Food and drink in Thailand

Thai food is regional — start there

The single most useful thing to understand about eating in Thailand is that there isn't one Thai cuisine — there are several, and they taste different from one another. What most of the world calls 'Thai food' is largely the central style of Bangkok and the plains: bright, balanced, leaning sweet and sour, the home of green curry, tom yum and the noodle dishes. Travel north or south or into the northeast and the seasoning, the staples and even the rice change under you.

The North, around Chiang Mai, cooks the Lanna kitchen: milder and earthier, less sugar, more herbs and bitter notes, and its own famous dishes — khao soi (egg noodles in a coconut curry broth, crowned with crisp noodles), sai ua (a lemongrass-and-herb grilled sausage) and nam prik dips eaten with sticky rice and vegetables. Sticky rice, not steamed jasmine, is the staple you'll eat it with.

The northeast — Isan — is the food a lot of Thais crave most: punchy, sour, salty and chilli-hot. Its holy trinity is som tam (pounded green-papaya salad), larb (a zingy minced-meat salad) and gai yang (grilled chicken), all eaten by hand with sticky rice. Isan food has quietly colonised the whole country, so you'll find it on streets nationwide. The South, down toward the islands and the Malaysian border, is the spiciest region of all: turmeric-yellow curries, gaeng som (a fierce sour curry), khao yam rice salads and superb fresh seafood. Knowing which region you're in tells you what to order — and a food trip that moves through two or three of them tastes far richer than one that eats the same central dishes everywhere.

Thailand food itinerary

Turn the regions into a route — Bangkok, the North, Isan and the South, in an eating-led order.

Best food cities in Thailand

Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, the southern food towns and the Isan scene compared as eating destinations.

What to order — beyond pad Thai

Pad Thai is a fine first dish and a genuinely good one when it's cooked fresh at a wok stall rather than reheated for tourists — but it's the doorway, not the house. The dishes worth crossing the country for are the everyday ones. Start with the noodle-soup world: a bowl of guay teow built to order from a cart, or the tiny, intense bowls of boat noodles you order three or four at a time. Then the curries — a coconut-rich green curry, the gentler peanut-laced massaman, the herbal jungle curry with no coconut at all — each spooned over rice rather than eaten alone.

From there, range outward. Tom yum goong, the hot-and-sour prawn soup, is the dish that teaches you how Thai cooking balances sour, salty, sweet and hot in one spoonful. Som tam and grilled chicken make the perfect cheap lunch. Khao soi is reason enough to go north. Grilled river fish stuffed with lemongrass, a plate of pad kra pao (holy-basil stir-fry over rice with a fried egg, the default Thai fast meal), morning rice soup (jok or khao tom), and the snacks — satay, spring rolls, grilled pork skewers, sticky-rice parcels — fill the gaps between. And leave room for dessert: mango sticky rice when mangoes are in season, coconut ice cream, the custardy kanom from market stalls, and the bright shaved-ice bowls.

A practical ordering tip: the best stalls do one thing. A cart with a single dish chalked above it, a queue of locals and a cook who has made nothing else for years will almost always beat a tourist restaurant offering forty dishes from one kitchen. Point, watch what regulars order, and don't be shy about eating the same brilliant thing twice.

Food and drink in Bangkok

Chinatown, the noodle stalls, food courts, markets and the city that has the deepest menu in Thailand.

Food and drink in Chiang Mai

Where to eat khao soi and sai ua, plus the northern markets, cafés and coffee culture.

Street food and night markets — where Thailand eats

Street food isn't a budget compromise in Thailand; for a great many locals it is dinner, and some of the country's best cooking happens on a single burner under a tarpaulin. The pleasure of it is the grazing — a skewer here, a bag of som tam there, a bowl of noodles standing up, a bag of cut fruit for the walk home. You eat several small, fresh, cheap things instead of one big plate, and you taste far more of the country for it.

Night markets are the organised version of the same idea, and they double as the evening's entertainment. Each region has its signatures: Bangkok's sprawling weekend and riverside markets, the Sunday Walking Street and Saturday market in Chiang Mai, Phuket's Old Town and weekend markets, and the island and beach-town markets that come alive after dark. Go hungry, walk a full lap before you commit, carry small cash, and follow the queues. Markets are also the easiest place to eat as a vegetarian or a cautious first-timer, because you can see everything cooked in front of you.

Street food in Thailand

How to read a stall, what to order, eating safely, and when a guided food tour earns its fee.

Best night markets in Thailand

Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Hua Hin and the island markets compared by food, shopping and family fit.

Drinks, coffee and the sweet stuff

What you drink matters as much in the heat as what you eat. Fresh-pressed fruit shakes and coconut water are everywhere and cheap; iced tea and the lurid-orange Thai iced tea (cha yen) are the classic street pairings for spicy food. Coffee has quietly become a serious scene — Thailand grows arabica in the northern hills, and Chiang Mai in particular has a deep specialty-café culture, while traditional roadside coffee (oliang, sweet and strong) is its own thing entirely.

