Pad Kee Mao, aka Drunken Noodles
If you were to do any kind of search for the best Pad Kee Mao in Bangkok, you would very quickly come across this lady at Raan Jay Fai.
The stovetops appear to be buckets coated in tar, and that gives this lady serious street cred.
I ordered as everyone directed: Crab omelet & pad kee mao. When I saw that the omelet was being deep fried in oil, turned over again and again until every centimeter was thoroughly soaked in oil, resembling a giant chimichanga, I vowed to myself that I would only eat a couple bites since this was likely the caloric equivalent of eating a dozen donuts.
And then I ate most of it anyway. The deep fried crab omelet burrito came out golden and crispy, looking not unlike a giant piece of battered cod if you didn’t know what you ordered. Just what I need before eating another pile of noodles sautéed in oil. I say that like it’s a bad thing, but I did need to sport a bikini by the end of the week, and I was fully prepared to get questions asking how far along I was in my pregnancy, to which I would respond “42 plates of fried noodles & a fried crab burrito, that’s how far.” I actually did look like I was 6 months pregnant in the hotel elevator mirror after this meal. 
Not sure if you noticed, but an entire clan of crabs resides within the golden fried egg batter. This is where the hefty price tag – a whopping 800 baht (22 euros) comes in. In a place where a whole dish can run you upwards of 1 euro, that is no small price. But lucky for me, I live in Paris, and 22 euros is a STEAL, so yes, I will eat a family of crabs.
Let’s gaze lovingly at the pad kee mao.
I know it’s hard to tell because the portion is small, but this shrimp is the size of my fist. Ten points for mutant colossal prawns.
Was it the best pad kee mao of my life? To be honest, no. Since pad kee mao is my favorite Thai dish, and all the world was saying that this was the best in Bangkok, my expectations were sky high. I thought I was going to have the best meal of my life – I mean death row stuff. As such, when it lacked the depth of flavor – the chili & basil & garlic & spicy heat I had been salivating for, my life felt shattered. For a good 30 seconds to two minutes. It was hard. Thank you for your sympathy.
Maybe she anglofied it for me, thinking I couldn’t handle the heat. Maybe she was having an off day. Maybe I’ve already found the world’s definitive best pad kee mao, and it’s in Dallas, TX. (Doubt it). But this one was a mere shadow of the flavor explosion of pad kee mao at my favorite Thai spot in Dallas, and I don’t know how to reconcile such a difference.
In all honesty, this was probably the biggest disappointment of my trip to Thailand (WHY IS LIFE SO HARD??), which is more of an indication of how awesome Thailand is than anything else. If in two and a half weeks traveling across a foreign country, the worst thing that happened is you were underwhelmed by a noodle dish, then things are going pree-ty well. That’s why I’m planning to move to Thailand.
And then I’ll go back and get the pad kee mao at Raan Jay Fai again, just to be sure, and I’ll ask for Thai-level spicy. Until then, I’m still on the hunt for the world’s best pad kee mao, while simultaneously on the hunt for authentic Thai food in Paris to quench the cravings. Suggestions welcome.
Raan Jay Fai
327 Maha Chai Road, Old City
Bangkok, Thailand
4pm-2am
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PKM is my favorite also. You might want to try Banana Leaf in north Dallas or Bambu in Richardson. Both will make it Thai hot. Banana Leaf’s Cajun Thai owner if he is there revels in firing it up.
Banana Leaf in Dallas is my favorite pad kee mow place! Didn’t know it until I moved to Nashville, TN and couldn’t find that taste again. I tried a few places in Bangkok and was surprised to see that many places didn’t have it in the menu. In Phuket now and did a Google search and came across this article.
Good to know, Greg! Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll have to try it next time I’m in Dallas!
I guess to each their own and what pad lee mao is supposed to taste like is subjective, hens the spread of oils and flakes on the table to customize to your taste. I will say for me “Auntie” makes the perfect noodles for my taste. The tangy and sweet punched up with just the right heat has never disappointed. I hope you have the chance to give her another try.
Happy to give it another try of course! Again, I think she may have tempered the spice down a bit. Expectations and preferences are of course very subjective, and it may be that I’m just used to a different style.
Okay, pretty please, give over your fave Thai food place in Dallas, because being from the Waco area, I have got a far better chance getting great Thai food there, than ever being in Bangkok.
Asian Mint. Their pad kee mao is out of this world. Runner up, Noodle Wave, for green curry. Oh how I miss them!
“…the chili & basil & garlic & spicy heat I had been salivating for, my life felt shattered. For a good 30 seconds to two minutes. It was hard. Thank you for your sympathy.”
I don’t know if the places you went to and loved in Texas were “geared to” or “adjusted” for American tastes or not – but is it at all possible that one may have experienced a mismatch between what one had grown “used to” as “the best” in a US-Thai sense versus what acrtual Thais preferred in their food in Thailand? In this sense I also think of what the proprietess of Lotus of Siam was reported (by her daughter) to have said when she said that she tried from the beginning to serve dishes that closely matched or approximated what folks in Thailand would seek out and eat and was dashed (to tears) when she was lambasted for the “non-authentic”/”weird”/etcetc taste of her dishes — until a well-known food blogger one day wrote up her place and praised it and all of a sudden people flocked to it and proclaimed its wonderfulness.
For that matter, it sounds like you were expecting a hurricane blast of HEAT (and the basil and garlic etc) taste in the pad kee mao. Uhh, Thai dishes (including pad kee mao) are NOT supposed to be OVERBOARD with the chili and spicy heat, amongst other things. They bare to be in a balanced state where the dish is NOT something that a US chilihead might pant after. Just sayin’.
Best Regards.
Thanks for your thoughts, and I of course agree with you – There is no question that my expectations were based off of versions in the U.S., and even though I know they are Thai families who run my favorite places, that doesn’t mean they aren’t adjusting them for American taste. Just like Thai and Indian restaurants here in Paris take nearly all the heat away, or keep it very low level because many French people don’t like spicy foods. So yes, there is a possibility that my favorite version of pad kee mao is not authentic, and so maybe this was in fact the best in Bangkok. All I’m saying is that I was disappointed because it was not very flavorful. I don’t think it’s out of the question to hope something will be flavorful, even if it’s something subtle like sushi rice, there is certain flavor to be hoped for. This just fell flat to me, particularly after all the raging I had read about. I guess I just didn’t understand.
I’m surprised to hear you say that Thai food is not supposed to be overboard with spicy heat, though, as if I shouldn’t have expected it to be spicy. Some of the stuff I ate in Chiang Mai (with locals) and further north in smaller villages were incredibly spicy – so much that the heat definitely was the overwhelming defining factor, and much more than anything I’ve ever had previously. Of course the cuisine in each region I know is very different, and this dish is not a Northern Thai dish, but I didn’t think it was out of the question to have expected some heat, after all they did ask how spicy I wanted it.
I’m not saying I’m an expert. I’m saying that a bunch of people said this was the best pad kee mao in Bangkok, I tried it, and I was disappointed because I thought it was going to be the way others had described it would be, which seemed to be a match with the dish as I’ve known it. I’d much rather discover the authentic version when I’m traveling somewhere than an Americanized version, so maybe that’s what this was, it just didn’t wow me, and I did not get the flavors that other people said they got from the same place. The question that remains to be answered is whether this is one of the best versions I can find in Bangkok, and I’ll have to get more recommendations for next time before I can answer that one. Please do recommend other places that you know about if you have some, so I can expand my knowledge. Thanks for your input!