
Why There Are So Many Thai Restaurants in America - NaOH
https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason-that-there-are-so-many-thai-restaurants-in-america
======
athenot
That is actually a great idea.

The best way to build a bridge between peoples is through culture, and food is
an important part of culture.

The next step in bridge building is sharing meals with people of other
cultures. Starting or strengthening friendships around food is a great way to
lessen the power of prejudices, and put aside our _national_ identities for
the benefit of sharing a common bond as humans through our _cultural_
identities.

Edit: even though the stated reason in the article has a political motive, I
still think it helps at a human level.

~~~
onomonomono
I have to assume when you say national identity it means the same thing to you
as racial identity because our national identity is mutable and transcends
race. I can't move to Thailand and become Thai. I can't move to China and
become Chinese. But they can move here and become American. They can move here
and live the American Dream.

~~~
HeadsUpHigh
Isn't that what's so amazing about the USA? That it is open to "anyone"( well
you get what I mean)?

People come from different nations, a country that allows different nations to
exist in the same physical space is a great way to bridge that gap and food
seems like a good starting point. Anyone can probably gain some appreciation
for some culture if the food is good( like, this culture actually has
something worthwhile to show). I think it works in a subconscious level. Also
given the lack of worldwide history education it's also an interesting way to
get people in a first contact with a different culture.

------
tootie
Not mentioned is that probably half of Thai restaurants in the US are run by
Chinese people. A good chunk of Japanese, Vietnamese and even some non-Asian
restaurants are run by Chinese also. One of the top Thai restaurants in my
area is run by a white guy. And there's a sushi place run by Thai folks. Good
cooking doesn't care where you're from.

~~~
digianarchist
My wife is Thai and she tells me that the majority of the Thai places she's
eaten at in North America suck.

Exception is San Francisco. There's a place in Little Saigon that is run by
Thai people and she said the food there is exactly the same as home.

Here in Toronto we recommend Si Lom Thai Bistro. Which is good but not
perfect.

~~~
newhotelowner
Majority of Indian restaurants food doesn't taste like what we eat at home.

~~~
cwbrandsma
I have a friend that lived in India for a year or so. At the end of his stay
and american chain restaurant opened up TGI Friday I believe). He said that
was one of the worst meals he had while there. Nothing tasted "right."

------
runarberg
There are also plenty of Thai restaurants in Reykjavík (and Iceland in
general), probably for a different reason then the article states since
Iceland has a significant Thai population.

Living in Seattle for the past year, and loving Thai food, I noticed that
there is a general overall difference in the type of restaurant a Thai place
is between Reykjavík and Seattle.

Thai places in Seattle seem a lot fancier then in Reykjavík. In Seattle you
most likely have to order a table, or at the very least have a waiter show you
to your table. In Reykjavík, on the other hand, Thai places tend to range all
over the place, all the way down to having only 4 bar-like seats by the
window.

The menu is also way more diverse in Reykjavík. In Seattle, you can pretty
much guess the entire menu before you walk into a Thai place. While in
Reykjavík a Thai place might only have three types of pad thai on the menu, or
only sell soup, or even sell have 3 or 4 pages of stuff on the menu, including
non-thai cuisine.

Generally, I like the Thai places in Reykjavík better then in Seattle.

~~~
thinkythought
Check out "Thai Tom", it's more the style you're thinking of and very, very
good. Expect to stand in a big line though

~~~
kristjansson
Very, very good. One of those meals I can remember years later. Sit by the
burners and sweat for the full experience.

------
matz1
Indonesian food are delicious and the country population are huge but yet
relatively unknown outside Indonesia. So yeah the power of marketing and
deliberate smart plan can't be underestimated.

