Sunday Lunch Thai Style, Ubon Ratchathani Thailand.

One of the big bonuses of living in Isaan Thailand is the cheap food on offer. There are so many small restaurants that offer all sorts of food to nearly suit anyone’s culinary tastes.

Nearly every Sunday at lunchtime we try and head out to eat. Sometimes we head to one of the many nice restaurants we have here in Ubon, also the chain restaurants like Fuji or MK get thrown in here and there. Dining out at these is expensive to most, say around 1,000 baht or $30 Australian dollars with drinks. Yes, still cheap as chips, I agree.

But we often jump in the car and go for a drive and when we see a restaurant the looks good we stop and give it a try. I was taking many pictures and do hope to get them all edited and uploaded one day soon, but time has not been on my side.

Where I live around 150mtrs in a straight line are the small ramshackle restaurants you see all over the countryside of Thailand. Bamboo framing might have some shade cloth on it and old tin as a roof with a rough concrete floor. Some fold out tables and plastic chairs and you are in business.

The cutlery is so flimsy that the fork bends when you stab a bit of meat or vegetable. I really love these places and it isn’t often you get a meal that is uneatable. Most the times the food is very good.

One thing I got used to very quickly was telling the people to not add MSG to the dish (Mai Sia Phong Churot khrap). Here in Thailand MSG is added to everything, it looks like they are adding salt but it is MSG. One of the first things I learnt was to tell the people not to add it into my dishes. The debate is always interesting on this subject as some people say it isn’t as bad as it has been made out to be, but with all the other crap I indulge in I just keep it out.

If we are not at one of our regular restaurants that know we don’t want it added we just politely tell them when we order. It is never a problem if you don’t want it added in your dishes.

On Sunday Noot was feeling a little lazy as she is coming down with a flu I think. Nong Ja has had a hacking cough that she is starting to finally see the better side of. Seeing a little three year old spit out thick chunks of green phlegm is not nice over 5 days.

So we went to a regular little shop that is maybe 150mtrs away from our front door in a straight line. We call the lady grandma, as that is what all the people call her. She and her husband and two of her kids run the shop and we always get a good feed there.

My two girls looked happy, even though Ja was running at 65% and Noot at maybe 80%.

Here Noot is feeding Ja some of my dish, Noot’s was way too spicy but more on that later. Ja had not been eating much the last few days. Some toast with a little bit of butter was her favourite but solid food was off her radar.

Hard to believe that she was sick, right?



But Ja was more interested in her drink, some orange Fanta.

Noots dish was Phad Prik Yuak, a sweet pepper but is pretty spicy.

We shared a suki soup and this was good.

And I had mixed vegetables and pork.

The entire bill with the Fanta came to 105 Thai baht or around $3.30 Australian.

Brunty