Thai Papaya Salad is Not What You Think (...it's better)

There's a rhythm to the country of Thailand, and it sounds like Somtam, pounded in a mortar and pestle. The national favorite, sour and spicy, intrinsic in Thai cuisine and beloved around the world, Somtam is a Southeast Asian icon. Fresh fruits and vegetables, citrus and chili, all lined up in the windows of a thousand carts and restaurants, and it's hard to imagine life here without it. But barely 50 years ago, this didn't even exist. At least, not like this. And as for how it happened, where it came from, and how it took over… well, that's one of food's most fascinating stories. So today, we're on the trail of Somtam, trying the best versions, talking to the legendary masters, and tracing the path of a humble salad that is most definitely humble no more. Alright, if you'll just trust me for a second, I want to start with a quick thought experiment. What if somehow, and just go with me on this, history had unfolded just a tiny bit differently, and instead of the entire world being introduced to the vast spectrum of Italian pasta, well all we ever got was spaghetti and meatballs, and we never even knew what we were missing. Now, I know what you're probably thinking, that would be crazy. Obviously, pasta is more than just one dish, it would be unthinkable to view it in such a limited scope. But then, what about something like… satay? Just this on menus everywhere, chicken and peanut sauce. But honestly, an entire category that somehow got overlooked, in favor of just one version. Exactly like Somtam. I bring this up because I want you to forget everything you think you know about this dish as we go into the story. Because somtam isn't a dish at all, it's a category, and one of the most fascinating within Southeast Asian cuisine. Across the somtam spectrum, there are versions based around unripe papaya, or any other fresh fruit, or maybe without fruit at all. There's somtam made from corn and cucumber, chicken feet, and straight up chili peppers, and that's just the foundation. Inside, there's no limit to the options, with favorites as diverse as sour hog plum, salted rice paddy crab, and even in recent years, high-grade chunks of raw salmon. Nothing about somtam is probably what you'd expect. The iconic version, here known as somtam thai, dates back all the way to the ancient days of, I dunno, probably the 1970s. That incredible combination of papaya with tomato and long beans, garlic, peanut, dried shrimp and fresh chilis, dressed with lime, palm sugar, and fish sauce. And even though that's now a global favorite, it might not even be the most popular somtam in Thailand. That honor most likely goes to the beloved somtam phu pla ra, also papaya but made with fermented fish and a whole bunch of other fun and challenging ingredients. Almost every somtam stall you see, and there are said to be more than 10,000 in Bangkok alone, well, they pretty much always sell both, catering to any customer's palate. But they also serve a lot more than just those two, because every town or even family has its own preference for somtam. And just like exploring for pastas in Italy or satays in Indonesia, well if you only stick with one kind of somtam in Thailand, you're missing out. Most of the visitors to this unnamed street stall on Bangkachao Island just come for bog-standard Isan food. Grilled meat, sticky rice, and a classic version of somtam. But if you ask, well, you'll be rewarded with the chef's specialty, somtam with young coconut. Not the meat, but the wood from the tree itself, still soft and not fully grown. It's obscure even within Thailand, but on this island, it's just a way to use local ingredients, served alongside the crowd of pleasing favorites. Garlic Chili Bean Sprouts Peanuts Dried Shrimp Lime Sugar Fish Sauce That's it. Garlic Chili Bean Sprouts Tomato Dried Shrimp You know, if you watch the channel, you know that Daria and I spend a lot of time here on Bangkachao. You know, it's kind of our home away from home. It used to be before we got busy with the channel and we were here every weekend. But this was such a unique thing and they serve it with salted egg, which to me, salted egg is just like an absolute must in somtam. That's my secret ingredient that just makes everything better. But this was such an interesting place that when we filmed our Bangkachao video, I wanted to come here. They were closed that day. And then we thought, okay, well, we'll come back and we'll do it again. And then they were just gone. You know, these makeshift kind of buildings. One day we just passed and it was gone. We looked for this dish at this quality everywhere else in Bangkok. We never found it again. Not like this. And then just one day we're driving around and we just see, oh, it's not gone. She just built her tent like 100 meters further down the road. And yeah, I'll put the pin in the comments, but this is a great place to stop if you're already in Bangkachao. Yeah, that's great. You got me to eat. A lot ahead of us. All right. Now you might be thinking, Hey, I have a lot of questions about this coconut somtam, which would make sense because it is incredible. But here's the thing. Remember, we already pointed out that according to the Thai government, there are 10,000 restaurants and street carts serving somtam in Bangkok. So maybe a better question to be asking would be if every single one has its own somtam specialty. Well, how much more epic stuff must be out there? And of course, that answer is much more than we could possibly show in a single video. But we should try. As we make our way to our next destination, if you don't mind, bear with me for one more quick digression into how little we know about