~~~
amitparikh
I will briefly add that Indonesian food is massively popular in the
Netherlands ("East Indies" being a former colony). Rijstaffel [1] --
literally, "rice table" \-- is a national specialty that is celebrated by the
Dutch, although I will admit that the history of the meal is rooted in that
former colonialism.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel)

~~~
matz1
Well, Netherlands is a special case, of course. But relatively unknown compare
to korea/thai/japan. These country population is much smaller than indonesia
yet their cuisine is everywhere.

------
spaceflunky
I have been to Thailand about 5 times since 2006. In fact, I'm writing this
from the airport returning from Bangkok this evening.

One thing I've noticed over the past decade is that the diversity of tourists
has changed dramatically over the years. The first time I went to Thailand I
saw mostly Americans, Australians, and Europeans. Nowadays its common to see
people from all over the middle-east, Africa, South America, and of course the
rest of Asia (China and Japan in particular). I was even surprised to see a
Vietnamese tour group at Suvarnabhumi today (interesting to see Vietnamese
with the disposal income to travel and the interest to travel to their next
door neighbor). Just goes to show everyone loves Thailand.

Gastro-diplomacy appears to have paid off! What a great investment!

~~~
freddie_mercury
> I was even surprised to see a Vietnamese tour group at Suvarnabhumi today
> (interesting to see Vietnamese with the disposal income to travel and the
> interest to travel to their next door neighbor).

I live in Vietnam. Virtually every middle class Vietnamese I know has been to
Thailand. For two simple reasons: it is one of the few places on Earth a
Vietnamese can travel visa-free and it is relatively cheap. (Especially
compared to, say, Singapore, which also allows visa-free travel.)

~~~
spaceflunky
Is it correct to say that having disposable income for international travel is
a relatively new phenomenon for the Vietnamese?

~~~
freddie_mercury
I guess it depends on what you count as "relatively new". Vietnamese have been
traveling internationally, since the early 1990s after Đổi Mới in 1986. It is
4 hours from Saigon to Cambodia by bus. It is 12 hours from Hanoi to China by
bus. I think Hanoi to Laos is also 12 hours or so by bus.

That's three countries within a pretty easy bus ride, making international
travel relatively common.

As far back as 2007 (the oldest numbers I could find quickly), Cambodia was
seeing over 125,000 Vietnamese tourists a year.

There's a reason there are massive casinos in Cambodia all along the border.
(Vietnamese aren't allowed to gamble in Vietnam, so they go to Cambodia to do
it.)

Vietnamese have been traveling throughout Southeast Asia for a while now. It
is just that their numbers have finally caught up to (and in many cases
surpassed) Japanese & South Koreans so you can notice them.

More disposable income certainly helps. But so do things like the increase in
the formal economy (it is impossible to get a visa anywhere unless you have a
bank account, a labor contract, etc). So do things like the spread of
"Western" work hours (even now, the typical non-office job is 6 days a week,
usually 10 hour shifts, which doesn't exactly leave much time or energy for
travel; so travel most often happens in between jobs).

------
tcbawo
I had always assumed that many Asian themed restaurants added Thai menu items
because it was trendy/popular. It's common to see sushi at Chinese, Korean, or
pan-Asian restaurants.

Also, where I live, many specific Latin American restaurants (Peruvian, Costa
Rican, etc) have started offering burritos and hot salsa, even though it's not
typical of their cuisine.

------
fipple
It’s a lot simpler than this. Pad Thai is very sweet and Americans love sugar.

~~~
eznoonze
Pretty much! They are mostly over-sweetened versions of some southeast asian
food. Once I had a curry chicken in a supposingly high end Thai restaurant.
The curry sauce was so sweet that it tasted like dessert. Most Thai
restaurants in North America are like that. I guess to most people
sugar==taste good. This rule applies to many other ethnic cuisines that target
"mainstream" in NA as well.

------
pouetpouet
if only more countries invested in soft power instead of saber rattling.

~~~
smt88
I would argue that the largest direct attack by one major power against
another major power since WWII was Russia hacking/interfering in US elections,
and that's an example of soft power.

I'd honestly rather have sabre rattling, because at least it's in the open and
subject to popular scrutiny.

~~~
jacquesc
You mention the upside of sabre rattling. The downside is it tends to result
in people getting killed.

~~~
smt88
And election meddling doesn't? It's not as direct, but it happens.

Also, as I alluded above, sabre-rattling hasn't resulted in armed conflict
between superpowers since nuclearization.

------
logfromblammo
If you don't appreciate the clickbait headline, it's because the Thai
government subsidized them, as a form of soft-power diplomacy.

~~~
neolefty
Soft power is the best kind of power. Oh no we've been conquered by excellent
cuisine!

Someday, we'll just call it "food".

~~~
Quequau
Yeah but what about these few extra kilos I'm carrying around because of it?

