Consider: Thai Food
Thai'ing up an age old mystery
Happy April Fools’ Day! This is not a prank, but another edition of Considered in your mailbox. Did you miss me?
It is well-known by my friends, family and Instagram followers that I am a noodle head. I love every kind of noodle, from pasta to rice noodles and even spaetzle. One of my favorite noodle dishes is Mie Goreng, an Indonesian stir fried noodle dish made with kecap manis (pronounced like ketchup), a sweetened soy sauce. It is a perfect delivery food. The problem is, when you open any delivery app, it is unlikely you will find an Indonesian restaurant nearby. You will, however, find many Thai restaurants (Indonesia’s nearby neighbour).
Indonesia has a population of over 277 million and there are estimated to be 100 Indonesian restaurants in the US. Thailand, on the other hand, has a population of 70 million. Care to guess how many Thai restaurants you’ll find in America? 5,342. With only 300,000 people of Thai descent in the US, they have the highest ratio of ethnic nationals to restaurants of any group in the US. There are 10x more Thai restaurants per Thai in the US than there are Mexican restaurants per Mexican. Looking outside the US, Thai restaurant domination is almost universal.
That Thai food came to dominate the ethnic restaurant landscape is not an accident. It all starts with Pad Thai and ends with gastrodiplomacy (something the world needs more of).
Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since the early 1930’s. The transition from absolute monarchy was led by a group including Plaek Pibulsonggram, or Phibun, who led the country on and off for almost 15 years. Economically, during his rule the country was very poor and struggled with food shortages. Phibun realized that one bowl of rice could be used to make two bowls of rice noodles, so Phibun touted noodles as an alternative starch in hopes of stretching the nation’s rice supply. Combining the noodles with cheap vegetables and inexpensive proteins, pad Thai was created. The government not only published the recipe for pad Thai, but encouraged street vendors to make and sell it throughout the country.
Note: There is debate about the national origin of pad Thai. Phibun says it was a creation of his house chef but the dish’s full name, kway teow pad Thai hints at Chinese origins (kway teow is Chinese for rice noodles).
In 2001, the Thai government established the Global Thai Restaurant Company, Ltd., with a goal of opening at least 3,000 Thai restaurants worldwide. Spoiler alert - they were radically more successful.
The Ministry of Commerce’s Department of Export Promotion, created three different “master restaurants” that entrepreneurs could select from:
Elephant Jump: A fast food Thai restaurant that is highly adaptable, depending on its location. Food style is a modification of authentic Thai, with a modern menu that appeals to a broad cultural range.
Cool Basil: A contemporary Thai restaurant. The theme is blending of Thai identity and international styling.
Golden Leaf: A classical Thai restaurant with an elegant menu. The décor features authentic fabrics and Thai objets d’art.
Which model does your favourite place follow? Export-Import Bank of Thailand offered loans to Thai nationals hoping to open restaurants abroad, and the Small and Medium Enterprise Development Bank of Thailand set up loans of up to $3 million for enterprises in the food industry, including foreign Thai restaurants. Thai diplomats were also granted the authority to award “Thai Select” awards to the best Thai restaurants they encountered in their travels.
Compare this to the Indonesian story. Unlike most countries in the region, Indonesia’s economy is fairly self-sufficient and does not rely on exports or tourism. With no need to cultivate foreign markets for its product, they have not engaged in national promotion campaigns. Tough foreign visa requirements tied to the erroneous belief that the country was a hotbed of Islamic terrorism have limited migration and export of an incredibly delicious foreign cuisine.
Thailand, while the leader in gastrodiplomacy, is not the only party that engages in the practice.
Chinese Restaurants
The prevalence of Chinese cuisine all across the world is more a response to immigration policies than an active campaign by the Chinese government. The US example is illustrative. Chinese immigrants were heavily restricted after the end of the gold rush, but in 1915, Chinese business owners became eligible for merchant visas, which allowed them to travel back and forth to China and sponsor family members. This was so popular that the number of Chinese restaurants in the U.S. doubled from 1910 to 1920, and doubled again from 1920 to 1930. In an effort to curb the growth, the visas were limited to “higher class” restaurants. This led multiple entrepreneurs to pool together and create “Chop Suey Palaces.” These larger, more opulent restaurants, led to the distinctive pagoda-style of architecture that Chinese restaurants became known for.
North Korea
The government of North Korea maintains a chain of 130 restaurants called Pyongyang, which serve North Korean delicacies like cuttle fish and dog meat soup. Mainly located in places that border North Korea, there are also a number of these restaurants in places where the country does business (Moscow, Vladivostok, etc.).
The Moonies
The wildest example of gastrodiplomacy, from my perspective, is the role that Reverend Sun Myung Moon, a Korean religious leader, played in the global growth of sushi and Japanese restaurants. The Reverend, whose followers are popularly known as “Moonies”, drove the growth of sushi and Japanese food globally. His church owned a company called True World Foods, which owned fishing boats and seafood processing plants (which he purchased after being inspired by a vision). The company claims to hold more than 70% of the mid-high end market and exports more than a million kilos of fish from Japan to North America every year. Church missionaries were given $100 in seed capital and told to build up a retail and wholesale fish business, which many of them did. Many of the missionaries were Japanese, and as sushi exploded in the 90s, they had great success supporting the Japanese entrepreneurs opening sushi restaurants. There is a fascinating article about it in The New York Times.
PS
The dough-based noodle “spaetzle” is a key plot point in the Alec Baldwin/Meg Ryan body swap movie, Prelude to A Kiss. The plot is that a male stranger asks for a kiss from Meg Ryan’s character on her wedding day. She obliges, and the two end up switching bodies. The old man, in Meg Ryan’s body, ends up enjoying a spaetzle-filled honeymoon with Alec Baldwin’s character, as shenanigans ensue. I learned about the movie from watching a community theatre production at the Phoenicia Playhouse years ago. I thought, until writing this, that the performance was just an adaptation, but it turns out the play had a run on Broadway, received a Tony nomination, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991. I also thought the story was incredibly strange until I read it was an allegory for the AIDS crisis and now it all makes sense. They don’t make ‘em like they used to!
yes, we’ve missed you…always a good read and an opportunity to learn something new in the process…😎
Really interesting stories! Thanks! 😀