Thai food in the US is where Italian or French food were half a century ago: a varied and highly regional cuisine seen as a monolith represented by a few stereotypical dishes.

The vast majority of Thai-American restaurants are owned and operated by immigrants from Bangkok or its surroundings, and they serve mostly central Thai food. There’s nothing wrong with this: phad thai and the various coconut milk curries are central Thai dishes, and you can have those when you pry them from my chile-addled tastebuds. But some of the most interesting and spicy food in Thailand comes from the northeast (also knows as Isaan) and northern parts of the country.

Some of these dishes appear regularly on Thai-American menus. Larb gai (minced chicken salad) is an Isaan dish. So is *som tam,* green papaya salad, but it’s rarely worth ordering here. Som tam, notes Austin Bush of the awesome blog RealThai, is probably the most popular dish in all of Thailand. Even though it originated in the northeast, it’s available on every street corner in Bangkok, and when in Bangkok I’ve been known to stop on the way to lunch to get some som tam.

Som tam starts with shredded green (unripe) papaya, pounded in a clay mortar (or “pok pok,” presumably an onomatopoeia) with tomatoes, dried shrimp, garlic, lime juice, palm sugar, fresh chiles, fish sauce, and sometimes other ingredients like long beans or black crab. I am not down with the crab, but throw all the rest together and you’ve got one of the most delicious things I can possibly imagine. When you order som tam on the streets of Bangkok, you can specify how many chiles you want. I want a lot.

But som tam in America is a bad scene. This is one of those dishes that takes practice to get the balance of flavors right, and generally when I order it here it’s too sweet and not spicy enough. Sometimes it’s not even pounded in a mortar, so the ingredients never quite come together. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I went to Portland and had one of the best som tams of my life, at a little place called Pok Pok.

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When I got to Portland, my mother-in-law handed me a printout of a restaurant review from Portlandfoodanddrink.com. As I read it, I started to go a wee bit loopy, because it was describing the exact kind of restaurant I’ve long dreamed about stumbling upon in the US: a little northern/northeastern Thai restaurant:

> The papaya salad is marvelously refreshing; incredibly complex and yet perfectly balanced between sweet, spicy, salty and astringent. Little chopped peanuts and longbeans give a distinctive crunch; tamarind and palm sugar work together in perfect balance.

I was practically in the car before I finished reading. Pok Pok, it turns out, is a little shack. The owner, as you might guess, isn’t from Bangkok. You might not guess that his name is Andy Ricker and he isn’t from Thailand at all. A former sous-chef at the defunct and lamented Zefiro, Ricker is crazy for Thai food. As he told me by email:

> I went to thailand in 1988 for the backpacker experience,
loved it, returned when a friend moved there a few years later. was
introduced to the local chiang mai food by him and his wife, and have
been going back yearly for 2-3 months at a time since then. spend
much of my time in CM studying the food with their family and
friends, eating the food, learning the language (rudimentary
conversational). CM is a food mecca!

Aside from the som tam, Pok Pok serves a delicious grilled chicken (gai yang). Ricker imported the rotisserie from Bangkok, and uses Cornish game hens. I enjoyed the lemongrass-marinated chicken and its spicy dipping sauce. The weird thing about it was that in Thailand, chickens tend to be flavorful but tough and scrawny; this chicken was juicy. I also had a bowl of kao soi (curry noodle soup, hugely popular in Chiang Mai) and some pork satay. The satay is the best I’ve had anywhere, unbelievably tender and juicy.

There was also sticky rice. Basically, I ordered 90 percent of the menu.

Ricker lives in the house next door to Pok Pok, and he’s converting part of the house into a sit-down restaurant with an expanded menu. Here’s a hint of what it might include:

> dishes that are ubiquitous in
thailand (ie: khao kha muu, kwaytieo naam, kwaytieo reua, plaa ping,
plaa neung manao, muu yaang, kai teun, etc.) never seem to make it on
to menus here, and the stuff that does is almost always watered down
or homogenized for the american palate.

What the hell is he talking about? I can help you out. **Khao kha muu** is stewed pork leg on rice. **Kwaytieo naam** is noodle soup with meat and vegetables. **Kuaytieo ruea** (“boat noodles”) is noodles in dark broth with beef. **Plaa ping** is grilled fish. **Plaa neung manao** is steamed fish with lime. **Muu yaang** is marinated grilled pork. And **kei teun**, well, I had to ask:

> Kai teun is stewed chicken with herbs often served in a claypot with noodles–chinese in origin.

Stepping across the border, he’s also planning to feature a famous Hanoi fish dish. “Basically anything that goes well with beer and whisky,” Ricker said.

Pok Pok is already one of the most intriguing Thai restaurants in the US. With its impending expansion, it will almost certainly become one of the best.

**Pok Pok**
3226 SE Division
Portland OR 97202
(503) 232-1387
Mon-Sat: Lunch 11:30am-3:30pm, Dinner 4:30pm-8pm