Help I'm being oppressed!

------
asveikau
This says that the Thai government started the program in 2001, but I remember
Thai food suddenly becoming trendy in the 90s.

~~~
tnorthcutt
“Apparently, the government had been training chefs at its culinary training
facilities to send abroad for the previous decade, but this project formalized
and enhanced these efforts significantly.”

------
creaghpatr
While this play by the Thai government is a pretty indisputable home run in
terms of mutual goodwill, what would be the reaction if [controversial foreign
power of your choice] launched a similar effort at a greater scale?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
To be fair, it matters very much who is making the gesture. The gorilla in the
room behaves very differently from the underdog. Everybody expects that.

------
iammiles
I wonder if that's the reason why a few of my favorite local Thai restaurants
all have the same or similar Thai tourism posters displayed throughout.

Regardless I think this is a brilliant idea by the Thai government. I'd love
to see other regions / governments do a similar thing!

------
DonaldFisk
In London there are plenty of Thai restaurants too, but I don't know how that
compares with the proportion of Thais in the general population.

There are also plenty of Japanese restaurants, yet very few Japanese. Many of
them are run by Chinese who have learned to prepare Japanese food.

~~~
M_Bakhtiari
And many more of them are run by Chinese who haven't learned to prepare
Japanese food, unfortunately.

By the way, are you the dataflow guy?

~~~
DonaldFisk
> And many more of them are run by Chinese who haven't learned to prepare
> Japanese food, unfortunately.

It's variable. There are some I'd avoid, but there are also some good Chinese-
run Japanese restaurants.

> By the way, are you the dataflow guy?

Yes. I've had to move my pages (now at
[http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/FMJ.html](http://www.fmjlang.co.uk/fmj/FMJ.html)
). I've recently made major changes to the numeric type system, which now has
a built-in Prolog interpreter and supports units and numeric ranges. I'm
planning to add dependent types at some point but not soon. The system's still
not ready for release.

~~~
M_Bakhtiari
Interesting. I'd like to try to use a dataflow system like that for an
industrial application (despite my name, not for uranium enrichment
centrifuges, I promise). I'll keep my eye on it. Will it be released as open
source or a proprietary product?

Also, have you looked at the static checking of units of measure in F#? I find
myself wishing I had something like that since I work with a lot of physical
measurements.

~~~
DonaldFisk
I intend to release it as shared source, i.e. charge only for commercial use.

Units of measure in Full Metal Jacket are SI, similar to those in F#, but it
also supports prefixes, e.g. 2.3mg expands to 2.3e-6 kg. The types and units
are checked while the program is constructed in the IDE. At present there's no
fully working compiler.

------
simplicio
Interesting. I've been surprised by the number of Thai restaurants that have
opened (and often, quickly closed) here in upstate SC, a relatively rural area
that, so far as I know, doesn't have a large Thai community. So I guess this
at least somewhat explains it.

I've also noticed that Thai restaurants tend to be a little more hit-or-miss
than other ethnic food places. I imagine the Thai gov't pushing to encourage
Thai-Americans who are on the fence about whether they should open a
restaurant would explain that as well.

------
russnewcomer
Depending on where you live, the reason also could be because there is a
refugee population that has been resettled in that city.

Omaha, where I live, has a growing local chain of Thai restaurants (Salween,
if you live here) that are owned and run by Karen refugees who have been
resettled here. Their food is very, very good, the restaurants are very
popular around town, and they greatly assist their community.

If you want to help refugees and other people groups, patronizing businesses
owned by them is a fantastic way to do so.

------
Taylor_OD
Very interesting. I wish there were more, "authentic" Thai places around. I'm
in Chicago and by far the best Thai place I've ever eaten at was a small shop
in Vermont. The owner is Thai and it's only open for lunch in the summers. No
other Thai I've ever had compares. My brother who has spent some time in
Thailand said it's because most Thai places are serving Americanized Thai
food.

Authentic Thai Food is also a difficult thing to search for.

~~~
wenc
I'm in Chicago, and good Thai food is indeed hard to come by around here. I've
been to Bangkok and good food is everywhere, even in mall food courts (Siam
Paragon in Bangkok has surprisingly excellent food -- I think it's because
most Thai people tend to hang out a lot in malls due to the hot weather).

