- The best food courts in Bangkok, Thailand.
I'm Chris, this is Yellow Productions.
I do travel guides that are fun, informative, entertaining.
Bangkok is known for its street food,
but if you want food that's air conditioned,
not food that's air conditioned,
if you wanna eat food in an air conditioned place,
then this video is for you.
I'll be telling you some of the top food courts
to eat in air conditioned comfort,
but still be eating some tasty street food
that Bangkok is famous for.
The first market that we're gonna visit,
the first food court, is this one.
It's in the JJ Shopping Mall.
It's right next to the Chatuchack Weekend Market.
It's up on the top floor of this complex,
and there is about 30, 40 different
food vendors here, to buy food.
I've got pad Thai, we've also got
a little bit of noodle soup, and a couple coconuts.
The pad Thai, 50 Thai baht, which is
about the equivalent of $1.50 US.
Same with the noodle soup, the coconuts 45 Thai baht,
so, everything I've got in front of me is about $6.
That is amazingly cheap.
And what's interesting is they don't
take money at the food stalls.
This is typical of a lot of the food courts in Thailand,
but you go buy a cash card at a little main booth,
so you put money on it, and then
you redeem this to actually get your food.
For dessert, we've got some mango sticky rice.
This is 80 Thai baht, it's one of the classic Thai desserts
that you have to get when you're in Thailand.
Mango, rice, condensed milk over it, it's sticky and sweet,
and so, let's give this mango a try.
Mm.
It's a very sweet mango.
Mangos in the US are often sour.
Mm, and the rice.
Mm.
It's like warm and savory and sweet at the same time.
So it's a pretty good combination between
the mango and the rice.
And if you're wondering why I have a second fork,
well, it's 'cause I need to eat that quickly, you know?
Mm.
A couple of the things to know about eating
in Thai food courts, they don't provide napkins,
so if you want napkins, bring them yourselves.
Also, the utensils here, they're in
some common utensil areas,
and they have this thing of hot water
that you can dip the utensils in to clean them,
and when you're done with your plates
and you're done with your meal,
you take them to one of the return areas.
Also you'll notice the food items are pretty small,
so chances are you'll not just be eating one dish,
you'll be eating three, four, or five,
between two people, to get you full.
So what do you have after dessert?
More food, of course.
So this is Hainanese chicken, Hainan chicken, 40 Thai baht,
you get the chicken, rice, some cucumbers, and some soup.
Hainan chicken, super popular in Singapore,
if you've seen my videos on Singapore hawker centers,
and everybody said the ones in Thailand are a bit different.
So I'm curious to try it.
It comes with a couple different types of spicy sauce,
so let's give this a go.
We'll get the chicken, let's dunk it
in some of that spicy sauce, it's got the skin on it.
They chop it up fresh with these chickens
that are hangin' up there.
Mm, it's flavorful, it has
kind of a nice ginger and a garlic taste.
The chicken's not hot, it's kinda like room temperature,
but it's on the hot rice.
So let me put it in kinda this other sauce over here,
which looks like of like,
almost like a sweet and sour sauce?
Mm.
It's good, this is a spicy sauce that's a little sweet.
And, you get some healthy vegetables
to wash it all down.
Best food court number two in Bangkok
is the Pier 21 food court
in the Terminal 21 shopping center.
This is on the top floor of that shopping center.
The shopping center, it's like airport themed.
Every floor is themed on a different city, like,
the second floor is all London,
the fourth floor is San Francisco.
This floor is Pier 21 in San Francisco,
and so the food court, everything says
Pier 21 Bangkok, right there.
You can see we're having a curry fiesta right here.
Some yellow curry and some green curry,
one with rice, one with noodles.
One's 30 baht, the other one's 35 baht,
so this is the equivalent of like one US dollar,
and this is like one US dollar and 10 cents,
I mean, it's pretty cheap.
So this we'll eat with a spoon,
and it's nice to put the curry on the rice, and then,
or maybe like this, have a little bit of rice
with the curry.
Mm.
Spicy.
Actually, quite spicy.
So what's the appropriate dessert after curry?
Mango sticky rice, of course.
35 baht for the small, you see there's
less mango than the last one,
just a little more than one US dollar.
I'll say, this food court I actually like
a little bit better than the last one.
It's themed nicer, it's a little bit cleaner.
They actually provide napkins, which is pretty nice.
