If Thai food were a language, it would be Italian: stylish and loud. Negotiating the menu every time you eat is intimidating. It all looks appetising but what is it? After your fifth tom yam gung, you’ll be begging for something familiar.
Three Tiers
Bangkok, like any self-respecting capital city, caters for all budgets.
The high-end options are the luxury hotels with their rooftop bars. Local diners feast on their sense of social superiority. What you eat isn’t as important as being seen eating it – think haute cuisine mixed with mass-market wine and a healthy sprinkling of PM2.5.
The people’s street food moved long ago into the mall’s food courts. Eating and air con go together very nicely. If you can fight through the crowds, the food’s cheap – and instantly forgettable.
In the gutters you’ll find open-air popups, usually a family of cooks, some surly waiting staff and tacky plastic garden furniture. They serve traditional food for Bangkok’s commuters, drunks and sex workers. You really need to avoid seeing highly made-up working girls eating fried bugs. The stuff of nightmares.
New Bukhara’s Indian Restaurant
After days of this, you’ll be a highly suggestive mess. You’ll want something you recognise, and I don’t mean a steak and kidney pie and a warm beer in a depressing Irish bar. You’re on holiday, you’ve got to have some standards. Everyone likes Indian, right?
Searching for New Bukhara’s, you’ll be vigorously jostled as you walk through air thicker than that tom yam. You’ll pass street vendors hawking sex toys, cheap football shirts and off-brand Viagra. If you have any humanity remaining, you’ll arrive a sweaty misanthropic mess.
The air con hammers you. The place is reminiscent of tourist safe restaurants in India; the mood and décor are sedate. The lighting is thankfully low. Indian pop music plays.
The clientele are mostly Indians. Western sex-pats are mostly absent, although you might suffer the occasional ranter. Service staff get friendlier after they see you’re not paying your dinner companion the hourly rate. They’ve seen it all before. Politeness works wonders.
Food
Many places have more artful presentation, but Bukhara’scan’t be beaten on quality. Choicescater for meat-eaters and vegivores. First time? Go for the classics. Start with vegetable samosas and the alu chaat. They excel at fragrant carbohydrates.
Next, you can’t go wrong with a thick creamy tikka masala – decline the spice. Eat as the Indians do and avoid filling up on rice. The naan is as thick as a blanket. Death by Ghee? Only if you eat here too often.
Bukhara’s was recommended to me as a ‘real meal’ when I was an out-of-my-depth first-timer in Bangkok. They offer reasonably priced food exotic enough to feel special yet a welcome alternative to all that lemongrass and coriander. If the Thai experience is overwhelming mind and stomach, this will settle both.
Lee Russell Wilkes 