Food From Northern Laos

Vietnamese food is often introduced abroad through a single bowl of phở and a single sandwich, bánh mì. Both deserve their fame, but they are only the doorway. Vietnam is a long, narrow country whose kitchens change as surely as its weather. A meal in Hanoi does not taste like a meal in Huế, and neither tastes quite like breakfast in Saigon. The north prizes clarity and restraint. The centre delights in complexity, colour and chilli. The south cooks generously, sweetly and with armfuls of herbs. This guide is the map for our Vietnamese Food tab. It explains why the country divides into three great food regions, what to look for in each, and how the pieces fit together. The individual dishes get their own articles in our daily series — phở already has its guide, and bánh mì and bún chả begin the run — so here we stay at survey height: the regions, their characters, and the names to know before you go deeper. Why One Country Has Three Cuisines Geography starts the story. Vietnam stret...

Nom Banh Chok: Khmer Noodles for Breakfast Photo: Cooking Storie Breakfast in Cambodia often arrives in a basket. Early in the morning, women carry fresh rice noodles through villages and market lanes in woven baskets balanced on their heads or hung from a shoulder pole, calling out as they go. Stop one, and within a minute you have a bowl: a tangle of soft, just-made noodles ladled over with a warm, golden-green fish curry, then buried under a garden of raw vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. That is nom banh chok — often simply called Khmer noodles — and it may be the most Cambodian breakfast of all: light, fragrant, fresh and eaten before the day gets hot. Noodles made from fermented rice The noodles give the dish its name — banh chok refers to the way the dough is pressed by hand through a heavy press into boiling water. Traditionally the rice is soaked and lightly fermented first, ground to a batter, pressed into a dough, then extruded in soft white strands that are gath...

Khao Jee Pate: The Lao Baguette Sandwich Photo: Van Life Wanderer Morning in Pakse starts with bread. Before the heat settles over southern Laos, the baguette stalls are already busy — baskets of small, golden loaves, still crackling from the oven, split open and smeared generously with pate. A vendor works fast and without a menu: pate, a slick of mayonnaise, thick slices of white pork sausage, pickled vegetables, cucumber, tomato and a fistful of coriander, then the sandwich is pressed shut, wrapped in paper and handed over still warm. That is khao jee pate, the Lao baguette sandwich — breakfast, lunch and travel food in one crisp loaf, and in the south, around Pakse and Champasak, it is a point of real local pride. A French loaf that became Lao The baguette arrived in Laos during the French colonial era, and Laos, characteristically, made it its own. In Lao, khao jee can mean grilled sticky rice in other contexts, but order khao jee pate at a market stall and there is no con...

Cross the Mekong from Vientiane to Nong Khai and almost nothing about the food changes. The language stays Lao. The sticky rice still comes to the table in woven bamboo baskets. The papaya salad still arrives loud with fermented fish, and the heat still makes no apology. You have entered Isan — Thailand's northeast, some twenty provinces and roughly a third of the country's people, most of them ethnically Lao. Bangkok will tell you this is Thailand's spiciest, funkiest, most exciting regional kitchen, and for once Bangkok is underselling it. It is the Lao table on the Thai side of the river, shaped by a dry plateau, deep poverty turned into ingenuity, and a pride that seasons everything. That is exactly why the Isan tab lives on this blog: to eat Isan food is to eat Lao food's closest sibling, and the argument between them is the friendliest one in Southeast Asia. One People, Two Banks of the River The Isan plateau — the Khorat Plateau, walled by hills and drained by ...

Gai Yang: Isan Grilled Chicken, Charred and Juicy Photo: The Woks of Life Follow the smoke in any Isan town in the late afternoon and you will find gai yang. Whole chickens, butterflied and flattened, glow over low charcoal grills outside shophouses and market stalls, their skins blistering to a deep amber, fat dripping and hissing into the coals. The vendor fans the fire with one hand and turns the bird with the other, and the smell — lemongrass, garlic, turmeric and woodsmoke — does the advertising all by itself. When it is done, the chicken is hacked into pieces with a cleaver, still steaming, and served the only way it should be: with a mound of sticky rice, a fiery bowl of som tam, and a small dish of jeow for dipping. It is Isan's grilled chicken, charred at the edges, juicy in the middle, and quite possibly the best chicken on earth. A chicken built for the roadside Gai yang belongs to northeastern Thailand — Isan — the wide, dry plateau that borders Laos and shares ...

Hokkien Mee: The Old Town's Fried Noodle Icon Photo: AutourAsia Walk into a busy food shop in Phuket Old Town at lunchtime and listen. Under the fans and the clatter of plates you will hear the same order called out again and again: one Hokkien mee, one more Hokkien mee, extra egg. What arrives is a bowl of thick, golden yellow noodles, glossy with a dark, savoury sauce that is not quite a soup and not quite dry — wok-fried, then braised for a moment in rich prawn and pork stock so every strand drinks it in. Tucked through the noodles are prawns, squid, slices of pork, fish cake and leafy greens, and on top, in the houses that do it properly, sits a soft egg, its yolk ready to break and enrich the whole bowl. It is Phuket's signature noodle, the dish locals measure a new shop by, and one of the clearest tastes of the island's Hokkien Chinese heritage. A noodle that crossed the sea Phuket's food cannot be understood without its tin-mining past. In the 19th and ea...