Food Tours · Tour

Yaowarat Backstreets Food Tour: 15 Tastings for Eight Guests

«Have you eaten rice yet?» is how you greet a friend in Thai, which tells you where food sits in this city. This tour spends four hours in the alleys behind Yaowarat, Bangkok's Chinatown, on the back of that idea. Fifteen tastings or more, across eight or nine stops, two of them listed in the Michelin guide. Crispy chive dumplings with nam jim jaew. Satay with chicken grilled over charcoal. Slow-braised pork. Shrimp dumplings, and poh taek, the seafood soup. Most of the vendors have been cooking the same dish in the same spot for decades, which is why they are worth finding and why you would not find them alone. The Thai-Chinese exchange is the other subject: noodles, stir-frying and a good deal else in Thai cooking arrived from China, and the guide traces it while you eat. Groups are capped at eight, and there are two staff, a guide and an assistant. Bottled water is included, alcohol is not. It starts and ends at the terrace bar of the Shanghai Mansion on Yaowarat Road, five minutes from Wat Mangkon MRT. The operator is blunt about who this does not suit, and so are we: not vegetarians, pescatarians or anyone avoiding pork, because the vendors have no alternative, and not severe allergies, halal or coeliac, because of cross-contamination. Lactose intolerance is fine. Morning departures serve the same food with a couple of stops swapped for places that open in daylight.