Those of you who have visited already have been subjected to my favourite London restaurant: Tuk Tuk Thai in Bayswater. It is a noodle bar, so it specialises in noodle dishes, which are giant bowls of soup with fine noodles being a primary ingredient. They come in all kinds of flavours. I favour the ones with a coconut milk base. I tend to alternate between two dishes: tom kha gai (pictured below with the flowers) and laksa (pictured below without flowers). For the uninitiated, tom kha gai is a mild and slightly sweet soup whose primary ingredients are coconut milk, chicken and lemon grass, but it does have a bit of chilli to round off the flavour.
Laksa on the other hand is a spicy affair. In London it seems to usually have tofu, chicken and prawn. Prawns by the way are what we in the US call shrimp. However, my understanding is that traditional laksa is tofu, fish, prawn, and cockle. Cockles are a kind of clam. My beloved usually orders a dish which consists of lightly fried rice mixed in with basil chicken with a fried egg plonked onto the top of it accompanied by a pot of green tea. It too is delish! Some of the staff members will put in her order when she step in the door and the tea arrives at the table before we do. The staff are amazingly friendly and it feels a bit like family… As much as a bunch of Asian people I barely know can feel like family...
The tom kha gai here is actually pretty much identical to the stuff you get in the States, which is actually unusual because it is more of the norm that Asian restaurants in general here are nothing like the ones at home especially when it come to the menus.
For example, prawn crackers (pictured) are standard fare here. They are deep fried flour that has been mixed with liquidised prawn meat, salt, and pepper. It sounds rather horrible and they look like packing materials, but they are actually incredibly addicting. If you put a person in a silo full of these things at midnight, I am certain you would found him with an exploded stomach in the morning. Well... provided there is something to drink to go with them.
Not surprisingly, they go well with beer… On the flip side, I have yet to run into General Tso’s Chicken or a fortune cookie here, apparently American inventions. I think it is the long time connection with the East that Britain has had. The Asian stuff here is closer to authentic.
My favourite thing in the Chinese restaurants here is that there is a giant turntable in the middle of the table. All of the servings go on the turntable and everyone spins the turntable to take a bit off each. Anyway, Tuk Tuk Thai does not have turntables. It is too small. But it does have good food and very good prices. And you know me… I can’t turn down good cheap eats.
Completely unrelated: note the new feature on the left panel that I recently added which states any upcoming travel plans…
