Thailand’s Best Cheap Eats: A Running List From Multiple Trips

Not just pad thai and mango sticky rice

The Thailand cheap eats conversation usually starts and ends with pad thai. There’s so much more. Here are the dishes I seek out specifically for the combination of cost, quality, and the fact that tourists almost never order them.

Khao tom (rice porridge): ฿40–60

Thailand’s breakfast soup — plain rice cooked until it becomes porridge, served with ginger, egg, pork, or fish. Restaurants serving this open at 6am and close by 10. Warming, gentle, nothing like it at home. Particularly good in Chiang Mai’s old city morning markets.

Kuay teow reua (boat noodles): ฿15–25 per bowl

The smallest, most intense noodle soup in Thailand. Dark, rich pork broth, small amounts of noodles, crispy pork fat on top. Order five bowls — that’s a full meal for ฿100. The Victory Monument area in Bangkok has a cluster of boat noodle shops worth making the trip for.

Kanom bueang (Thai crepes): ฿15–20

Crispy coconut crepes folded around sweet or savory fillings — shredded coconut and golden threads (sweet), or dried shrimp and coconut (savory). Street vendor food at its most casual. Always makes me happy.

Pad kra pao (stir-fried basil): ฿60–80

Ground pork or chicken stir-fried with holy basil and chili over rice with a fried egg on top. This is what Thai office workers eat for lunch more than almost anything else. Simple, fast, deeply satisfying. The holy basil gives it a specific perfume that’s different from Italian basil — you’ll smell it cooking from across the street.

The insider move

Follow office workers at lunchtime in any Thai city. Wherever they’re going, the food will be good and correctly priced. They eat well and efficiently and they know where all the good spots are.