From south to north welcome to Issan region of Thailand. This is the land of extra spicy,
extra bold and luxurious taste. We've loved Isaan food ever since we were in New York City. A lot of
Isaan food there and we're so happy to be here in this region. There's so much incredible food.
In this video, we're going to show you lots of it. The ultimate Isaan food tour here in Udon Thani.
We're gonna show you different night markets.
But, it's still daytime and the night market is just about to open.
So let's go for daytime food, shall we?
One thing to note about streets in Thailand is like when you see
like we love how their street signshas on top of it has like a landmark from each
province or city you're in. It's really cool so even in Udon Thani you have a little
temple there on top. That's the street that we're going to get our daytime feast.
We got here a lot of staples of Isaan cuisine. It also has a lot in common with Lao. Laos is a country
only an hour away from here in Udon Thani and they overlap a lot in the cuisine, especially when it
comes to the som tum, the green papaya salad and the laap. The laap is amazing because it's such a
dynamic dish. So we actually have it two different types of laap here. We have a vegetarian laap but we
have one with fried squid. We've never seen this before coming to Udon Thani. The thing with laap
is great because you can have it fried, boiled. You can have meat, seafood, vegetable, you name it.
But this fried squid laap is really something special. Fried squid is one of our favorite
things to eat anywhere in the world and so is laap. So you combine two together
it is just like a match made in heaven. Can't even talk about it anymore, let's take a bite.
The fried squid is tossed with fish sauce, toasted rice powder, a lot of different herbs,
scallions, mint. Real symphony of flavors. You have sour, salty, spicy, a little bit of sweet. There's
just so much going on in here. You have that freshness coming in from the herbs like the mint.
Laap is such like a simple dish in terms of execution, but it's not simple in flavor.
It's very complex in flavor. It's pretty healthy too that's what's nice about it.
Feel like in general about Isaan food we love it's relatively healthy if you think about it.
Som tum, or green papaya salad may be arguably the most famous dish in Isaan, the most popular.
There's so many different varieties. We've got the Lao version because we're only hour away
from Laos, why not? The Lao version comes with this really dark bold fermented fish.
You can see it's a very striking color, a lot of chili in here too.
And there's tomato, herbs. I love just watching it being made too. Watching it being made fresh. Just
mashing it up on that mortar and pestle. It's beautiful. Alright let's take a bite.
Such a fresh dish. I love that green papaya that it's nice and crunchy.
Not sweet, just has a really clean fresh flavor. You mix that in with that
fermented fish. You get that little bit of fish funk, but it's not too overwhelming.
What I like about it too it doesn't go too crazy with the fishy funk, you add in that the herbs too. It's
such a nice refreshing dish and it's got some heat too. We actually asked them to dial it down just a
little bit, but this can be really spicy. And even even on a low level, it's got some real heat to it.
The star of the show, this mushroom laap. What I really love about this mushroom laap aside from
it's not that common around Thailand and I think in most part of the world is that it is very
healthy. Like what you find in many restaurants it's pork or chicken, sometimes there's duck.
There's at least three or four different kinds of mushrooms here.
Add that mint on that bite. Ah an explosion of flavor inside your mouth.
Wow
and that lunch was delicious now we need to walk all that food or on our way to
besides the food probably the main attraction here at
it's it's funny and you'll see why why it's funny but it's a beautiful place all right let's go
if you're watching this video and you know what they're playing can
anyone tell us what they're playing it looks like it looks like a mix of golf and bocce
welcome to the land of rubber duckies we have urantani lit up in lights very
nice reflecting on the lake beautiful and the reason why i say land of rubber duckies because
look at that look at how many rubber duckies floating there's two there's plenty more over that
end right there it's a thing because even if you go across the street there's a lot of little cafes
and smoothie shop restaurants they all have little rubber duckies outside so it's famous in this park
it is cool though yeah i think we've heard that this place is landing since we are in the north
northeast yeah it's pretty much landlocked besides the mekong river at the north on the border
this is a beautiful beautiful suspension bridge
look at that
and it changes its colors too pretty
and this park is huge it is big from the looks of it coming in it looks tiny but it is huge i
feel like this one especially this this looks new it's like they just opened it probably very clean
for the main event dinner now this entire stretch is just filled with a night market now we are
going to show you or give you a glimpse of what you can get in this live market in this entire
it's probably about a half a mile of night markets here it's really incredible we love it it's very
centralized it's by all the shopping centers so this udtown's a big shopping center here
and this is the first night market is right next to the tesco lotus
you can just get lost here buying food yeah it's amazing all right let's go
so there's the first stop here at this amazing market i just
the aromas here are just mouth-watering so the first stop we have here are for isaan sausages
so here in the isan region northeast of thailand they're very famous for their sausages they have
