The best meal I had in Thailand was in Chiang Mai was a suggestion from a friend/coworker who had honeymooned in Thailand last year. This restaurant was basically in a parking lot. And since the restaurant was basically just a restaurant with a cement base and tin roof in a parking lot it made it pretty hard to find but the adventure was worth is.
The Khao Soi Khun Yai aka Grandma’s Khao Soi is located just inside the old city so I thought it would be pretty easy to find looking at the map above. Eh not so much but I am absolutely the worst person with directions so the fact that I found the way to get the group there means it probably isn’t that hard at all. The key to finding it is the below sign.
We turned off on Sri Poom like 4 or 6 when we needed 8. We didn’t realize the streets were named the same. We then were in the back streets and found a cooking school and I tried to ask them directions and the language barrier was too much. We hoped back on our bikes and went to go back on the main road and turned the corner and saw the orange sign. We couldn’t believe we had found it. It really was perfect timing because hangry was starting to creep over our group.
The sign is on gates and the way they are angled you don’t see the restaurant so you need to have a picture of this sign with you to reference. This picture is from the blog Eating Thai Food and this blog really helped us! Another thing to note is they are only open Monday through Saturday 10-2pm.
Now let’s talk about Khao Soi. It is a northern Thailand dish so we ate lots of this in Chiang Mai and Pai but not down in the islands. The dish has Burmese influence and translates to mean “cut rice” in thai but in Burmese the word for noodles is khao swè which shows there really is a heavy Burmese influence on this dish. The broth is full of different complimenting flavors like shrimp from shrimp paste, curry and coconut. They serve the broth over egg noodles and top it with boiled egg noodles. It is served with a “toppings sid plate” that includes pickled mustard greens, shallots, lime, and ground chilies fried in oil. You can get beef or chicken but since we arrived at 1 pm the only meat left was beef.
Each year on our friendsgiving trips we have a favorite food that we know we will crave when we get home and this was that. The noodles are thicker since they are egg noodles and have a nice bite to them and with the beef it tasted like a hearty stew with Thai flavorings.
You would think it would be too rich to finish, but no that is not the case.
