The very first time you had Thai food ... tell us all about it if you remember

[Jingthing]

What was your experience the very first time you ate a dish of Thai food?

What were the dish (es)?

Where was it?

What city and country?

What kind of restaurant or perhaps home cooking?

How was it?

What did you think?

Looking back at what you know about Thai food now, how do you feel about what your impressions were then?

Edited December 27, 2014 by Jingthing

[kurnell]

Glebe in a Sydney restaurant in 1987. Can't remember any dish apart from chicken wings, but I was addicted. Being all class, I took a case of VB in with me.

[Jingthing]

Thanks ...

I'd like to add another question to all to the OP:

How OLD were you when you had Thai food the first time?

No, it's not quite at level of losing your virginity, but as many of us eventually moved to Thailand and now eat Thai food A LOT, it ain't NOTHING either.

Edited December 27, 2014 by Jingthing

[smokie36]

First time was a restaurant near Richmond....I had a prawn curry in the garden.

Guess I must have been 21 at the time.....and yes it blew my tastebuds away!

[Gonsalviz]

Bangkok, Kwayteow. I loved it but there was something strange tasting about it. No, not the blood balls. It was the Pak Chee. Didn't like it at the time but now, if it is not there, I miss it.

Note: Thai food outside of Thailand and the Thai food made in the tourist trap restaurants are not the same as Thai food 36 years ago. I refuse to eat at a restaurant that caters to farang.

[Jingthing]

I started this partly because for some reason I can't specifically remember the details and I wish I could so curious if others do. I do remember it was in San Francisco and also the first Thai joint I ate in a lot. Racha Cafe when I was about 23. My fave dish was a chili squid with bamboo shoots. I know I would still love that exact same dish from there today. They are long closed I think.

Sent from my Lenovo S820_ROW using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

Edited December 28, 2014 by Jingthing

[Mooner]

Tom yum kung in Bangkok in 2000. Loved it! Apart from the curries I tend to sway towards Issan food but not the fermented dishes.

[xen]

The significant first Thai dish was Tom yum gung in Phuket 1986 . I had had Thai food before that in Oz but nothing like that Tom Yum gung.

[whiteman]

So long ago I forget

[Jingthing]

So long ago I forget

Interesting.

So not quite as memorable as losing your virginity for some (including me).

Interestingly I do vividly remember the first time I tasted a spicy version of Chinese food.

Washington D.C. Chinatown, age 12, Kung Pao Chicken!

Also my first burrito.

San Francisco, Mission District, age 23, El Faro restaurant.

[radiochaser]

Outside the gate of Ramusun Station, 7th RRFS. It was either fried rice with chicken or noodle soup with meatballs, and a coke. October or November 1972.

Which ever it was that I had eaten, I liked it, but I still wondered if I was going to get sick from eating Thai food. The new guys processing in on the base were told several times, Don't eat Thai food outside the base, you will get sick if you do!

Edited December 29, 2014 by radiochaser

[seancbk]

Thanks ...

I'd like to add another question to all to the OP:

How OLD were you when you had Thai food the first time?

No, it's not quite at level of losing your virginity, but as many of us eventually moved to Thailand and now eat Thai food A LOT, it ain't NOTHING either.

I would have been about 9 or 10 years old, so 37 years or so ago.

I expect it was a green chicken curry.

[Jingthing]

I didn't have the perspective I have now, but the OLD Racha Cafe in SF (the first regular Thai food joint) was really quite good. They had a distinctive cooking style on some dishes I've never had since and yes they usually had happy Thai-American customers there as well.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Jingthing

[rice555]

Coffeyville Kans ass, 1966 a few Thai friend at school cooked it,

no Thai ingredients were available. They had Care Packages sent

to them monthly.

A friend of mine in Mountain View CA, brother opened the first Thai

Restraint in The Bay Area. He gave it to S***** and moved back to LOS.

My friend is a poor cook at best, Had a Mex. cook doing his work and

sat around and smoked and talked a lot. 15 years ago, there were 3

Thai places within a baseball throw of each other.

rice555

[tutsiwarrior]

first time I ate thai food was in a restaurant in Glendale, CA in 1988...we went on the suggestion of a friend and I didn't pay much attention to the food; I was about to leave the US for good and it was the last time that I would have the opportunity to hang out with a dear friend and it was sad...had no idea at the time that 15 years later I'd be living in Thailand...

[chickenslegs]

Around 1980. Newcastle, UK. On a first date a girlfriend suggested Thai food so I went along with it. Knowing nothing at all about Thai food and being used to ordering starters, main and sweet, I chose as my starter the tom yum chicken from the "soups" section of the menu.

I proceeded to eat the soup just as if it was a Heinz cream of Chicken - no rice, just spoonful after spoonful of too spicy (for me) broth and chewing away at the lemon grass, kaffir leaf, and ginger root (or was it something else) until I was sweating like a drugs mule at passport control.

Too macho to admit it was too spicy or to ask for advice about how to eat it.

[wayned]

An intense burning sensation in my mouth when I ate it that wouldn't go away for a long time followed by the same senstion at the other end a few hours later!

My wife's cooking in our house everyday! But I love it!

[BudRight]

Eight years old, Bangkok, shrimp fried rice. It was street food. I loved it, especially with lime and fish sauce.

Edited December 30, 2014 by BudRight

[Jingthing]

I was already deeply into other kinds of spicy food by the time I started eating Thai food so I didn't even notice it was very spicy. Of course they toned it down by default, and later learned to demand them to jack it up.

[lannarebirth]

I started this partly because for some reason I can't specifically remember the details and I wish I could so curious if others do. I do remember it was in San Francisco and also the first Thai joint I ate in a lot. Racha Cafe when I was about 23. My fave dish was a chili squid with bamboo shoots. I know I would still love that exact same dish from there today. They are long closed I think.

Sent from my Lenovo S820_ROW using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

That's a really good first dish. One with staying power. I think mine may be San Luis Obispo in the 80's and it was a green curry and something else. Don't even like the green curry now as practically every other curry is so much more delicious. I feel sorry for the westerners who never have had real Thai food. In America it tends to be too sweet with an excess of coconut milk.