- Hey, everyone.
It's Mark Wiens.
I am in Chonburi, Thailand,
about an hour and a half outside of Bangkok
in the countryside not far from Pattaya,
and this is a restaurant that is well known.
It's actually in the middle of nowhere,
but they are known for serving traditional
and especially jungle Thai food.
I am so thrilled to be here,
about to eat some incredibly delicious Thai jungle food.
(reggae music)
Hanging out with my buddy Joel for this meal,
and Ying and Micah.
Micah, you ready to eat some jungle food?
This restaurant is so cool.
You get off the highway.
How long did we drive off the highway?
Like maybe five kilometers at least?
About five kilometers off the highway,
and then all of a sudden you get to this restaurant,
and this is the exact type of restaurant
that I just absolutely love.
Just a clearing in the coconut forest.
I haven't even eaten yet
and already I'm in love with this restaurant.
- Chef is giving us a taste.
This is coconut shell.
I have definitely never eaten a coconut shell on purpose,
other than a coconut shell shard, but it's soaked in water.
Wow.
- You can tell how it will be good.
- Very rare.
I've never seen it in Thailand before.
They're just showing us
some of the ingredients they use here.
The pineapple shoot.
- It just balloons and puffs up.
That egg just literally soaked up all of that oil.
What a beautiful thing.
And they're all extremely friendly here.
- When can you say you're having a dish
made with coconut shell?
(Mark laughs)
- Fried pork belly with salt.
- Oh, I just got a nose full of chili.
Oh, that's a beautiful thing.
That's like tear gas
from the aromas coming out of this kitchen.
My nostrils are actually burning.
I haven't even eaten the food yet,
and this is already my favorite restaurant in Thailand.
- Before I start eating, I just wanna say
a huge thank you to theskinnybib on Instagram.
That's where I got this recommendation from to eat here.
We just watched them cook all of the different dishes.
That literally increased my adrenaline
watching them cook those dishes.
This is an amazing jungle restaurant.
We ordered up just some dishes
that I've never tasted in Thailand,
some unique dishes, some unique ingredients,
the passion that's oozing from this restaurant,
is just on another level.
Joel and I are gonna eat all these spicy dishes,
but Micah is gonna have some really good milk later.
Starting off with this dish that's right in front of me.
It's called moo-pa-choot-za-por-ote.
And this is a jungle pig, a wild boar,
then with a very interesting ingredient,
which is pineapple shoots.
And then he stir fried this up with a bunch of curry paste.
There is some holy basil in here.
There are green peppercorns.
And you can see the little white pieces.
Those are the shoots of the pineapple.
And the curry paste is just thick on the meat.
(reggae music)
That's my first bite, and it's a winner.
The meat is slightly tough,
but like you want wild boar to be
You can really taste the green chilis.
It's spicy, oh yeah.
- [Joel] For sure.
- That gives you a nice burn.
And then those pineapple shoots,
they're softer than bamboo shoots.
They're really, really silky crisp.
It almost has a green curry flavor from that paste,
but in a 10 times kind of way.
This is something I've never eaten,
and it's called geng-moo-ga-la.
This is what the chef gave us a taste test of,
the coconut shell, which has been sliced into thin strips.
And it's young coconut shell.
Oh, that is insane!
Oh, wow.
That texture.
The crunchiness is amazing.
That's unbelievable, partly due to that ingredient,
the coconut shell, but then also partly due to
the flavor combination that they've created.
Oh.
I think Micah wants some.
Next up, this dish is called moo-ba-pa-la-kum.
Similar to a salad or a mixture,
but it's a type of Thai dish.
This one is made with, yeah, the wild boar.
Then there's chilis in here.
Look at that piece of wild boar.
Look at that skin, that all naturale.
Rakam, it's like a type of snake fruit.
There's two different main types, salak and rakam.
Rakam is the fatter one.
It's like a sour snake fruit.
- [Joel] Dude, smell that, too.
- It's a little bit of a fermenty flavor.
Oh, that goes up my nose.
Oh, that is stunning.
That rakam does have
a little bit of a fermented taste to it,
a little bit of a rotting fruit taste,
and it is wonderful.
Here's the seed of the fruit, of the rakam.
It's so sour.
And then you can't eat the seed.
It's a hard seed, but you can just suck off
all of that meaty fiber.
