Daily Dose of English 78
(American) Thai Food
Daily Dose of English 78
Intermediate
Hey everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're talking about American Thai food. And this is a continuation of the little series I've been doing where I talk about the American versions of different foods and different cuisines from around the world. Because I like food a lot and I think it's fun to talk about. And especially because some of you might be listening from one of these countries and maybe don't know what your food is like in the US. And so, yeah, here we are, I guess. And today we're talking about Thai food. Thai food from Thailand is the name, is what we call the country. And Thai food is really quite common in the US. It's almost as common as Mexican food. Not quite as common, but it's just everywhere you can find Thai food. And there's a couple of different kinds of Thai restaurants, but the most common is probably like a fairly simple family restaurant. They have maybe eight to 10 people that work there, and it's a medium-sized restaurant with some tables, and they have a relatively large menu. But the interesting thing is that almost all Thai restaurants in the U.S. have the same menu. They're really quite similar and it just depends on how good the things are at that restaurant. I can think of four Thai restaurants that I've been to just off the top of my head, really close to where I grew up in Portland. They're everywhere. They're really common. It's also a fairly common favorite food for people to get takeout for. That was quite an interesting sentence. A lot of people like Thai food, is what I'm trying to say, and going to get Thai food, especially for takeout, is very common. In fact, Thai takeout was probably my family's most common takeout dinner, because we didn't get takeout that often. We'd probably only do it once or maybe twice a month, but one of our favorites was always Thai food, because we knew this place that was really, really good. In fact, it's still my favorite Thai food that I've ever had, and whenever I'm there in Portland, I will go out of my way. I'll drive the extra 20 minutes it takes to get there, because now I don't really live close, or my family doesn't live close to it. but it's really worth it in my opinion. Some of the common foods that you get at Thai restaurants are Pad Thai, spring rolls, salad rolls, and curry. There's also a couple of more specific ones, but I don't have the names on the top of my head. But let's just start with curries, because Thai curries are freaking delicious. They usually have a large amount of vegetables in them. Typically, I think it's carrots, potatoes. Bell peppers, bell peppers are also pretty common in the curries, and they come with rice. They always come with rice, white rice, and there's sometimes other stuff in the curry, but the main thing is the curry part, the sort of soupy base that is usually made with coconut milk or coconut cream of some kind, so it's very coconutty and creamy and thick, and then a lot of spices. There's usually a couple different colors you can order. You can usually get green curry, yellow curry, or red curry, I think are the three colors that most come to mind when I think of Thai food. And they usually have different levels of spiciness and different kinds of spices and things. And they're really, really good because they have so much flavor. And that's what I really like about Thai curries that I've had is that the amount of flavor just, it feels like it's punching you in the face, right? You feel like you're, drinking in just a mountain of flavor and you pour it all over your rice and the rice just soaks up all that delicious flavor and goodness and sauce and it just tastes really, really good. I generally like to order at least one curry to share, because I think Thai food is best when shared, because especially in the US, the portions are humongous. They give you so much food. And it's best to try a couple of different things, and you put it all on your plate, and then you eat things together. And so having at least one curry is a given. The other things that are common are sort of some starters and like some appetizers, we call them, which are like spring rolls and salad rolls, I said. Spring rolls are deep fried and they have some vegetables inside of them and they have like a shell that's pretty crispy and hard and they get fried and they usually come to your table boiling hot. They're super hot and so if you eat them right away, you'll probably get burned. Um, I don't love spring rolls or sorry. Yeah. Spring rolls or egg rolls. I think are also called sometimes. Not really sure what the difference is, honestly, because I don't really like them. I don't really order them that much. They don't have a ton of flavor, in my opinion, and they're sort of fried and a little bit greasy. If they're there and somebody has extra, I'll eat one or two, especially with the sauce, because there's always this sweet and sour sauce with chilies and garlic at a Thai restaurant. That's really good. But I significantly prefer salad rolls. Salad rolls are really, really good, actually, and they're actually a great thing to make at home. They have a big, almost like tortilla, if you remember from the Mexican food episode, but it's made of rice paper, or rice, and it's like this paper thin. And it's called rice paper wrapper or rice wrapper or something like that, salad roll wrapper. And they're pretty big. And then you get them wet and you essentially wrap other ingredients inside this paper. And it becomes like chewy and sticky. and you fill it up with various salad pieces. Maybe you have shrimp in there or chicken. There's usually rice noodles and lots of salad stuff, right? Like carrots, lettuce, tons of different vegetables can go in there too. It's really open to whatever you want to do. If you want to put mushrooms in there, you can. However you want to do your salad rolls. But they're usually pretty similar in Thai restaurants. They often have mint in them, which is really yummy. And then the magic though, is that they get served with peanut sauce. Peanut sauce is really, really good. And honestly, the peanut sauce that you can make at home, I don't think it's as good. I've never made a peanut sauce at home that I like as much as a Thai restaurant peanut sauce, because those sauces have just the right amount of sweetness and saltiness and peanut-ness, and they're kind of liquidy, so you can pour them on your salad roll as well. because it's really easy at home to get a really thick sauce or a really thin sauce, and so it's hard to put on food well. And so I love salad rolls with peanut sauce. They're really, really good. Another thing that's great with peanut sauce is chicken satay, which is also common. And it's really just chicken that's been cut thin and then put onto skewers and then grilled, but it's really good. It's got good spices on it, and then with a little bit of peanut sauce, really, really yummy. However, now we're getting to the big, famous items on Thai restaurant menus. Pad Thai, Pad Se Ew, various noodle dishes. My favorite is Pad Se Ew, which is a wide noodle, so it's a very big noodle, and then it's made with beef usually, broccoli, and a bunch of sauce. And I just really like the taste and flavor of Pad Se Ew sauce, and I like the size of the noodles. Pad Thai, however, is most people's favorite. It's really famous. The noodles are much smaller. There's more ingredients. There's usually some bean sprouts on them. You can have it with chicken or with shrimp. Again, has peanut in it. Lime is typically served with it. There's lots of really yummy things. And I do really like Pad Thai as well. And yeah. So those are the main dishes and things that you'll find in a Thai restaurant. But the last thing that I want to mention is that, now I'm not 100% sure this is true, but I'm pretty sure it is. I'm pretty sure that I've read about it from like real sources, is that the Thai government sponsors Thai restaurants in other countries. And that's a large part of the reason why there are so many Thai restaurants in other countries, and why the menus in the restaurants often look very similar, is because they provide people with the opportunity to open a restaurant, and they just follow a pattern, right? Here's what you buy, here's your menu, here's how you cook the things, here's how you train your staff, go open a restaurant somewhere in the world. And this has been super successful, especially in the US. Everybody knows Thai food, everybody knows Pad Thai, it's super duper famous. And I think that because of its success in other countries, Pad Thai has now become really popular in Thailand as well, even though it started out as something not as popular. Sure, it was made, but it wasn't like the national dish or anything like that, but now it's just absolutely everywhere, I think. But I'll have to actually go to Thailand at some point to figure out if that's really true or not, because I've never been. So anyways, that's been the episode on Thai food, or on American Thai food, I should say. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and maybe learned a couple of words. And if you've never tried Thai food, you should definitely see if there's a restaurant near you. Anyways, I'll see you tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye.
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