Most of the places that non-Thai people recommend in the Chicago Loop are
mostly of the Americanized variety (because restaurant economics -- these
places need broad appeal to turn a profit given the high rents).

Don't get me wrong, I'm ok with non-authentic cuisine as long as they are
good, but Loop Thai restaurants are mostly only "passable". The better Thai
places are in locales with cheaper rent, e.g. JJ Thai Street Food in West
Town, and Aroy Thai in Ravenswood (Aroy was recommended to me by a Thai
person). These serve dishes that are much closer to what you would find in
Thailand (i.e. spicier, more fish-sauce punch), but the downside of this
authenticity is that folks with milder palates might be put off -- you
probably wouldn't be able to bring any Olive-Garden-loving relatives to these
places.

My personal barometer of how good a Thai place is the sweetness. The sweeter
the pad thai, the less authentic the place.

Tyler Cowen, the economist, has this to say about Thai food in the United
States: [1]

"Thai food in the United States is becoming bad. It’s getting sweeter—with
excessive use of refined sugar—and the other flavors are growing weaker and
less reliable. In absolute numbers, more excellent Thai restaurants exist than
ever before, but I wouldn’t want to vouch for the average quality of Thai food
in America these days.

One problem is that many Thai people have such a wonderful service ethic. I
don’t think I have ever once been treated poorly in a Thai restaurant. That
has made courting wide audiences relatively easy. Thai food also looks healthy
and has beautiful colors—all those greens, reds, yellows, and oranges.

As a result, Thai food has become cool. I first saw this trend in California,
in the 1980s, when young people in black started turning up in large numbers
at Thai restaurants in Hollywood. It spread. Americans eating in a Thai
restaurant are likely more hip than those eating in a Chinese restaurant. Yet
hip people do not always have superb taste in food.

As Thai restaurants have become more popular, they have become unreliable. It
is so easy to make the food too sweet, appealing to lowest-common-denominator
tastes or masking deficiencies in the food’s preparation. The best sweet Thai
dishes mix sweet with tart, but there’s been too much abuse on the sweet side
and not enough use of fish sauce or fermented shrimp paste or ground white
pepper. The most-reliable indicators of bad Thai restaurants are a large bar
and sushi on the menu. Those are both signs that the restaurant isn’t that
serious about food. Stay away."

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/six-
rul...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/six-rules-for-
dining-out/308929/)

~~~
monksy
Aroy was recommended to me by a Filipino person.

I like Andy's Thai Kitchen a lot. They've managed to treat my friends and I
really well even during peak times. Also, you get a lot of food with your
order. (Downside: Cash only)

Ocha in Bucktown is good.

~~~
wenc
Yes, I forgot about Andy's Thai Kitchen. My Thai friend recommended that one
too.

------
davidw
I had a look at ratios of immigrants to numbers of restaurants in Italy a
while back, but it looks like the chart may have been lost during a blog
migration:

[https://journal.dedasys.com/2008/05/13/restaurants-
immigrant...](https://journal.dedasys.com/2008/05/13/restaurants-immigrants-
and-the-popularity-of-various-cuisines/)

------
mindcrime
All this may be true, but part of the reason is still that Thai food _is_
yummy and delicious! Speaking for myself, I could eat Thai pretty much every
day. And luckily enough, I feel like we have an embarrassment of riches in
terms of good Thai food here in the Triangle area. You've got:

YumYum in Cary

Thai Villa in Cary

Thai Cafe in Durham

Thaiphoon in Raleigh

Champa in Raleigh

Thai Palace in Chapel Hill

etc., etc. So sure, thank you Thai government, for sending all this yummy
goodness our way!

~~~
Djvacto
Finding restaurant recommendations for my area on HackerNews of all places.
This is great.

Can we get a Triangle Food thread going?

In no particular order or connection, some of my favorites:

* Relish, by Crabtree

* Salt & Lime Cabo Grill, by North Raleigh

* Fiction Kitchen, Downtown Raleigh

* Remedy Diner, Downtown Raleigh

* Beer Garden, by Glenwood (The pretzels <3)

* Trophy Pizza & Brewing

* Orient Garden in Cary (our favorite Chinese takeout place)

* Himalayan Nepali Cuisine, Cary (watch out for that spicy scale)

* Coffee & Crepes, Cary

* Mac House, Durham

* Mura Sushi, North Hills

~~~
pc86
> _Can we get a Triangle Food thread going?_

Please, no.

