Sampling Baan Thai Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
I loved Seaside, California, my family’s first neighborhood, when we moved to the West Coast for its variety of ethnic restaurants.
I wanted my daughter Florence
to try Thai food, so we went to Baan Thai when it was just opening up in
2000. (It is still open 17 years later.)
On our first visit there, the
walls were painted white and the glass over the pale green tablecloths gave off
a slight glare, because there were no curtains on the waist-to-ceiling high
windows that covered two walls of the restaurant.
I chose a corner table and
studied the only decoration in the restaurant – an 8 ½” by 11” photo of what I
thought was a seated Buddha or a person.
A tall, tapering crown that resembled Thai temple towers topped off this
personage.
When the waitress came to
take my order, I asked her, “Is that a man or Buddha in that picture?”
“Both,” she answered.
“He is our king.”
That was my first inkling
that India had influenced Thai culture as well as that of China.
I gave her my order for
panang curry not quite knowing what that was.
A series of five peppers at the bottom of the menu served as a spiciness
(hot) guide for your order.
I chose the three-pepper
variety. The panang curry served with
ridged carrots, corn, bits of chicken, and green pepper filled half of my
plate.
A mound of white rice sat
next to it with a twisted orange slice next to that for decoration.
The taste was citrus and
hot. It left a pleasant tingling taste
in my mouth, but I was too busy at the time as a salesman selling Tibetan art,
Russian icons, Ghandaran Buddhas, Thai and Vietnamese Buddhas, Indian Ganeshas,
and Persian carpets in Carmel to delve into the ingredients in this delicious
dish.
What I did do one night when
I should have been researching another story was to look Thailand up on my
computer’s encyclopedia. I discovered
that the Thai practice Theravada Buddhism, derisively called Hinayana (Lesser
Vehicle) by the Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) Buddhists of China and Japan.
In a nutshell, Theravada
Buddhists seek Enlightenment for themselves whereas Mahayana Buddhists endeavor
to become a Bhodsattva, one who can achieve Enlightenment, but who puts it off
to help others attain Enlightenment.
Young Thai men I read in this
article usually spend some time as a monk in the same way that young men in
many countries spend some time doing military service.
I wondered if this was why
the servers at Baan Thai seemed so unflappable even when it was busy. Then, I went back to my other story and let
my interest in Thailand hibernate.
I went back to Baan Thai and
decided it was time to try something new when the waiter saw me and said,
“Panang curry?”
I changed my order several
times to yellow, green, and red curries.
They were all good and contained peppery, anise-flavored Asian basil.
I progressed up the chile
chart for spicy additions to the dishes I ordered. Sugary Thai iced tea made with condensed milk
put out some of the wildfire situations I willingly undertook.
I read the cookbook Cracking
the Coconut by Su-Mei Yu, who had “attended an exclusive boarding
school founded by the Royal Court of Thailand,” according to the book’s
cover.
I made panang curry once at
home to know how to make it, but preferred eating it in restaurants to support
ethnic communities, especially my neighborhood.
In 2002, I took Florence out
to Baan Thai for an early dinner after I had picked her up from her charter
Waldorf School in Pacific Grove, California.
Baan Thai had prospered and had received excellent reviews in the local
newspapers.
Landscape paintings were
lined up along the windowless walls.
Lace curtains kept the sunlight’s glare at bay and big, color pictures
of the King and his consort decorated the dining room. Smaller pictures of dancers in tall, conical
hats, boats in Bangkok, and elephant tapestries decorated the walls.
Behind my daughter was a
picture of the one-tusked elephant God from India called Ganesha. At the Asian Art Gallery, I sold tons of
these little, bronze statues by saying, “Ganesha is the remover of obstacles.”
Everyone in business knows
these are people who mess up mailroom procedures, invoicing, and inventory
control in companies. I think everyone
in Silicon Valley has one of these statues by now.
Florence asked me, “How do
you remove obstacles?”
I told her the kiddie version
of Ganesha, “Ganesha gave up one of his tusks, so humans could read. Basically, if you read well and know math
very well, you will have a good life.
Lawyers have very big vocabularies.”
End of Article
By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks, Teen in China, and Marrying France
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