Isan Cooking

Isan food travels better than any other Thai regional kitchen, which is why som tam carts stand on street corners nationwide. At home it is built around sticky rice, rolled into a ball with the fingers and used to pick up everything else. Som tam is green papaya pounded in a clay mortar with lime, chilli, garlic, palm sugar and fish sauce, and in the north-east usually with pla ra, fermented fish, which changes the dish completely. Larb is minced meat with toasted rice powder, mint and lime; nam tok is the grilled version. Gai yang goes over charcoal, sai krok Isan sours in the sun, and jaew dipping sauces sit beside all of it.

What you actually see

• The mortar - som tam pounded to order, the heat set by a count of chillies.
• Sticky rice - eaten by hand from a woven basket.
• Gai yang - marinated chicken flattened and grilled over charcoal.
• Jaew and pla ra - the dipping sauce and the fermented fish behind the flavour.

When to go

Any month, though the north-east is punishing from March to May. Grill stalls fire up in the late afternoon and sausage vendors work the evening, while markets sell the salads from mid-morning. Ordering som tam Thai gets you the milder, sweeter version; som tam pla ra is what the region itself actually eats.

Honest expectations

Isan food is the hottest of Thailand's regional cooking, and asking for it mild often means it arrives merely painful. Raw and fermented preparations are genuinely common, including raw-meat larb and fermented fish, and both carry real risk for visitors, so stay with cooked versions. Away from the cities, English menus barely exist.

Nearby

Khon Kaen's night market and the weaving villages around Chonnabot.