> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://easythailandvisa.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Pad Kra Pao and Som Tam Are Not Dishes, They Are Decisions - URL: https://easythailandvisa.com/pad-kra-pao-and-som-tam-ordering-thai-favorites/ - Published: 2026-07-19T00:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-19T12:28:09.000Z - Description: The two things every Thai orders every day are a question about your week and a question about your stomach, and you only have to answer them correctly once. - Author: Somchai Jaidee - Tags: Street Food The first thing I ask for in Thailand is pad kra pao gai, and I have asked for it about four hundred times, and the only variable in four hundred identical meals is the person making it. That is how good a dish has to be before it stops being an order and becomes a default. Last verified 1 August 2026. ## Pad kra pao, and what you are actually choosing **Stir fried holy basil with whatever protein you picked, served over rice with a fried egg on top.** It is the most ordered dish in the country, and the reason is that it is fast, cheap, hot, and genuinely delicious, and a large share of Thai people eat it several times a week. **The protein is the only real question,** and the options run to chicken, pork, beef, squid, shrimp, crab, and a version with a fried egg and no meat at all. Ask for *pad kra pao* and then name the protein, and that is the whole order. **Ask for the rice, separately, in words.** Most people get fried rice by accident here, which is good, and if you want plain rice you say *khao* on its own. The distinction between the two is the difference between the best and a perfectly fine dish. **Now the two decisions that matter.** First, *phet* or *mai phet*. Second, *khai daeng* for a fried egg, which is what you get, or asking for no egg, which is the correct answer if you are a person who does not want a fried egg on top of everything. **And the thing nobody tells you:** the good places fry in a very hot wok and the basil is properly blistered, and the bad places have a large grey pile of wilted basil on a plate of something. You can tell from across the street. The wok is loud, the cook is fast, and there are nine other dishes moving at once. Choose a shop that looks busy. ## Som tam, and the two questions that decide it **A green papaya salad pounded in a mortar, and the entire dish is the answer to two questions: how hot, and how sour.** **Those are the only two axes that matter,** and the default is medium and medium, which is correct for most people and wrong for everybody on their first day. **There are regional styles and they are real.** [Isan](https://easythailandvisa.com/isan-northeastern-thailand-the-region-nobody-visits/) [som tam](https://easythailandvisa.com/thai-regional-food-isan-north-south/) is drier, sharper, heavy on the dried [chilli](https://easythailandvisa.com/thai-chilli-heat-and-how-to-eat-spicy-food/) and the lime, and it does not contain [fish sauce](https://easythailandvisa.com/thai-seafood-pla-tha-and-fish-sauce/). Northeastern Thai food in general is built on fish sauce and shrimp paste and fermented things, and Isan versions of dishes are frequently much more assertive than the central Thai ones you get in Bangkok. **So if you are in Isan, ask for the local one,** and if you are in Bangkok you are more likely to get a version lifted from a menu written for tourists, which is milder and sweeter and less interesting. **The other variable is the addition,** because you will be asked. *Kin* for salted fish and peanuts, *goong* for shrimp, and a version with no dried chilli at all that a great many people are quietly relieved to be offered. **And there is a completely different thing called *som tam*** that is a stew of tomatoes, long beans, tamarind and dried shrimp, served in a bowl, and it is a different dish with the same name, and it is excellent. Ask for it. Nobody offers it and everybody enjoys it. ## What goes with both **Thai fried chicken, *khai tod*,** which is the single most compatible food in the country, and a bag of the same fried chicken is the answer to a lot of problems in this post. **And a plate of something with rice that you did not order at all,** because in a shop doing stir fries the good thing on the next table is always a better decision than the thing you had planned. This is the single most reliable rule I have and it has never once failed. ## The two mistakes **One: ordering everything mild on the first day.** You will spend a week eating a cuisine with one setting when it has forty, and the mild version is genuinely a different dish rather than the same dish dialled down. Try the real thing, and if it is too hot, the next one will be too. **Two: treating a fried egg as an optional extra when it is the point.** The yolk running into the rice and the sauce is a large part of why the dish works, and the version without it is a worse dish. Have it the way it is meant to have it, and then remove it if you must. ## How to find the good ones **A place with a queue at seven in the morning is telling you something,** and so is a place that is empty at one in the afternoon when the office crowd has gone home. **Look for the wok.** Not a hob, not a flat top. A proper round gas wok that is on fire. That is the equipment difference between a dish that has been made properly for forty years and one that has been assembled. **And look for the mortar,** for som tam. If the papaya comes out of a blender in a glass, it is a different thing and you can see the difference across the road. **And if a shop is busy, the queue is short, and the cook is working fast,** that is a very good sign and it is a free one, and you should take it every single time. **More on this** - [Khao Soi, and the Eight Other Northern Dishes You Should Eat](https://easythailandvisa.com/northern-thai-food-khao-soi/) - [You Will Come Home Unable to Make Pad Thai and It Will Be](https://easythailandvisa.com/thai-cooking-class-what-you-actually-learn/) - [Pad Thai Is Eleven Ingredients and Most of Them Are Not](https://easythailandvisa.com/thai-pad-thai-how-it-is-actually-made/) - [Leo Is Thirty-Five Baht and the Good Beer Is Not in a Bottle](https://easythailandvisa.com/thailand-beer-singha-leo-chang/)