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Thais are passionate about food, and love discovering out-of-the-way shops that prepare unexpectedly tasty dishes. Nowhere is this truer—or more feasible—than in Bangkok. The city's residents always seem to be eating, so the tastes and smells of Thailand's cuisine surround you day and night. That said, Bangkok's restaurant scene is also a minefield, largely because the relationship between price and quality at times seems almost inverse. For every hole-in-the-wall gem serving the best sticky rice, larb (meat salad), and som tam (the hot-and-sour green-papaya salad that is the ultimate Thai staple) you've ever had, there's an overpriced hotel restaurant serving touristy, toned-down fare. In general, the best Thai food is found at the most bare-bones, even run-down restaurants, not at famous, upscale places.
If you want a break from Thai food, many other world cuisines are represented. Best among them is Chinese, although there's decent Japanese and Korean food as well. The city's ubiquitous noodle shops have their roots in China, as do roast-meat purveyors, whose historical inspiration was Cantonese. Western fare tends to suffer from the distance, although in the past few years many upscale and trendy western eateries have opened, some of them quite excellent.
As with anything in Bangkok, travel time is a major consideration when choosing a restaurant. If you're short on time or patience, choose a place that's an easy walk from a Skytrain or subway station. The easiest way to reach a riverside eatery is often on a Chao Phraya River express boat.
This branch of the Michelin-starred Sri Lankan restaurant, Ministry of Crab specializes in fresh, meaty crab flown in daily from that country. Crabs are prepared with your choice of sauce–garlic chili, baked, black pepper, or curry–and range in size from 500g "small" crabs to five-pound "crabzillas." Also on the menu are a variety of other crab dishes, including a creamy crab liver pate, fresh king prawns, clams, and oysters.
The seafood at this 1,500-seat, garishly fluorescent-lit establishment is way overpriced (plus you pay a charge for the cooking), and the atmosphere is extremely touristy, but the place is always packed and it makes for a fun night out. As in a supermarket, you take a small cart and choose from an array of seafood—crabs, prawns, lobsters, clams, oysters, and fish—which chefs then cook how you prefer.
You'll feel on top of the world at this classy 61st-floor space, one of the loftiest open-air restaurants in town. The international menu focuses on grilled seafood prepared with flair, and the service is friendly, but as with most of Bangkok's rooftop restaurants, you're paying for the sky-high setting, not the food—you might just prefer to come for a sunset drink to enjoy the stupendous views.
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