This is our typical order at Sampeenong, our favorite Isan food joint in the area.
Gai Yang (grilled chicken)
Somtam Lao (Lao-style Papaya Salad)
Tap Wan (literally, “sweet liver”)
Kor Moo Yang (Grilled Pork Neck)
And here’s my homie, Aot, working on a new coffee drink in a Chemex at his coffee stand in front of the restaurant:
It all looks good to me, but I have to ask: do they have strange ways of cutting up chicken in Thailand? In the West, there’s a pretty standard (and to my mind, commonsense) way to take a chicken apart, but my experience in US-based Chinese restaurants and some local restaurants here in Seoul has taught me that not every culture carves up a chicken the same way, and some of those carving methods strike me as utterly illogical, not clearly following obvious joints and muscle groups, thus making it unnecessarily hard to pluck out the chicken meat. Where does Thailand fall on the logical/illogical spectrum?
These are small, free range chickens. They’re spatchcocked, grilled, and basically chopped into the parts you’re used to back home with a few exceptions (like the piece on top, which is the tail up to the mid-back). Because they’re laid out flat and smaller, it’s easy to divide them up like a flatbread or something.