This one has something like 26 or 28 different eateries,
and the San Francisco theming is pretty cool.
They operate off that same buy a card, redeem it, principle.
This one, more in kind of central Bangkok,
you can take the BTS right in front of it
to get to this mall, so that's convenient too.
The next best food court
is the Food Republic at Siam Paragon.
Food Republic, it's a Singaporean-based food court.
And if you've seen my videos on the best food courts
in Singapore, you'll see this one quite a bit.
But what have we got here?
Well, we've got kind of like a corn salad,
we've got some seafood rice noodle,
ooh, and then what do we got right here?
Look at this.
This is an omelet, and what's the secret?
It's not just an omelet,
but inside the omelet it's pad Thai.
This is shrimp, or prawn, pad Thai in an omelet.
That looks pretty delicious.
And one of the things you'll find a lot of these food courts
and traditional Thai restaurants, street food,
they'll always have a set of spices on the side.
You'll always find, like, chili pepper,
some kind of other spicy thing,
and then interestingly enough,
you'll almost always find, can you see this?
'Cause it's white, it's maybe hard to see.
You'll almost always find sugar too.
So if it's not sweet enough for you,
you can get some sugar and then add it in.
But me, I'm gonna add in a little bit of the spice
to start with, not too much because
if I put in too much spice, then that equals death.
This is wokked up fresh, they wok it up
fresh when you order it.
Mm.
It's good, it's just the perfect combination of
spicy and sweet at the same time,
and the egg just adds a little bit more substance
to the noodles.
Corn.
Here.
Mm.
It's another one of those, it's corn,
it's got tomatoes and tomato juice,
but then there's a spicy kick to it, too.
I don't think I've ever had, like, spicy
corn, it's chilled, and cooked.
And then,
these noodles over here have a dipping sauce,
so we'll go ahead and dunk that in the dipping sauce.
Mm.
Not like a sweet and sour sauce,
maybe a little bit of a sweet and sour sauce.
This one has sour thing.
So, Food Republic, what I like about this food court,
it's a nice vibe to the food court, and,
to drink, we've got this mango smoothie right here.
Mm.
Which is cold, it's great on a hot day.
Some fresh pieces of mango in it.
Pretty good, so, check out Food Republic
if you're at Siam Paragon.
Best food court number four in Bangkok,
this is just down the street from Food Republic,
creatively named, and very different than the last one,
if you look over there it's called Food World.
We're up behind the sign, so read that backwards,
it said Food World, okay, come back here.
So what have we got here?
Well, you know, you can never go wrong
with mango sticky rice, and we've got some durian.
Durian dessert.
This is a famously Thai fruit,
and, (sniffs) it's odiferous.
It has quite an odor to it, I must say.
This fruit is banned on airplanes,
it's banned in a lot of places.
I'm gonna eat this in a moment,
but let me tell ya why I like this food court.
Actually I think this is my favorite
of the food courts we've been to in Bangkok.
Why, because it's really bright, it's really clean,
and we like how well laid out the shops are.
They all have pictures of the food,
and their food's really close up,
so you can really tell what you're getting.
It's not the cheapest, you're probably gonna
pay a little bit more, but it's a great wide selection
and it's up on the seventh floor of CentralWorld.
So, let's go ahead and dive in.
We all know what mango sticky rice tastes like,
so we'll get to that in a second,
but let's go to the durian.
I've been dying to have this, because durian
is really something that's hard to find.
So this is the durian fruit on top,
and it's got sticky rice down below, so,
let's see what this most stinky fruit tastes like.
Wow.
It has a really strong flavor, I must say.
I generally try to have a look of, like, it's delicious.
And,
I mean, it's not,
It's not completely awful.
Um.
It's something that almost tastes
like banana when you start,
it has a consistency like banana, but,
it has this
maybe like putrid taste that comes on after you've eaten it.
Again, not awful, but
probably not as delicious as mango.
Yeah, ooh,
I think in the future, I definitely think I'm gonna stick
with the mango sticky rice.
But, hey, try out the durian, so when people talk about it,
you know what that actually tastes like.
It's not that bad.
It's not that good, either.
I think it's an acquired taste,
one that I have yet to acquire the taste for.
But mango sticky rice,
I've acquired the taste of this
from day one, I can eat this every meal.
This, which is done,
I think I'm good.
For a while.