anything. Now, in the beginning, we talked about how some dishes become famous and others stay obscure, even within the same category. But what's much more interesting is why that happens and how much luck plays a role in the process. I'll give you an example to show you what I mean. In 1853, the Emperor of France, Napoleon III, became engaged to Eugenia de Montijo, a minor noble from Granada whom he fell in love with at a party. After the wedding, she moved to Paris and as the new queen, she brought her own cooks from her hometown. In the palace kitchen, they prepared a Granadian cold tomato soup made with leftover bread, something called gazpacho. This would catch on with nobility and spread across Europe, but to this day, there are a thousand kinds of gazpacho, each unique to different parts of that region. Some are objectively wildly more interesting than this one, but because of one chance encounter, well, the whole world only knows this. Now, that's just one example. You could literally pick almost anything that's gone global. And find some fluke or coincidence that's brought it to the mainstream. And obviously, that gets us back to Somtom. The story goes that it all began as something known as tam som, made by the Lao people of the central Mekong and as far as we know, at first, a technique of turning fruits into something savory, pounding them in a mortar and pestle with padek or fermented fish sauce. Now, by the time we see the first outside records of Laotian cuisine, tam som was essential, consumed in various forms from the Luang Prabang highlands all the way to the Mekong delta, but there was no standardized recipe. The only requirement was for something to be sour and pounded, meant to cut through the richness of the Lao staples of sticky rice and grilled meat. Slowly, as new world ingredients arrived, tam soms would adapt, first incorporating chili peppers brought by the Portuguese by way of Siam, and later papaya, which probably worked its way up the Mekong from Cambodia, just a guess but based on the fact that the Lao word for papaya, ma kung, is a loan from Khmer. Anyway, I'm gonna fast forward because we've covered this before, but in 1828, the Lao kingdom of Vientiane lost a war against the Siamese, and the territory was demolished, every survivor forced to cross the border into what's now Isan, northeast Thailand. To the Thais, Isan was relatively unimportant, a vast swath of land mainly useful as a buffer against European colonists, so Lao culture and cuisine survived intact. But over the next 150 years, every town and settlement evolved in its own ways, divided by the empty space of the Korat plateau, and everyone everywhere had their own take on a sour and pounded salad. At some point by the early 20th century, Thai cooks had become aware of this dish, as it shows up for the first time in a palace recipe book in 1935, named as somtam, an inversion of tam som. But regardless of the name, it wouldn't truly penetrate Siamese culture until three decades later, when a wave of migration brought hundreds of thousands of Lao Isan migrants to the capital, flooding Bangkok in search of work. At first, the new Isan street carts catered only to the migrants themselves, but in time flavors were adapted to appeal to the local palate, and Thais began to enjoy specialties like lab, gai yang, and of course, somtam, toned down and presented more like a traditional yum, or central Thai salad. Now yum is something that dates all the way back to the Ayutthaya kingdom, noble and beloved in a flavor profile based around lime, palm sugar, fish sauce, garlic, and chili. This would be the template for a variation of somtam, meant to appeal to upper class Thais. It would be sold at old town street carts by Isan migrants, but by accident, well, it would also appeal to foreigners, drawn by the bright colors and vibrant flavors and the pounding of the mortar and pestle. In the 1990s, when the Thai government started working on a new program to invest in promoting the cuisine abroad, somtam made the cut. Not the quote real stuff, but the style that was now a sensation sold around Bangkok's tourist landmarks. By now there are countless shops around the world selling that dish. But the real rewards are to visit places run by migrants from Isan, making their own family recipes. And maybe the most revered is this shop known as Somtam Jay So. There's nothing remarkable about Somtam Jay So. On the surface, it's like any other Lao Isan restaurant. Grilled chicken, sticky rice, and somtam. But out of the 10,000 similar spots in Bangkok, this one might be the most beloved and legendary. It started back in 1998 when Jay So, at the time a migrant worker from Yasothon province in the far reaches of Isan, was laid off from her job at an office. So she took her last savings and opened a street cart, which within a year would turn into this location. Over the next quarter century, her somtams would earn the heart of Bangkok, become a noted favorite of Mark Wiens, and even get showcased in stories by Vice and other media outlets. Jay So would cook and win on Thai Iron Chef. And to so many here in town, she's the standard for making a proper somtam. Is this us? This might be us. Is this? Yeah, for you. In this country, there are some signs that you're about to have an amazing meal. When you see a cook who is wearing sunglasses that look like that. Very extravagant. Very extravagant. And there's a line of customers, that's an indication that this is going to be delicious. Also the fact that this is this is a legendary spot. Lab duck, chicken thigh and chicken breast, three kinds of somtam. We started the day with the classic somtam Thai, somtam Lao, and then the coconut one as a base. Here