Pad Thai -- a rant

I grew up in a Thai family in suburban southern California, circumventing endless idiotic jokes about my long-ass last name, fending off the jealous haters in kindergarten who made fun of (but secretly wanted) my shrimp and winter melon soup lunchbox, and going to Sunday school and summer day camp to learn all about the culture, religion, and language of a little axe shaped country on the other side of the planet.

Most nights, either my mom or dad cooked dinner; if my mom cooked, it was usually rice and some variation on what my friend Dottie calls the "brown and green" -- meat and veg stir-fry in very few variations. But if my dad cooked, we usually had a nice little spread -- a brown and green stir-fry, maybe some fried pork spare ribs, and a little soup. At temple on Sundays, we'd eat in the food court in the temple basement. We'd trade our dollars for $2 coins and 50 cent coins, which we'd use to buy delicious Thai lunches like Thai-style shumai, som tum with sticky rice and barbecued pork, stewed fatty pork leg over rice with egg and pickled chinese cabbage, grilled meatballs, or, my favorite, duck noodle soup. In the evening, before the 45 minute ride home down the 101 to the 60 in our hydraulics-free bouncing Chevy van, we would often stop by a Hollywood Thai restaurant for a delicious dinner. I liked to order rad-nah -- noodles with chicken and chinese broccoli in a thickened gravy flavored with yellow bean sauce. I'd ladle on spoonful after spoonful of chilies pickled in white vinegar and bathe my face in the fragrant steam. My brother, who would probably rather have been eating at Sizzler, would usually order a crab fried rice and put up the walls when any renegade spoon (especially mine) tried to get in on the action. In tribute to his Chinese heritage, my dad loved to order goy see mee, which is a lot like rad-na but uses deep fried egg noodles instead of sauteed wide rice noodles. My mom often ate yen-ta-fo, something I only learned to appreciate as an adult -- a spicy noodle soup with strange tripe-shaped chewy white fungus, an artificially red sweet bean sauce, water spinach, and an assortment of seafood.

So I was a bit confounded when in high school, some friends invited me to join them for lunch at a local restaurant that they loved. I was surprised by the growing popularity of Thai food in the 80s and 90s. I didn't know there were any good Thai restaurants in our hood, so I was skeptical. They asked me, "Do you know how to make pad [rhymes with rad] thai? I LOVE pad [rhymes with bad] thai!" In my sixteen years as a Thai-American girl I had never tasted it. We never had it at any of the Thai family birthday parties I'd been to. It looked like something that the guy who made the fried mussel omelet in the temple basement peddled as an accompaniment. I must have seen it before, but I'd never tasted it myself.

When we got to Thai BBQ, everyone ordered the famed pad [rhymes with sad] thai. A steaming plate of pad thai emerged from the kitchen and everyone readied their wooden chopsticks with watering mouths. The noodles I recognized as "sen lek," the skinny rice noodles I usually associated with noodle soups. But the color was a bit strange to me. How do the noodles get so red? What was with all those peanuts? Why had I never heard of this before? And then I tasted it -- sticky, soft and overbearingly sweet with the clean crunch of raw bean sprouts and peanuts. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, and it really didn't have anything to do with my experience with Thai food. I was familiar with the flavors of northeast Thailand's cooking -- the bright, clean salt-tart heat of som tam, the mouth-watering savor of dried-fried beef. Pad thai was not really my cup of tea, and I was ready to leave it that.

But pad thai was not going to leave me alone. As I went off to college and started meeting new people, many of my introductions began like this:

POTENTIAL FRIEND: Hi, my name's [POTENTIAL FRIEND'S NAME].

GANDA: Hi, I'm Ganda.

PF: Ganda, what an interesting name. What kind of name is it?

G: Um, it's a Thai name.

PF: Oh, are you Thai? I LOVE Thai food. Do you know how to make pad thai?

G: [Huh?] Um, no.

I realized that pad thai was the dish people thought of first when they thought about thai food. And it had nothing to do with the Thai food I knew. Thai restaurants I went to had food that was overpowered by sugar and peanuts, sugar and peanuts, two things that were used very sparingly in my house. Why did pad thai become so popular? Why did people think Thai food was about sugar and peanuts? I think it got popular maybe because it's easier to pronounce than pad kee mao (hangover noodles) or pak boong fai dang (fiery water spinach) or moo daed diew (dried fried pork).

Of course, there's a history of imported foods becoming bastardized for palates that maybe wouldn't be ready for the real deal. Candy-apple red sweet and sour pork (disgusting by all standards as far as I'm concerned), California rolls (I like them, but they don't have much to do with the sushi tradition), ham and pineapple pizza (also something I happen to like) -- they're all American creations. Pad thai is actually a Thai dish, but for some reason, people here think that it's the national dish of Thailand. That's like saying brie is the national cheese of France. Brie is a great cheese, and brie is quite nice, but there is so much more to the world of French cheeses. It would be a crime against the many other cheeses of France to only eat brie. And it's a crime against the expansive world of Thai cuisine to only ever order the pad thai lunch special.

If you're in New York, I encourage you to go to my favorite NYC Thai restaurant, Sripraphai in Woodside Queens. Their menu is extensive, their ingredients run the gamut, and they will still make you some pad thai if you can't let it go. If you're in L.A., go to Ruen Pair on Hollywood Blvd., my favorite Thai restaurant anywhere. Make sure you point and order anything from the specials whiteboard (which happens to be written only in Thai). It will rock your world. Without excessive peanuts and sugar.