Khanom Cusine

With only a few more months of living in Khanom, it's time to slowly say goodbye to this beautiful little fishing village; and that means eating at all our favorite local restaurants and food shops. As often as possible-
I'll also try to highlight some of the other wonderful things to eat around Khanom-
It has been an amazing four years... We will try to visit often but I might never live here again and I know I'll always miss Khanom. But that's another story and this is about food.
So lets eat!

May, 20, 2010
Lunch at Krua Chonapa, on the beach road 1km from Kho Khao

Chonapa is one of the very first real Thai restaurants I tried on a vacation here over four years ago, before we made the decision to move. I was feeling adventurous that night; cruising a chopper along the beach road with a month of holiday, and seriously considering the prospect of leaving the U.S.A to move here and run a restaurant. At Chonapa I decided to skip the English menu and just point at something in the middle of the Thai pages. Sometimes adventures can lead to disaster. I've never seen a dish that looked or tasted anything like this, it was horrible. Dark nuggets of some mysterious sinewy cartilage, covered in a muddy brown sauce that was beyond spicy. I tried to eat it.
I dove in with a heaping chili-infused spoonful of rubbery chunks that seemed to be on fire in my mouth, and I was then rewarded with the unpleasant snap of chewing something hard. I ordered more beer with ice and kept eating. I convinced Jen to try some, a tiny bit on the end of my spoon and that was enough, she wasn't touching the chunks.
Maybe the kitchen was having fun with the silly foreigner who thought he could blindly choose from the local menu, or maybe the menu actually said 'Insanely spicy Duck tongues and testicles with bits of Ox knuckle'

I'll never know what I ate, but I do know how to order exactly what I want in a Thai restaurant now and I've been back to Chonapa many times. They have an all new menu with some simple twists on traditional Thai dishes.
We only ordered one dish as they were out of the winged bean needed for the other salad we wanted, guess we'll be going back soon-

This is Som Tom Tawt or fried papaya salad with seafood-




Som Tom is a very common Thai salad, often sold from street vendors and mobile Som Tom carts that cruise around in every city.
It is most often made with green papaya as the base but it can also be made with: heart of palm, cucumber, apple, carrot, even enoki mushrooms. These are all available at Krua Chonapa at various times but they have also taken the Som Tom one step further.
Deep Frying-

Here they've taken the simple Som Tom and brought it to a higher level. Deep fried green papaya, mixing that crispy golden goodness with the perfectly steamed squid and shrimp is brilliant. Place one fried papaya flake on your plate and crush it with a spoon, then add the salad of seafood, roast cashews, baby tomatos, string beans, and lime.


Som Tom is perfect but this is somehow even better.