we have one that uses this really popular, especially in Bangkok, a corn base for somtam lotus stem with the salted field crab. And then this one which has like this is their house recommendation. This is what they told us was like the specialty of the house. You see it in everybody's photographs. I don't even get I can't begin to tell you what's in this. French. It is with with snails with escargot. We definitely have papaya. We also have lotus stem. We have what looks like a form of Vietnamese sausage, which you'll see in a lot of Isan somtam. I am just gonna we'll just start eating. I don't know what everything is. This is most likely a variation of some kind of eggplant. Yeah, well, I'll in narration in the voiceover, I'll talk you through this because I'll actually like go through and figure out what every component is. But for now, first step is we need to eat somtam jay so most famous somtam in Bangkok. What is what? The olive. Ah, what is this? Grape. It's not a grape. It is a grape. Oh, maybe it's a grape. Or olive. Or neither. It is. You want to try it? You want me to try it? You try it first. It's a pickled grape. That's amazing. We're gonna go progressively more and more challenging. Let's try the lotus stems next. You can tell by that dark color that that's going to be made with or the padak, the Lao fermented fish sauce. So far everything's in balance perfectly. These look imposing. Remember when we did the Isan food video and me and Gary were you weren't with me and Gary when we shot were you? On the other side of the river at his favorite Isan spot. Okay. When the lady just gave us a somtam without anything other than chili peppers. It was just a plate of chilies. None of these, they look spicy but they're actually, everything's in balance. You guys want to sit down and just join us to eat. Let's get out of the way. There's gonna be a lot of we've done this. Somehow we have not appeared on camera together in more than two years. Since the last time that we filmed together you have opened a hundred and more restaurants. Yeah and like bring back some money and kill the debt that's from COVID or build more debt. If you've watched this video so far and wonder if the rest of the world's ever going to catch on to the fun diversity of somtam, well the answer is ask Charlie Cotter, the Michelin-starred evangelist of the food from Thailand's northeast and one of a handful of pioneers presenting Isan cuisine in all its spicy and funky glory to an upmarket audience. It even goes to an extreme at the legendary 100 Maha set where when a customer comes in they don't even have the option of staying in their comfort zone. Both the somtam Thai and the one with salted crab and fermented fish, well they're both thrown on the table for free like a parallel universe kind of chips and salsa. When you sit down at the table and you order you don't have to order the somtam because you're presenting every customer when they arrive with two versions. Yeah. Why do you do that? Why do you show both of them and that's something that you think people have to have? It's a garnish on the table. Yeah I think we just put it out there because we don't want people to order it and then we just feel like this is how we like to eat our somtam. Somtam is very very subjective so when it's really subjective and people have to actually order it and when they want to adjust the spice levels and the sour levels and sweet levels it's really hard for us to be able to compensate and adjust all the flavors to make it match so we just do it the way we want to and just give it out for free and then that's what we're gonna do and that's how we serve it and then also it's a good introduction into the papaya salads and the between the Lao version and also the central version as well but the bottom line is just didn't want to have to like live with people A few months back Chef Charlie opened this place as a collab with another Bangkok legend Gagan Anand, the mad scientist behind what's currently Asia's number one ranked restaurant here at a place called Isan. The idea came from a conversation about somtam and other northeastern delicacies that are so flexible they can take on almost any form elevated even experimental as long as the basic rules are understood and followed. How would you explain somtam from an Isan Thai context? I think just from the from the word itself if you go back and split the two words som and tam. So som actually means sour tam means a pound so taking those two words you already know the action that's necessary and the flavor that's going to be poured in this particular category of dishes which did not which was not always the pie itself right but as time passed by somtam is now equivalent or just understood as the somtam is the papaya salad so I think everybody has their own their own techniques it's a very subjective dish for sure you can never please someone a group of eaters with one somtam everybody's going to have their own preferences and so they'll also people that make the somtam also have their own preferences as to what they're adding to what they'll omit from it and what is right what is wrong it's a good table discussion also a good argument at times but you know it's the beauty of it. Let's talk about the four that we have on the table right now so what do we have? So we on the rightmost side we have the tam lao so tam lao is the one with the plara obviously and we start this off with some chili also add a little bit of dried chili in there as well from the dry heat and also for the fresh chili heat then we'll have some tomatoes in there a little bit of the eggplants and then pound it with the the papaya and then on top we'll finish it off with the kathin