing to Germany to study.

After seeing my friend off at Svannaphumi airport with a bunch of her relatives, I took a ride with her cousin and her husband.

Although it was getting late, they offered to drive around a bit to show me the Royal Palace lit up at night,,, which we couldn't get near because the roads were blocked because of people protesting against Thaksin.

Then, the wife said she was hungry and suggested we'd stop for a bite.

They parked the car right in front of the very Thipsamai!

I didn't ask them to take me there, what a sweet coincidence.

We had their "superb" phat thai, their signature dish that is cooked with shrimp and shrimp roe and comes wrapped in a thin omelette.

Honestly, I wanted to like it, but I don't do great with shrimp roe.

I still ate it and I can imagine that people are hooked with this signature dish. It was a lot sweeter than phat thai I had elsewhere. You can also table-cook it as you please with all the regular garnish of lime juice, chili powder, crashed peanuts, sugar and so forth.

Maybe I will give it a second try to their "regular" phat thai with no shrimp roe on my next occasion.

The husband had a courtesy to tell me AFTER we finished the meal the story of what people call "pratuu pii", a door of ghost, around the corner from Thipsamai.

According to him, there used to be a prison, and death sentences (then done by shooting, now done by lethal injection) were made, throwing the expired convicts out of the door.

I also found another version of the story, though, that when many people died of cholera, dead bodies were piled up in the nearby temple Wat Siisaket, and the door to bring in the bodies was called pratuu pii.

Anyone knows which story is correct?

Thipsamai
5.30 p.m. - 1.30 a.m.
313 Mahachai Rd. Samranrat, Pranakorn, Bangkok 10200
02-221-6280

4 comments:

    a ghost gate! Now that's Gibli-esque.

    food and the occult/paranormal phenomena... we need to get into this topic more.

     

    oh yeah., I was also going to say, that yummy-looking thing reminds me of okinomiyaki, hiroshima-style.

    what on earth does shrimp roe look and taste like?

     

    oh yah, hiroshimayaki also has those thin omelette doesn't it... or was it more of a thin crepe. It took me a while to develop a liking to hiroshima yaki. Not that it tastes bad, it's rather good and now I love it, but sometimes it felt like eating several different things that were not necessarily happy with each other.

    Shrimp roe comes in different colors like bluish green and orange... orange one looks like tobiko. It tastes like cholesterol rich food as with other roes. I am not a big fan of roes except the few I don't mind such as salmon roe, caviar and tarako (cod roe), which leaves shrimp roe, kazunoko, uni, tobiko etc.

     

    ohh kazunoko, my old nemesis.....
    i like the crunchiness but that bitter flavour.... yukk

     

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