You Do Not Need to Read Thai to Order in a Thai Restaurant
Six words on a menu will get you a full meal. Not six hundred. Here is the actual working vocabulary of a Thai kitchen, and what to do when the menu has no English on it at all.
I once spent four minutes pointing at a menu in a Chiang Mai restaurant while a very patient waiter nodded encouragingly, and in the end we both said kin krap and neither of us knew what the food was.
We ate. It was good. But that was luck, and the fix is about twenty words long.
Last verified 1 August 2026.
The six words that carry a whole menu
Kin means eat. It also means rice. This single ambiguity is the engine of the entire language and of the entire restaurant, because a dish called kin anything is a rice dish, and ordering kin on its own is a polite way of saying give me the rice.
Phet means flavoured with, or flavoured for, and it appears on almost everything. Phet prik is chilli heat. Phet nam pla is fish sauce. You do not need to know the base dish to use it.
Sam, song, si, nam, ha are the numbers five, two, three, six, five. Combined with tua, which means piece or slice, they let you order a portion. This is how you ask for one plate instead of two, and it is the difference between a sensible dinner and a leftover.
Nam pla is fish sauce. Phet nam jim is soy sauce. Phet nam pla pla is a sweet soy. These three appear in enough combinations to rebuild most of the menu from memory.
Jai means heart. K gai is chicken. Moo is pork. Neua is beef. Once you can name the protein you can order almost anything.
Pla means fish, and it is also the word for banana, which is a genuine trap that catches people in a market and never in a restaurant.
The two words on every menu that you should not skip
Phet and nam together are the whole heat and salt structure of the dish. Anything with both is going to be strongly flavoured. If you want gentle food in Thailand, ordering by absence is easier than ordering by presence: say mai phet, not spicy, and jam yen, little salt, and you have asked for something mild before the food arrives.
Yam means any cooked vegetable dish, stir-fried or boiled, and it is the easiest order in the country when you have eaten a lot of rice and need something green.
Ordering when the menu has no English on it
Point. This works, it is culturally normal, and the pointing method is a complete communication system. Point at a dish on another table and at the menu. Most restaurants have photographs of something.
Use the numbers, not adjectives. Saying ha phet and holding up five fingers while making a mild face communicates an order for five portions of something not very spicy, and it is understood perfectly.
Ask for the menu photo. A large restaurant will have a photo book or laminated sheet. This is not a favour to ask for. It is normal.
And use the one sentence that breaks the ice in every Thai restaurant: Phet tam maak phet, khrap. Not too spicy please. Every waiter in Thailand can respond to this, and a surprising number will take it as a compliment and adjust the dish for you rather than just making it milder.
What is not on the menu
Most tourist restaurants in Thailand are not a complete picture of the food. The dishes a local eats on a Tuesday are often not the ones printed for visitors, and the best food in a town is frequently somewhere with no menu in any language at all.
Ask what the kitchen is good at today. Mai gin ahan? If the answer is a dish you have not heard of, order it. That has been my best heuristic for fifteen years and it has a very high hit rate.
What to point at
Tom yum for the soup, khao soi or khao man gai in the north, massaman if you want something sweet and mild, and anything with khao in the name if you want rice. Those four cover most of a first week in the country without any risk.
Avoid ordering three things at once in a small restaurant. Thai kitchens are small and cook to order. Three complicated dishes at once arrives in a sequence, over about forty minutes, and you will have eaten the first one cold.
