The uncertain future of street food

[reader]

Excerpted from NYTimes

BANGKOK — The coconut wood pestle hits the mortar, and the chili fumes rise in a cough-inducing haze. The lime rind bruises. Salted crab releases its funk, along with bits of claw and carapace.

Shreds of green papaya are tossed in, bathed in a blast of fermented fish paste tempered by palm sugar.

The smell is alive and dead, asphyxiating and alluring all at once. More than anything, this green papaya salad, made in a street cart by a woman who has been wielding her pestle for three and a half decades, provides the perfume of Bangkok.

But street food vendors — with their pungent salads, oodles of noodles and coconut sweetmeats — have lately become the target of some of the capital’s planners. To them, this metropolis of 10 million residents suffers from an excess of crowds, clutter and health hazards. The floods, the heat, the stench of clogged canals and rotting fruit, the pok pok pok of that pestle — it’s all too much.

They prefer an air-conditioned Bangkok, with malls, ice-skating rinks and Instagrammable dessert cafes. They want the street food vendors gone.

And so Somboon Chitmani, who has been making green papaya salad in the streets of Bangkok for 36 years, waits. By the end of this year, she has heard, street cooks could be cleared out of central Bangkok.

Already, the number of areas designated for street food has decreased from 683 three years ago to 175, according to the Network of Thai Street Vendors for Sustainable Development.

Sakoltee Phattiyakul, the deputy governor of Bangkok, dismissed fears that street food would be gone from Bangkok this year.

“No, no, no, we’re not going to ban to zero,” he said, stressing that a local government initiative to clear the city’s sidewalks of clutter was “just a plan that we have had for years.”

Others within the government bureaucracy have sent a different message, though, leaving vendors spooked. Earlier this month, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration said the sidewalk cleanup campaign was moving ahead.

“If they want to get rid of us, we can’t do anything to protest because it’s the law,” Ms. Somboon said. “But Bangkok to me is about street food. Without it, it wouldn’t feel the same.”

Nearly 15 percent of Thailand’s citizens live in Bangkok, and many cling to the fringes of one of the world’s most unequal societies. The capital’s notorious traffic forces long commutes, meaning it’s often impractical to return home to eat lunch, or even dinner until late. Besides, many people rent lodging without kitchens.

Street food is also a family business for Nitisak Trachoo, whose parents have pushed a pair of food carts across Bangkok for 27 years. Mr. Nitisak, 28, once worked as a bellboy but two years ago, when his parents asked him for help, he returned to the streets.

Each day, as demure office workers and tourists in short shorts watch, he pours streams of green batter into a mold for tiny cakes fragrant with the vanilla-like juice of the pandan leaf, a common flavoring in Southeast Asia.

On a recent afternoon, steam wafted from the griddle, adding a syrupy note to the humid air.

“Being a bellboy is a lot easier,” Mr. Nitisak said, mopping away sweat. “But when my parents asked me to help I came right away because it’s the Thai way.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/14/world/asia/bangkok-street-food.htm

 

[vinapu]

9 hours ago, reader said:

 

They prefer an air-conditioned Bangkok, with malls, ice-skating rinks and Instagrammable dessert cafes. 

 

all those we have at home , no need to suffer 24 hrs  travel to taste then only because it different time zone

[pong]

Oh, this newsppr.  parrotting emotional blackmail about what they claim to be poor people as utter victims of faceless burocrats. The Thai have an enormous talent to throw in their own glasses. Those pesky vendors have spoilt it for themselves by the way they think they can rule and take whatever space they can lay their greedy hands on and leave the garbage for which they refuse to pay lying around for the rats and roaches. Just to stingy to pay the odd extra baht to settle themselves in the plenty empty spaces sitting all around all the areas mentioned. And it takes 1000s of baht to simply please the brown boys to have the ´right´ to claim footpath-space along Silom-they very well know the principle of asking more for spots with good revenue. Alas-that money wont be refunded for the expired rest of time bought. In essence it boils down to moving the carts a few meters.

Thus: there are no POOR vendors there. In TH its always about baht when it comes to protests, be it in a friendly way by misleading journalists (though in this case its a 100 times rcycled issue) or by sometimes blocking cityhall or district offices of the BMA.

Sadly it also seems that the once flourishing foodcourts run by the many hypermarkets are also on the way down-many are half empty, prices are higher and it often just does not taste well. So after all maybe the CP/centran etc groups are all after it bu crunching the vendors and then offering them space for a stall in those courts. Good stuff for further investigating by NYT (or more likely buying it from a source on the spot): the cruel big capitalists again strike the poor grassroots people! It wont even remotely concern to the orange haired nice lady here at the end of the soi who runs a khao tham seng (made to order in the wok) stall selling fly lice for 40 bt and merrily showing her grandchild with it and how much he has grown again. She does not even bother making a pricelist.

[reader]

You really should consider seeking therapy for your stream of unconsciousness condition