It's so sour and almost like fuzzy in texture.
What a stroke of genius to mix that with wild boar
and lots of chilis.
And this dish right here is called mut-don bai chamuang.
And this is squid with squid ink,
so that's why it's so black.
And then a type of leafy herb.
Do you know what it is?
- [Joel] I've never (mumbles)
- Yeah, I've never had bai chamuang before.
But it looks like they've shredded it up,
chopped it up, and also looks delicious.
Oh, that has a really immediate sweetness to it,
sweet and sourness to it.
And I'm not sure if that sourness and sweetness
is maybe coming a lot from that leaf,
because that leaf has a--
- It is sour.
Just taste a bit of the leaf, yeah.
Bai chamuang.
- Whoa. - Oh, okay.
- The leaf is very sour.
- This soup is awesome.
- This is a traditional version
of the fried Thai fish cakes.
Wow.
The balance of flavor.
- Sweet, and then the delicious fattiness
comes through after.
- They made sure to tell us that it's 100 percent fish.
That tastes like a rearranged fish.
This one is kaeng kelux pla duk.
It actually translates to salt curry, and with catfish.
And this is one of their signature dishes.
We also saw him making this.
It's just, yeah, a ton of curry paste.
There's coconut milk in there.
And it just looks like a flavor overload.
My excitement for food is at an all time high right now.
- (mumbles) the wild catfish.
- Oh, that's insane.
It's so smooth and so jungly.
It's so jungly tasting.
So not only do you feel like
you're sitting in the jungle eating here, which you are,
but the herbs are just packed into the food here.
We're gonna be weeping tears of joy here pretty soon
One of the funniest dishes is their omelet.
In Thai, and actually on the menu,
it says ky-gee-oh al-oy thi-sud ni lo,
and that literally translates to,
"The best omelet in the world."
There are some interesting ingredients in here.
There's salted egg.
There's thousand year old egg.
There's about a half a bottle of oil within this egg.
Let's look at that cross section.
This is a pretty sizeable bite,
but I really wanna get the full experience
of the best omelet in the world in my first bite.
It just juices in your mouth.
- The most multi-textured omelet that's just egg ever.
(Mark laughs)
- It's salty.
It definitely is like a sponge full of oil.
One thing you can definitely say for sure
is that it will ruin you for all other forms of eggs.
- Okay, I could agree.
- It's so good and so oily.
It's like the type of omelet
that you want to eat at three a.m.
I'm not gonna argue with him about this omelet.
It's undoubtedly among the world's greatest of all omelets.
It's like a warm blanket of egg.
So for Thai omelets, it's very common to use
something called sauce pik, which is,
it's made from chilis but it's sort of ketchupy.
I will be one to admit that it tastes
incredibly good somehow with the salty omelet.
That is an omelet that will change your life.
- Dude, you said it right.
At midnight, I would want nothing more than that.
- Oh, wow.
- To go to sleep with this in your stomach, mm.
- Yes.
- I'm experiencing some deja vu.
I think we were standing in the same place before we ate.
Now we're ordering again.
One thing that I forgot to order
that I wanted to order here is the,
this is some type of jungle yellow eggplant.
So he has just recommended a dish
that he's gonna cook with it for us.
- We've been here for two hours,
and we've just ordered another round of five more dishes.
We've already been here two hours.
- [Mark] I could not resist.
This is the type of restaurant
that you just wanna hang out all day long.
- [Joel] They're so friendly.
- They're so friendly.
The breeze under this place.
I'm in love.
I'm actually in love.
(reggae music)
That first round of dishes was so life changingly good
that we had to order more food.
And I don't even know if it's possible to stop eating.
Ying says we should start with the soup while it's hot.
This is gai-bon-dome-bru-kom.
And it is free range chicken
which is then boiled with that same fruit.
I guess I'll just go in for a seed in some of the broth.
Oh, that's sour.
Whoa, whoa.
That goes down your body with sourness.
Oh, it's so sour it's making my teeth hurt immediately,
like immediately, in front of those green chilis.
You know how sour a lime is?
Take that and double the sourness
and you have the sourness of that.
But it's also sour in a little bit of a different way.
It's not a citrusy sour.
It's almost like a vinegar sour.
Okay, next up, we're gonna try the pla duk pik-sote.
They fried the catfish, slices of catfish.