Yelp is a thing. This is not what HN is for.

~~~
monksy
Yelp is terrible.

~~~
pc86
And yet still a better venue for this garbage than HN.

~~~
mindcrime
And yet you seem to be the only one complaining...

------
Reedx
Interesting, had never heard of gastrodiplomacy or culinary diplomacy. But a
few other countries, including the US, have established some of these
programs:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy)

------
hrnnnnnn
It's the same in Stockholm. Lots of Thai restaurants, food trucks and those
semi-permanent wooden structures.

~~~
dagw
One interesting thing I have noticed is that Thai food in Sweden (or at least
Gothenburg) tastes almost nothing like Thai food in London. I wonder how much
'foreign' cuisines adapt to match local expectations.

~~~
mijamo
The worst is Vietnamese food in Stockholm, it taste nothing like Vietnamese
and tries to imitate local thai tastes. And that makes me so sad because I
love Pho but I have yet to find a good one in Stockholm.

I also wonder why people buy sushis in a thai restaurant here, they are
usually much worse than in real sushi restaurants and equally expensive. Maybe
it's because the different persons at the tables disagreed on which food to
buy but still, what's the next step? Selling pizza and Kebab in chinese
restaurants?

~~~
hrnnnnnn
How authentic are the fresh spring rolls? I really like those.

------
rhplus
On a similar theme, there's a couple of companies that produce cookie-cutter
Irish pubs for global markets:

[https://www.eater.com/2017/3/7/14839472/irish-pub-
design](https://www.eater.com/2017/3/7/14839472/irish-pub-design)

------
sonofblah
Smart plan, and works on many levels--both product and service industries
included (in terms of creating demand), but of course cultural and diplomatic
ones as well, with network effects.

------
rco8786
I remember reading something similar regarding Chinese restaurants.

It works though, my wife and I spent 2 weeks in Thailand largely because we
were so enthralled with Thai food in the US.

------
jessriedel
As I skimmed through the first N paragraphs in search of the buried lede of
this article, as I seem to need to do for most articles these days, I am
reminded yet again that HN needs an abstract service (aka tl;dr). Commenters
should submit an abstract which is voted up or down, hopefully based on
accuracy and compactness. Reader could then skim through abstract and make a
more informed decision about whether it's worth the time to read, just like is
done with academic articles.

(People who are going to comment without reading the article will do this
regardless of whether you have an abstract.)

------
mavelikara
TL;DR:

> But as it turns out, there is a much simpler answer: The Thai government
> paid for it.

------
M_Bakhtiari
Thai is pretty terrible compared to Vietnamese and Indonesian cuisines. Such a
shame the latter two have made so little of an impact on most of the west,
France and the Netherlands, respectively, excluded.

~~~
anoncoward111
Never have I seen such a subjective statement in my life.

For what it's worth, I prefer Afghan cuisine, but all food is a fusion of
earlier ideas anyway.

~~~
russnewcomer
Kabuli Pulau is fantastic. I used to live down the street from a kebab shop
that had the best kebab and pulau, all cooked on outdoor grills in front of
it. Fantastic food, and I wish there were more good Afghan places in the U.S.
I'm in the midwest, and the closest Afghan place I know of (that serves Afghan
food, not just owned by Afghans) is in Chicago.

~~~
anoncoward111
Incredible, I love it :) Hicksville NY has a decently large diaspora, we are a
bit spoiled here. I taught myself how to cook their way, here's what I do:

Buy onions by the 50lb sack, chop them up, put them in the food processor,
cook them once then freeze them into smaller containers. Whenever I want to
cook a quick meal in 10 mins, grab the onion puree from the freezer, throw it
into a pan with garlic and oil and paprika, fry it up and serve over some
bread :)

------
kbcool
I would like to believe this article but:

a) Having eaten supposed Thai food in the USA I can tell you it's not Thai!
Most of it's Chinese based.

b) You're talking about a government that couldn't organise its way out of a
coupe let alone have a foreign policy. There's no way they are organised
enough to do this.

It would be a great idea if it was in fact real.