On the alcohol side, the local lagers are light and built for the climate, and beach-bar buckets are a backpacker institution rather than a culinary one. Two practical notes worth knowing rather than guessing at: alcohol sales in shops are restricted to certain hours of the day under Thai law, and sales are commonly suspended around some Buddhist holidays and certain election days — if a shop won't sell you a beer at an odd hour, that's why. Treat any specific rule as something to confirm locally, as enforcement and exact hours can vary.

Chiang Mai food and coffee

The North's café and specialty-coffee culture, plus where to eat between cups.

Vegetarian, vegan and dietary notes

Thailand can be wonderful for vegetarians and workable for vegans, but it pays to be specific. Many dishes that look meat-free still carry fish sauce, shrimp paste, oyster sauce or a sprinkle of dried shrimp, so 'no meat' isn't the same as 'no animal products.' The most reliable phrase is 'jay' (เจ), the Buddhist vegan standard — food cooked jay excludes meat, seafood and usually pungent vegetables too — and jay stalls and the bright-yellow jay flag are easy to spot, especially during the annual Vegetarian (Jay) Festival. For everyday eating, learn to ask for no fish sauce and no oyster sauce, lean on the many tofu, vegetable and egg stir-fries, and use the markets where you can watch the wok.

The same specificity helps with allergies — peanuts and shellfish turn up widely, and language is the real barrier, so a written card in Thai is worth more than a careful sentence in English. None of this should put you off: with a couple of phrases and a habit of asking, dietary travellers eat very well here.

Vegetarian and vegan travel in Thailand

The jay standard, vegan survival, the Jay Festival, food courts, the islands and the phrases to carry.

Eating well and staying well — the hygiene basics

The fear of getting sick keeps too many travellers out of exactly the food worth coming for, and it's largely misplaced if you use a little judgement. The single best signal is turnover: a busy stall sells fresh ingredients fast and cooks to order, which is safer than a quiet buffet sitting under a lamp. Eat what's hot and freshly cooked, favour stalls with a steady stream of local customers, and be a little more careful with food left sitting out, raw or under-cooked dishes, and pre-cut fruit that's been exposed for hours.

For drinks, stick to bottled or properly filtered water — tap water isn't considered safe to drink across much of the country — and the commercial ice made in machines and sold as tubular cubes from sealed bags is generally fine, where loose, hand-cut ice is the thing to be wary of. Carry hand gel for the moments before a hands-on meal, give your stomach a day or two to adjust before going hardest on the chilli, and pack the basic stomach remedies you'd want at home. This is general travel caution, not medical advice — anyone with specific health conditions should check current guidance and speak to a clinician before the trip.

Thailand health and safety

Food and water safety, mosquitoes, pharmacies, clinics and the everyday health basics for a Thailand trip.

Eating street food safely

How to pick the right stall and order with confidence rather than caution.

Where the food scenes are best

Every part of Thailand eats well, but a few places reward a food-led trip especially. Bangkok is the obvious capital of it — the deepest menu in the country, from Michelin-listed street stalls and the Chinatown food crawl to night markets, food courts in every mall and a fine-dining scene that has come of age. Chiang Mai is the North's food hub and arguably the best-value great eating in Thailand: khao soi, the markets, and that café-and-coffee culture in one walkable old city.

In the South, Phuket's Old Town punches well above its weight with Hokkien-influenced local dishes and a strong market scene, while the smaller southern towns and Hat Yai near the border are quiet legends among Thai food travellers. Isan, the northeast, is where the country's most-loved everyday food comes from — under-touristed and rewarding if you want the real thing at the source. You don't have to chase all of them; pairing one big food city with the region you're already visiting is usually enough to eat brilliantly.

Best food cities in Thailand

Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, the southern towns and Isan ranked as eating destinations.

Food and drink in Phuket

Old Town local dishes, southern seafood, the night markets and the island's food tours.

Take a cooking class — the best souvenir

If one experience consistently turns travellers into lifelong Thai cooks, it's a half-day cooking class — and Thailand runs some of the best and best-value in the world. The format is reliably good: a guided market walk to learn the ingredients (the curry pastes, the herbs, the fish sauce and palm sugar that do the heavy lifting), then a few hours at your own wok turning out three or four dishes you'll actually eat afterwards. You leave able to recreate a green curry or a pad kra pao at home, which outlasts any fridge magnet.

Classes run in every food city — Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Krabi and the Gulf islands — and the choice is mostly about whether you want a small group, a private session, a farm-and-garden setting or a market-focused class. Book one mid-trip, after you've eaten enough to know which dishes you want to learn, and you'll taste everything that comes after it more sharply.

Best cooking classes in Thailand

Compare classes in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Krabi and Koh Samui by market visit, setting and style.

Build it into a food itinerary

Where a class slots into a country-spanning eating route, region by region.