Best food court in Bangkok number five,
this one is called Eat Thai, and I show this card
'cause this is the card you use to eat at this place.
Most of these food courts you buy a card in advance,
put money on it, and then get your food,
here they give you this card, kind of on the honor system,
in that you just scan this card where you eat
and then you show it when you leave,
and that's how they charge you.
This is the probably most upscale of the ones
in this video so far.
You can see all of the plates look pretty fancy.
They've got place mats at the tables
with utensils already at the tables.
So what do we have here?
We have a Massaman curry, with chicken right here.
Maybe come a little closer,
and I'll show you these things here.
Then we'll start with this one,
this a fried rice with some fish and things like that,
that looks pretty fancy.
This is a papaya salad.
This probably doesn't look like the papaya you're used to
because this is young papaya,
or basically, not-ripe papayal.
Papaya, as it ripens, gets orange, and so the young papaya
is still green, and they eat it as a vegetable.
But this...
Mm.
It's got some peanuts in it, but,
ooh, boy, that juice that it's in has a bit of a kick to it.
The Massaman curry, right here,
has some potatoes in it, it's got
a big honking thing of chicken,
it's got these little star things.
But the way you eat this,
you take your curry, you put it over the rice,
it's a nice little square right here.
And, then you can get a little bit of that.
Let's see how spicy this curry is.
You know, in American Thai restaurants,
they often ask you a spicy level, one to 10,
they don't do that in Thailand.
Just everything has a tendency to be really spicy.
But it's a kind of spice that sneaks up on you.
I'll say, this one, this Massaman curry,
it's made with a tamarind sauce, and so...
Mm.
It's actually more sweet than spicy, right now.
It comes with a couple of soups.
That's pretty good soup.
And what do we have here to drink?
This is a lemongrass drink, in a bottle.
Comes with some ice.
If you're worried and you've heard that in Thailand
you shouldn't drink the tap water,
so you shouldn't drink the ice,
places like this, they have a special ice vendor
that has filtered water, and so you won't get sick from it.
Mm.
Lemongrass is a particularly traditional Thai seasoning
that's often in things like tom yum soup,
but here, it's just a...
They take the lemongrass and boil it,
and add a teeny bit of sugar.
It has a very refreshing taste to it right here.
And then what to we have in this cup?
Boy, Topher, he's comin' out of the bag down there.
This is palm sugar juice,
in a bamboo cup,
which, as far as I can tell, is sugar, from palms,
that's been added to water.
It's pretty sweet, and kinda tasty.
So, you might've had sugarcane juice before.
This is just kind of another example of that.
So, if you want high end, this place has a lot
of different restaurants, plenty of different eateries,
and also has a lot of Thai street food carts too.
So the stuff that maybe you've seen at the street,
that maybe you're like, mm, I don't know,
doesn't look clean, or maybe there's rats running around.
Come in here and get it, you'll pay a little more,
but it'll be air conditioned and a bit cleaner.
The sixth best food court in Bangkok
is the Siam Paragon Food Hall.
This is on the first floor
of the Siam Paragon shopping mall.
This food hall is epic in size.
This, of all the food halls, has the most selection
and the most shops and stalls, all on one single floor.
If you're with a picky eater and you bring them here,
and they can't find something to eat,
you should probably just leave them here,
'cause they're not worth traveling with.
What are you even traveling with such a picky person anyway?
So, what do we have here?
We have roti Bangkok.
Roti, it's kind of like a crepe,
and this is roti with banana and condensed milk.
We stopped to get it, 'cause the guy was, like,
tossing these rotis around, he was really colorful
when he was doin' it, so we had to get it.
This is 60 baht, and smells really good.
It's got condensed milk on the top, banana and egg inside.
Mm.
It's a really good banana flavor.
Smooth banana flavor, sweet, hot.
Pretty delicious, I mean,
we're eating afternoon, before dinner, after snack,
you know, since we've been in Bangkok,
we've been packing away four to five meals a day,
so when you come to Bangkok, forget about the whole notion
of, like, three square meals, just really
eat your way through the city.
You know, you see something tasty, stop,
sit down, have something to eat.
Like
a banana roti.
Well we hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did, you'll enjoy watching
some other videos from our Bangkok series.
You'll find links in the description below, or you can click
some of these videos over here to watch them.
We won't say goodbye, because we'll see you
in the next video.