Khao Soi

One of northern Thailand's best known and most popular dishes is Khao Soi, a spicy curry noodle soup, usually served with chicken. Similar to a Malaysian Laksa, it also includes the addition of fish sauce, various aromatic spices and is always made with egg noodles.

The curry paste base features dried chilis, turmeric, cumin, coriander root, ginger, shallot, and cardamom. Coconut milk is added to the paste once it has been fried, creating a slightly oily, thick and creamy soup. Fish sauce and a spray of soy sauce is thrown in for saltiness and palm sugar provides the sweet element.

On Saturday, the local vegan eat and meet group organized a Khao Soi crawl with a goal to ferreting out the best vegan khao soi in Chiang Mai. We started at 11:00 AM at Aum restaurant and visited four other establishments over the course of the afternoon: Vegan Heaven, Bodhi Tree, V Lodge and 29 Coffties. We were provided with scorecards to rate the soups on five categories: authenticity, value for price, curry flavour, noodle quality and toppings. Each restaurant served us 1/3 sized bowls of their regular portions with prices ranging from 20฿ ($0.76 CAD) to 40฿ ($1.52 CAD).

Traditional Khao Soi is always topped with crispy deep-fried egg noodles and contains cooked egg noodles, fish sauce, chicken, beef or pork. Not exactly vegan. The challenge for the restaurants was to come as close to the original as possible, using only plant-based ingredients.

Some of the restaurants completely omitted the crispy noodle topping, others tried using deep-fried rice vermicelli and one nailed it with a fried wheat noodle that remained crispy. Some had wonderful broth, but mushy noodles. Some contained not-so-good fake meats, others had tofu or were loaded with vegetables.

Strangely, all were good in their own way, but the overwhelming winner at the end of the day was 29 Coffties whose Khao Soi contained a delicious, perfectly spiced broth, crispy noodles on top and excellent wheat noodles in the soup. It was also the largest and most beautifully presented version of the tour.

We ended the afternoon with the winner being announced as the group chowed down on vegan Cinnamon rolls or Peanut butter banana rools at Moods Café.

With full bellies, Brenda and I sauntered home and felt no desire whatsoever to eat any dinner.

As an eating day, I rate Saturday, January 22, 2022 a ten.Leia mais