a few varieties this stall has two of them got them both i love that you can see the sausage
links hanging up she cuts them up with a scissor puts them on these skewers and grills them up
so there's one here that's lighter i'll try that one first actually
so so good so you actually see at first glance it's bits of sticky rice here
let's take a bite of this one
it's so interesting this one it's got a fermented kind of sour taste to it
there's bits of that fermented pork but there's a lot of rice in here i'd probably
wager that this has more rice than meat but i love that sour taste it's just really nice
the sauce itself is very juicy if you're just grilling them up fresh all night long
and get here early because they sell out pretty quickly all right time to
try the second sausages much darker red almost brown color here smaller too get a little bite
this one's really really different it's a much more fragrant taste i really taste lime leaves
you can see there's some green lime leaves in here they're still rice but it's more red
this one is really unique because it's got that sour fermented taste but it also has
a really strong kick of lime leaves and there's chopped lemongrass in here
and you also have those little bits of rice but more of the meat maybe even a little bit
of blood in here from that color it's a really unique and really delicious sausage i love it
yeah ud town is a large shopping center over here in udantani
it's a mix of outdoor indoor shopping this is next to the big tusco lotus this is the ud town port
up next our all-time favorite dishes is nem cow we've even eaten it in the u.s but we're actually
eating it here in isaan where it's very famous and also very famous right across the border in
laos what it is is a beautiful crispy rice salad so the whole the whole rice ball is deep fried
and you can even tell at first glance when you pull up to the stall that it's really
crispy and this one she mixes it in with the pink nem the preserved pork
this dish is just has it all that aroma is just incredible let's get a big spoonful of this
it's got the beautiful harmonious flavors and textures just playing off each other that sour
spicy salty sweet funky and then you have the crunchy kind of bit of chewy from that
pork innard this the crunchy just comes from all different levels too the rice the red onion the
ginger you also have the spices from these red chilies this truly is one of the best
dishes i'm gonna boldly say in the world it's absolutely next level those lime leaves come in
and just give it such incredible flavor there's so much lime leaves in here
let's take it to the stratosphere of this dish
this is the u ud food centers looks like kind of a modern night market i'm not even sure if this
is a night market because it could be open at daytime it looks very modern inside so let's go
clothing section here
accessories shoes they're like different little stalls right now
we love the vibe of this place come to this place almost every night
for our two-week stay here in uruntani it has everything we need food smoothie
juices healthy stuff it has everything clothes you name it this market has it we have a staple
isan dish here it's a whole grilled tilapia fish covered in salt grilled over charcoal it's called
what's nice about it is that they cover the whole inside with
lemongrass lime leaves there's so much flavor when you crack that open and the
salt is used just so we can evenly cook it and it really leads to a really moist and juicy fish
i gotta admit tilapia was never really my favorite fish especially in the u.s i always
thought it had like a muddy dirty taste but it's different here in nissan let's try buy that fish
see if i can conquer my long-term beers over these fish that's a really fresh taste in tilapia it has
no hint of dirt muddy taste whatsoever the bench is fresher here we're also not far from the mekong
river not sure if it comes from there but this is probably the best lab i've ever eaten in my life
is so fresh and good people in front of me and didn't see what the fish look like i don't even
know it's tilapia a great way to eat the slapia is they give you a whole big bucket here of fresh
veggies and herbs and they give you this dish here full of different aromatics like lemongrass ginger
raw garlic red onion pickled vegetable we have vermicelli noodle we're in the northeast region
thailand isan we're not near the sea or the oceans we have only freshwater fish and that's
what tilapia is so the best thing to do is just take one of these lettuce or cabbage take some
meat of the fish put it on there wrap it up add some lemongrass some garlic some mint some basil
take that bite and it's just so refreshing and clean tasting really incredible it's
kind of this changed my mind about tilapia completely i'll tell you right from this spot
in this part of the episode where you buy us a coffee we do the walking and mostly the drinking
thanks to you down here below for making this even more possible now help us
support more local coffee shops like this one well it's not really a coffee shop it's a juice
bar smoothie help us support more local shops like this one by buying us a coffee and more thank you
this is the part where we're going to go healthy we have our juices and smoothie
it's been our go-to juice here our four ingredients we get is lemon ginger krachai
which is uh it's like a thai ginger it's like a mini ginger they call it lesser ginger
and we also have carrot they give this orange color
super healthy one of the healthiest things you ever see us consume on this channel
this is perfect you got that just i just feel like it's cleansing me on every sip
and lemon that ginger kachai carrot carrot even tastes that much but that lemon and
ginger is so strong it's got a little bit of burn your throat kind of sharp i love it
like we don't we don't just binge out on food here we try to keep healthy
you