Can someone tell me what are typical things thai people eat for their meals? We have some thai restaurants where I live, but everything seems so fancy, in a good way, of course. And some of them are (I think) americanized in the way they maybe prepare and present food. I am looking for a "real" thai place.

I was wondering what the typical thai breakfast is like.

Thank you

hi water falls, where are you located? maybe someone else on the forum might be familiar with the area and be able to give you a hint on where to go.

best thai restaurant to go to is a thai restaurant that has a lot of thai customers!

the food that comes to the table varies by region, but typically, a traditional thai meal is comprised of several different 'entrees' and a lot of rice. in thai, the 'entrees' are known as kub khao (literally "with rice") which kind of shows you the importance of rice. the thai meal is meant to be properly balanced with hot, sour, salty, and sweet. generally there will be a variety of preparations including curry dish, spicy salad (yum) dish, soup, stir-fried dish, etc. vegetables feature heavily on the thai table, and aside from the vegetables in each dish, there will often be a plate or crisp, fresh vegetables to eat with a dipping sauce of some kind.

thai food is served family style; all of the kub khao is placed on the center of the table and everyone is given a plate of rice. food is usually not passed around, but instead you take a spoonful or two of a kub khao and put it on your plate. the kub khao is (obviously) eaten with the rice. the kub khao is there to flavor the rice; the rice really is the main star of the dinner, humble as it may be. you never load up your plate with kub khao because that is considered greedy. you just take enough to get you a couple bites at a time. and usually you take different items each time so that your mouth is always enjoying a different flavour.

while salt and pepper are always on the western table to kind of tune the meal to each person's specific taste, the thai table features nam pla (fish sauce-- a condiment made from fermented anchovies. it tastes a lot better than it sounds) with plenty of thai chiles floating in it (and sometimes a little bit of garlic and a splash of fresh lime juice), vinegar with chiles floating in it, ground dried red chiles, and sugar. a tiny bit of sugar usually goes into noodles dishes only, and not the dishes you'd have for dinner though.

thai dinner is always a very communal thing. most important thing is to have fun and enjoy! and if you're dining with a thai person and they scoop a little bit of a kub khao for you and deliver it to your plate without you asking them to, it is kind of a sign of affection. it's very cute!

after i posted that entry, i noticed that you asked about breakfast, not dinner! oops! sorry... so here's one example of a typical breakfast.

the leftover rice from the night before is boiled into a soup (khao dtom - literally "boiled rice") and is usually served with the previous night's leftovers, a thai omelette seasoned with fish sauce and sometimes chopped cilantro or scallions are mixed in, maybe some salted dried fish, pickled vegetables, and sometimes peanuts.

makes a great meal at 2.30a too!! some of my favorites are: leeks stir-fried with oyster sauce, chinese broccoli stir-fried with salted dried fish, salted boiled duck egg, and dried shredded pork.

lately, a lot of western-style breakfast (eggs and sausage and toast) have been popping up.

for a quick breakfast, businessmen and taxi drivers usually get pa-tong-ko, which is the fried dough that tony does a handspring-vault over in the market chase in ong bak. it is usually dipped in sweetened condensed milk and eaten with coffee. another sweet breakfast is roti, an indian paratha bread, spread with sweetened condensed milk and sugar, and rolled up. to me, these two things are more like dessert than breakfast, but that never stops me from enjoying them for breakfast occasioanlly whenever i am in thailand! and besides, the real thai confectionaries are much more varied and exciting!

That sounds so delicious, even the fish sauce. :) I like trying new foods, though sometimes it DOES help to not know exactly what is on the plate until after I've eaten it. haha! I have read in a couple different places that thai food is eaten with a spoon and only use a fork to guide the food onto the spoon. Is this true for eating something like phad thai also? Or other noodle dishes?

I am sorry for all the really mundane questions, but I am wanting to learn. Thanks so much for your help and patience.

p.s. For Mother's Day, my daughter is taking me to eat thai.

i'm so happy you have such an interest in thai culture! i'm very happy to have the opportunity to talk to you about these things. as all thai people, i am very proud of my heritage and i consider it an honor that you would like to learn about thai customs!

yes, thai food is generally eaten with spoon and fork. food is delivered to the mouth via spoon (in your right hand if you're a righty), and food is guided onto the spoon via the fork (in your left hand).

some noodle dishes are eaten with spoon and fork, and some are eaten with chopsticks and a chinese spoon. the chopstick & spoon noodle dishes are generally of chinese origin, and are usually soups! there are a few exceptions; there are no solid rules. i have seen people eat pad thai with chopsticks, and i have seen people eat it with a fork & spoon, and i have seen people eat it with just a fork.

gutiew laard naa, a distinctly thai noodle dish (rice noodles smothered in a 'gravy' with chinese broccoli and a meat, usually pork) is eaten with spoon and fork.

your daughter obviously loves you very much! hope you have a great time! maybe mother's day will be too long for you to wait...?

speaking of noodles, noodle dishes are generally one-plate meals. thai dinners will include several kub khao dishes, but a noodle dish is considered a meal in itself. because of this, noodle dishes are generally served at lunch and not dinner. but this isn't a rule. if you want a noodle dish for dinner, by all means do so.

If you ask me, I will tell you that I can eat anything for breakfast such as steak, grilled chicken, rice soup, fruit, veggie, noodle, steamed rice, beef salad, TYG, fish, and lots more. But most of them are low fat stuff since I don't eat butter or cheese or fried stuff.

That is for me. I eat anything as long as they are freshly cooked.

Other people might have differnt things.

I miss Thailnd's market where I can eat very early like 5 am.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So don't skip it.