which kathin in thai in english is kathin acacia. So acacia on top this is never going to be a sweet port actually but these days it's a lot of places are very sweet for it you feel like it needs to be salty and sour for it so this is how we do it there's no garlic in this one and then moving on to the central version or the tam thai version that was found in the recipes from i think from the yellow power books the recipe books as well so this will have the peanuts we start off with garlic and the chili and then the papayas obviously we'll finish off with also the peanuts on top lime there so this one usually will be a lot more subtle than the tam lao and then there will be sweet for it right and you'll find it a lot you'll find it probably in the central region because of the dry streams because of the peanuts as you go with it this one is our version our take on the tam polomai or the fruit so here we'll have pomelos we have a bunch of citrus in there as well even some strawberries in there and then with some salted coriander to finish off and also we'll also add some dried chili roasted rice and also dry shrimp floss on to it as well and for this one is going to be the our noodle version so you'll find noodle versions in a lot of isan they'll use um noodles they use in um in their um which is their version of the pho i think if i'm not mistaken which is usually going to be a right a thinner rice noodle yeah and this is yeah and then the soup will be really gloopy because of all the starches coming out of the the noodles so this we're using udon noodles instead mix into the tam lao with the dried chilies with the salted crab salted field crabs and yeah so uh packs a lot of heat packs a lot of punch and then you get the extra texture uh from the um udon noodles let's give this a try i mean this is a classy restaurant i need a spoon give me the first place today i'm not eating with my hands to eat this with sticky rice yeah no i mean that's okay i i'm educated on on that much i can i can make my my sticky rice all right we're gonna do that just so i don't feel like a complete piece of s**t was that acceptable everybody's looking at me so i was saying in the last place that we were just taping you know with with charlie i was just saying that like shooting a salad video when we're talking about som tam is nice because i don't get too exceedingly full uh forget about that i'm stuffed so this is gonna be the last one then we're gonna take a couple hour break normally in in bangkok with the traffic we're driving around the city and we'll at least have like an hour to process after each place we film uh but uh this is right downstairs from from isan the charlie's restaurant we literally just took the elevator down one one level walked outside and here we are so we just finished one huge meal and what do they call this a bang bang straight into the next one um this one is with unripe mango um instead of papaya uh this is the luang prabang style so it's uh the papaya is cut into thin ribbons uh there's raw shrimp in there um which is is or is not pickled i don't know we'll find out when we try it and um and then there's this which is always kind of a really eye-catching way that it's served in any sun where you'll have the sometime at the center and all these you know accompaniments long beans salted egg uh pickled mustard greens there's often things like snails uh which because well i'll tell you why in a second here it's replaced with uh the grilled pork neck uh a little bit more foreign friendly and that's the reason why we're here because you know what i respect about this place we've only been here once before right when we moved to bangkok but what what i respect about what they do here is it's not dumbed down it's proper you know big range of sometime but meant for for foreigners we're in a very foreign heavy area it's it's um you know this is a place that's very much kind of in the in the expat center of of this part of bangkok um but you know this is the gateway drug to the real i guess sometimes that we've been covering today i'm going to try the mango one first i'm quite full dennis and carol this is where you guys earn your earn your keep i'm counting on you guys to eat the vast majority of the food here it's been a long it's been a long day so far we have one more location might take an hour lie down before we before we get there because they don't open until until the evening sticky rice is always let's give it a try that's actually really good just a few steps away from where chef chali and chef gagan are trying to win over well-to-do customers to old school some time well here the target demographic is foreign tourists but the menu still packs a punch this might not look like where you'd expect to find backpackers after a night of partying on soy 11 but that's exactly the idea i mean literally since the owners of this restaurant also own half the bars on soy 11 the famous hillary group who invested in scaling up their favorite isan street cart it's a gamble but in some ways a calculated one thanks to the work of entrepreneurs like charlie at mahaset and another pioneer kun a who won a michelin star for not his bangkok location but one in new york and who by now has expanded to japan and taiwan along with another something concept in ho chi minh city slowly the idea of what sometime is might be starting to change not enough to alter the worldwide perception of the category yet but it is a start you know there's a little more sugar in that than you traditionally expect because it's foreign or friendly location but still has the heat all right one more to try the specialties here along with a broad range of popular styles are the dishes of madame hometown