And again, it's wild catfish.
And then they stir fried it with,
actually, if you were to just look at this dish,
you might think it's stir fried with green beans.
But since I saw them making the entire dish,
I can assure you, there are no green beans in there.
That's just all straight up chilis and garlic.
And it looks stunning.
(reggae music)
Oh, that is an eruption of chili flavor.
That literally takes like you're eating a bush of chilis.
Next up, we got a plate of gai-koor-glur.
Koor is like dry fried, but I think this is deep fried.
Is that the butt?
Oh, I think I'll go for that.
One bite of a chicken butt.
That is just simple fried chicken,
just deep fried with salt,
but it could literally be among
the fried chicken hall of fame.
It's so good.
I think the reason is probably because
they're using local, free range chickens.
I did see some chickens running around back there.
Those are probably the chickens that this is made from.
Just the way they've just sprinkled it with salt.
It's an absolutely beautiful thing.
- And I'm like drooling between bites.
- There's something about, it's even kind of dry,
but at the same time, it's oily moist
from the skin and that.
Oh, the skin, I just got a bite of skin.
This dish is called see-kong-moo-ba-ma-koor-lur.
The ribs of wild boar stir fried up with lots of curry paste
and the key ingredient that I wanted to try
is the yellow eggplant.
So you can actually see.
These are actually, is that cartilage?
So you can actually eat that.
You think so, those little bones?
But look, yeah, I think there's actually pieces of the pork
and then also pieces of cartilage,
which I think you can just chew all the way through.
Okay, maybe you can't chew through that cartilage, though.
That's a pretty significant piece of cartilage.
Kinda has like a fingernail texture to it.
But oh, that flavor.
I just got some chili paste to the back of the throat.
That's wonderful.
The yellow eggplant is almost like,
it almost has a leathery texture to it.
This has to be one of
the greatest Thai restaurants of all time.
The owner has come over,
and she said we have to have one more dish.
We gotta try the nk pa.
Yeah.
- Final dish, Joel?
- Dessert.
Dessert has arrived.
- Yeah, this is dessert.
And this looks to be one of the most spectacular dishes,
and we know it's gonna be good
because the owners themselves
said we couldn't leave the restaurant without trying it.
It's a version of pun kra pao,
but like bo-lon traditional version.
It is made with a type of bird,
a jungle bird which is similar to a pheasant.
I just love that ratio of minced bird to herb.
That ratio is insane.
And they're just whole green chilis in there.
There's basil, holy basil,
which he said is like a jungle holy basil.
Maybe it's like a wild holy basil.
There's probably just a head of garlic within that dish.
Let's make this bite count.
Oh, that's a bite you wanna tuck away in your cheek.
Oh, they're the type of chilis
that kind of go up your nose like wasabi.
Oh, that is insane.
Oh, you get the crispiness of those bones,
just chilis folded in there.
The basil is super strong and peppery.
Layer upon layer of flavor.
Ah.
We have come to the end of this monumental meal,
and without exaggerating whatsoever,
I can safely say that this is
one of the best Thai restaurants, Thai meals,
that I've ever had in my entire life,
which makes this one of my personal favorite
best restaurants maybe that I've ever eaten at ever.
Everything about this place is just perfect,
from the food to the owners and everyone working here,
and especially this location, sitting here under the tree.
I could not be happier here eating a meal.
And if you're looking for some seriously spicy food
that will literally keep on giving inside your mouth.
I can still taste all the flavors in my mouth right now.
This is a restaurant you're gonna want to
make a pilgrimage to.
This is the type of restaurant that you should just
fly from anywhere in the world straight into Bangkok,
and it's about an hour and a half drive from Bangkok,
drive straight here, and eat,
and then it doesn't really matter
what else you do after that.
This was an amazing meal, an incredible experience.
I wanna say a huge thank you for watching this video.
I wanna say a huge thank you
to the owners of this restaurant.
Kub-koon-ma-kob.
This is the type of restaurant you just wanna take a nap
and then order again, and repeat.
- Kub-koon-ma-kob. - Kub-koon-ma-kob.
- Thank you very much for watching this video,
and please remember to give this video
a thumb's up if you enjoyed it.
I'd love to hear from you in the comments section below.
And I will see you on the next video.
Goodbye from Chonburi
and one of the best Thai restaurants in the entire world.