Thai brunch in Berkeley
My computer is finally back in action, which means I can resume regaling you with joyous tales of eating. Last Sunday I met some friends in Berkeley at the Buddhist temple Wat Monkolratanaram for Thai brunch. They’ve got a neat system going: the temple accepts cash donations, and in exchange provides the hungry public with tokens that can then be spent on a huge variety of fresh Thai food at their makeshift restaurant. Old ladies volunteer their time to cook each week, and crowds gather by about 11 a.m. to tuck into giant plates of beef curry or pad thai or taro fritters while sitting at long picnic tables in the backyard of the temple. Since it’s Berkeley, there are limitless opportunities for people-watching as you stuff yourself full of coconut and spice.
I got there a bit early, so I milled around outside eavesdropping on a couple near me who appeared to be in the early stages of mail-order-bridal bliss. Which is to say, neither one (an older, slightly seedy-looking man and a younger, pretty Thai woman) appeared to like one another very much or speak the other’s language, and were communicating with pidgin English (him) and hand gestures (her). She went off to explore the temple (with, I suspect, no small amount of relief), so naturally he and I started chatting.
I say “naturally” because as most of my friends know, I have a tendency to strike up conversations with just about anyone, anywhere, about any subject. This was actually the second gentleman I have met who has admitted without shame to mail-ordering his wife. He told me that she had just arrived from Thailand a few days earlier and was a bit homesick, so he was trying to help her meet other Thais by bringing her to the temple. I thought that this was rather jolly of him.
He gave me some background on their introduction, and was in the process of regaling me with a litany of complaints about the shocking expenses of marriage when Rachael arrived and extricated me from the conversation (I, too, felt no small amount of relief at being led away from this man, especially because I was being led in the direction of groaning steam trays of Thai food).
Rachael’s friend Matt joined us, and our conversation about the inevitability of his future employment at a think tank (he's working on a Ph.D. in poli sci at Berkeley) quickly began to falter as we attacked heaping piles of squash curry, fiery beef curry, pork with green beans and Thai iced tea. A small paper dish of khanom krok appeared, and we all agreed that the pairing of coconut and scallion was a delicious combination indeed. In fact, Matt was so overcome by the little cakes that he pronounced them “the best thing he has ever eaten” and vowed that he could eat them daily for the rest of his life if need be.
Here is Matt, overcome with emotion. "Is a life without khanom krok worth living?" he asks himself. "Can I get khanom krok in the think tank?"
We finished the meal off with a container filled with mango and coconut sticky rice (one of my favorites, as you can see in the header of this here blog), and black sticky rice topped with coconut custard.
It was a very good morning that led to a long, yet not altogether unpleasant, afternoon of heartburn.
I got there a bit early, so I milled around outside eavesdropping on a couple near me who appeared to be in the early stages of mail-order-bridal bliss. Which is to say, neither one (an older, slightly seedy-looking man and a younger, pretty Thai woman) appeared to like one another very much or speak the other’s language, and were communicating with pidgin English (him) and hand gestures (her). She went off to explore the temple (with, I suspect, no small amount of relief), so naturally he and I started chatting.
I say “naturally” because as most of my friends know, I have a tendency to strike up conversations with just about anyone, anywhere, about any subject. This was actually the second gentleman I have met who has admitted without shame to mail-ordering his wife. He told me that she had just arrived from Thailand a few days earlier and was a bit homesick, so he was trying to help her meet other Thais by bringing her to the temple. I thought that this was rather jolly of him.
He gave me some background on their introduction, and was in the process of regaling me with a litany of complaints about the shocking expenses of marriage when Rachael arrived and extricated me from the conversation (I, too, felt no small amount of relief at being led away from this man, especially because I was being led in the direction of groaning steam trays of Thai food).
Rachael’s friend Matt joined us, and our conversation about the inevitability of his future employment at a think tank (he's working on a Ph.D. in poli sci at Berkeley) quickly began to falter as we attacked heaping piles of squash curry, fiery beef curry, pork with green beans and Thai iced tea. A small paper dish of khanom krok appeared, and we all agreed that the pairing of coconut and scallion was a delicious combination indeed. In fact, Matt was so overcome by the little cakes that he pronounced them “the best thing he has ever eaten” and vowed that he could eat them daily for the rest of his life if need be.
Here is Matt, overcome with emotion. "Is a life without khanom krok worth living?" he asks himself. "Can I get khanom krok in the think tank?"
We finished the meal off with a container filled with mango and coconut sticky rice (one of my favorites, as you can see in the header of this here blog), and black sticky rice topped with coconut custard.
It was a very good morning that led to a long, yet not altogether unpleasant, afternoon of heartburn.
posted by cindym at 1:19 PM
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