in sisaket province in the south of isan along the border of cambodia what kun a shows off at his chain of shops are his own recipes from growing up in khon kan at the center of the plateau jay so's versions as we mentioned come from her own home village closer to lao in yasathan province and on and on it goes every migrant to bangkok or abroad bringing along something special from the place they grew up their own corners of the korat plateau now as some time has become established as a worldwide favorite there's a lot of argument over who should get the credit it's a dish or category popularized on thai menus but until the 20th century it was entirely the domain of the ethnic lao on both sides of the mekong the debate about something like most annoying nonsense was limited to dark corners of the internet when the only versions anyone knew was this because this is thai yes the famous som tam was influenced by lao traditions but i mean this was inspired by german sausage patties but good luck arguing that the burger isn't american but since som tam has grown into a worldwide favorite the fight for credit has gotten ridiculous sometimes started as a lao dish no matter what revisionist history you'll find online and the most famous version is definitively thai but lost in the stupidity over which national flag gets to fly over a plate of papaya salad is the unique story of the people of isan because for 150 years they were on their own refugees thrown into a vast and unforgiving landscape and made to start from scratch finding ways to survive and thrive and adapting their recipes to their new environment innovating creating not just irrigation and population centers but also incredible tastes and flavors and growing lao tam som into a category that would take a lifetime to truly explore as som tam spreads around the world attached to menus labeled as thai or lao a huge part of the credit belongs to isan the people of the korat plateau who should not be written out of this story because without them well our culinary world would be a little less colorful when we made our first video on isan foodway back in 2023 we finished that story by pointing out that in a city with 10 000 similar options it's not always about finding quote the best it's about finding your own favorite your comfort spot to unwind after a long day with some fantastic food good company and cold beer in the two and a half years since then well that idea hasn't changed and neither has our choice for where we go when we're off camera maybe the only thing that has changed is that a lot more people seem to agree with us as what was once our go-to street cart just a couple folding tables in front of klong toy market well it's expanded and now well it's a full fledged restaurant here's good foreign My name is Khao Wae. I'm the owner of Somtum Yod Maprao. My name is Hueng Sam Kao. Can you do it like this? Foreigners can come and eat at the Somtum Yod Maprao. The food is delicious and Thai people like it. I love Thai people. If you come to Thailand, you have to take a three-way ticket. You have to write your name on the ticket. You have to decide if the food is spicy or not. This is a picture of grilled pork. This is Somtum. The price is the same as Thai people. There is no charge. Thai people eat 10 baht. Foreigners also eat 10 baht. You can call 085-994-225. We only have Lime Man and Robin Hood. Thank you. They have this chicken in a clay pot. It looks like they crisp up in the air fryer. That's why it's so addictive. They are sponsored by Leo now. Are they really? They have a sign. They have Leo girls. They are drinking. Last time we were being fed Leo beer against our will. All we did was order Leo beer. You can start. Chicken? Don't take it from me. We have three kinds of Somtum. We have the beef spicy salad. We have the duck laab. And the Somtum Thai. The classic Somtum Korat. They have a million other kinds. I got one with cucumber because we haven't done that yet. It still fits the category. Charlie explained it to us. We had a couple more places planned. As you can see, we had a rain interruption. It was the last gasp of the Bangkok rainy season. We got hammered. Somtum overseas might be just a dish to order at a Thai restaurant. But here in Bangkok, or in Laos, it is something you have in this environment. Sitting outside with a cold beer, sticky rice, and grilled meat. That is what this is all about. If you want to find it in its original form, what a real Somtum is supposed to be, you come to a place like this. Fun shoot today. It's nice to just eat. We keep doing these. Back when we came here last time, all of our videos were just like, let's go learn about a dish and go eat a whole bunch of really good food. Since then, we keep getting more and more intense with our... Better than history of sugar where you just had to eat it. Drink rum over and over and just went to the market and ate sugar. Today's been fun. We got to film at a bunch of places we've never filmed before. I'm just going to eat. This is good. Somtum. Subscribe for more now, yeah? Subscribe for more from OTR. Thank you so much to everyone who supports us on Patreon. It really helps to keep us going. Find links below to our Patreon and social media and we'll see you soon. When you see this magnificent cut of steak, and you think to yourself, oh man, these guys, OTR, you know, we must be rolling in money ordering a steak like this. As soon as you think to yourself, what is that, $80, $100? Are we at Peter Luger's or are we at an Isan place in Bangkok? The answer is no. This is $3. And yeah. Nice. Nobody is going to think it's a $70 steak though. If you look closely at the garlic. Look at the garnishes though. Delicious though.