As you no doubt recall, the old Jimmy Buffett song from 1978, Cheeseburger in Paradise, begins:
Tried to amend my carnivorous habits.
Made it nearly seventy days.
And thus it was for me. Some seventy or so days into my most recent foray in living abroad, I was struck by the notion that, ya’ know, a cheeseburger and fries might just hit the spot. There were several arguments against this idea. First, seeking food in a place that’s foreign to its origins often leads to disappointment. It’s not just that the ingredients are, in many cases, different, but that the lack of experience growing up with the cuisine means that the cook is just interpreting the dish. Second, the environment in which the food is enjoyed is typically much different than that which would exist at home. I mean, having a bowl of clam chowder while watching the Number 8 bus careen through a plaza of office workers on their lunch break just lands different than enjoying a few sticks of moo ping and a bag of khao nieow while witnessing the same scene.
The result is that the food itself tastes different. Not necessarily bad, just different.
The other issue is who the target demographic is. Bangkok being a global metropolis, any kind of food you want is available at basically any time of day or night. But within the city, foreign options dry up once you leave the tourist ghetto that is the Sukhumvit Road corridor. While I’m sure they’re out there, maybe, I couldn’t point you to any place to get a legit burger once you get more than three kilometers north of where I live.
A Note: McDonald’s and Burger King are prevalent here, and there are also a few local chains. Those don’t sell legit burgers.
One of the reasons for that is that in Thailand, burgers are expensive, the equivalent of US$15.00. Consider that when I go get a Thai lunch it’s very easy for me to spend less than the equivalent of US$3.00. That’s food and drink. It’s also, unless I go to someplace that my budget considers “fancy”, kind of hard to spend more than US$6.00. And those dollars don’t buy you junk food – like McDonalds or Burger King – but tasty, freshly prepared meals. I have some go-to street food places where I’ll pick up anything from khao man gai – a delicious mix of boiled or fried chicken sliced on top of rice cooked in chicken fat, to a cooked-to-order kai jiao moo prik – a Thai omelet with minced pork and chilis, to the aforementioned moo ping – grilled pork skewers served with sticky rice, and on to gai todt – fried chicken right out of the fryer, and take one of these delicacies to the park and eat lunch in the shade. Honestly, forget tom yum goong as Thailand’s national dish. It’s really fried chicken.
I’m getting hungry just typing that.
And that is the problem. Given what the city offers in its culinary diversity of local food, why was I so jonesin’ for a cheeseburger when at best it would be an interpretation?
Another note for non-American readers. I do not know who Jones was but do know he was a junkie. He left his name as meaning a basically unsatisfiable craving.
When I speak of an interpretation, I mean no disrespect. But there are limits that constrain an attempt to take food from its original milieu to a distant shore and see if it can plant a flag. For Thai food in the US I like to use an analogy. Consider that all of Thai food makes up a pie – not an edible one, but more like a chart. The Thai food you can get in the US that is recognizably similar enough to the same dish as served in Thailand is less than the size of a single piece of that pie. If you look at the menu of the Lotus of Siam restaurant in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, widely considered to be the “best” Thai restaurant in the US, you will see none of my italicized delights except for tom yum goong on the menu. In fact, except for a few noodle dishes, none of the items on the menu makes it past the interpretation bar.
This is due to the inclusion of bell pepper in dishes where it has no place. Bell pepper, you see, exists only to provide something familiar to people not used to eating Thai food. But, as such, it also serves as a touchstone to judge, without taking a bite, whether the restaurant is worth entering. If the pictures on the menu shows chunks of bell pepper, carrot, onion, or baby corn, steer clear. This restaurant is for tourists. The pictures contain two subtle, yet intertwined, messages. First is “Look you recognize this food! These are the things you buy at home! They’re not the bitter leaves from trees and weeds that we eat. Or those nasty little eggplants. Or that stuff that tastes like it’s made from rope.” Recognizing what you’re eating is welcoming. The second message is “Look how big these chunks are! Why, you could eat them with a fork!”
Wut? You may ask.
In Thailand the default eating implement is not chopsticks, despite their ubiquity in western Thai restaurants. Chopsticks are reserved for certain kinds of noodles. Instead, the Thai tableware go-to is the humble spoon. You get a fork and spoon. The spoon is to eat with. The fork merely serves to push your food onto the spoon and to threaten your tablemates if they get too close to that last piece of todt man bpla you had your heart set on. The fork is basically not used. Unless you’re a foreigner. Eating with a fork is the culinary equivalent of the scarlet letter.
Now, take all of that and put it in context of the humble cheeseburger. In fourteen years of coming to, and now living in, Thailand I have eaten precisely one cheeseburger. And that was a buffalo cheeseburger. Not a bison, a buffalo, those long-horned, wallowing, frequently ill beasts of burden that were bred to do the jobs that weren’t big enough to require an elephant.
The burger was delicious, but very expensive.
Otherwise, I avoided the “big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat” mentioned in Jimmy’s song because of all the things that could possibly go wrong. It was an imported concept, made with atypical local ingredients, made by somebody who wouldn’t know the difference between medium rare and the medium at the temple who tells her future.
I. Was. Afraid.
When my jonesin’ was peaking, I happened to have a night free from other commitments. Wow, I said, I could go to a Thai movie and get a burger. I searched around the theater. There were several options, most of which, even to Google, were on the pricier side. I mean, really, fifteen-US for a burger and fries when I could get better Thai food for less than six is kind of a big ask.
And then I saw it. Just off the beaten path. In a neighborhood that didn’t attract the foreign crowd. Fat Dad’s Burgers. I looked them up and a cheeseburger and fries could be mine for ฿160 – just under five bucks. What could go wrong?
I parked my motorcycle, leaving the key, my helmet and riding gear, and the storage bin unlocked. I walked through a local night market, crossed the main road at the risk of life and limb, walked two blocks, and turned. Down a dark alley like the kind your mother warned you about, I saw it. Flashing in the distance, a tiny LED sign in the shape of a burger. Blink, blink, blink.
I rushed down the alley, jumped up on the building’s small porch and screeched to a halt. There was no mention of Fat Dad’s on the door. Instead, the sign said, “Fat Bud’s… Cannabis”. I looked at the LED sign, looked at the door, shrugged and walked in. I was confronted by a wall of jars filled with various strains of marijuana, behind a counter where a guy with a scale was weighing out product, next to a woman with a computer processing online orders for delivery, opposite a couch where two people were passed out in very uncomfortable looking positions.
I swear I heard someone say, “Dude.”
“Ummm… You sell burgers?” A definite uncertainty at this point.
The guy behind the counter gave me a wry smile and a knowing nod and slapped the menu down on the counter. “What can I get you?”
“Cheeseburger and fries. All the fixin’s”
“We don’t have any fixin’s.” He handed me a bottle of water. “It’s free.”
“Where do I eat?” I glanced at the sofa.
“The roof.” He pointed toward the ceiling.
Six flights up an unventilated stairway later, I emerged onto the roof. As a roof it was pretty much like all the roofs in all the cop shows where the bad guy runs to the edge and plummets to his demise. But, I had it to myself, the sun was setting, the Bangkok traffic far below. A few minutes later somebody pushed open the door and brough a small wooden tray with my order. The burger was bun, meat, “Fat Dad’s Sauce” and nothing else. The fries were thick cut, dusted and needed nothing else. As the sun set down the side of a distant high rise, I took my first bite.
Perfection.
Like the song says, I’m just a cheeseburger in paradise.
