Eating in Bangkok transcended my expectations.  Within a single bite I experienced so many flavors that  it woke up my tastebuds to a whole new level of delicious food.  The best part is that you do not have to spend a lot of money, and I mean you can spend $1 US dollar and have an excellent meal.
For cheap eats, we were lucky to have Terminal 21 Mall across from us and on the top floor there was a food court which offered numerous small restaurants with dishes ranging from $.75 -$2.25 US Dollars. My favorites were som tum (papaya salad), stewed pork leg, pork in gravy, sweet & sour soup, coconut ice cream and mango with sticky rice. We ate there so many times and were never disappointed.

Within the mall there are also tons of sit down restaurants offering every type of cuisine you could ask for.  We had dim sum from a 1 Michellin star restaurant called Tim Ho Wan.  They had amazing barbecue pork buns that were crispy on the outside but soft on the inside, shrimp dumplings, and wasabi shrimp dumplings. This was the real wasabi which is not too spicy.  We treated ourselves to a fancy Thai restaurant called Have a Zeed.  I had this really cool thai ice tea with ice cubes that were also made from thai tea.  We even had our last meal in Bangkok at Hawker Chan with Bob. It was also a 1 Michellin star restaurant that offered the best juicy, Singaporean soy sauced chicken I ever had.

Even within our neighborhood without walking very far we found all kinds of restaurants that we would eat at again (and some of them we did!).  In front of Terminal 21 is the best authentic Italian pizza at Pala Pizza. Slightly crispy square slices with a light tomato sauce and a variety of toppings to chose from.  My favorite was with buratta, prosciutto, and rocket and the baby liked their mushroom pizza.  We ate there a bunch of times not only because the pizza was amazing but the waitresses were super friendly.  Next door to our apartment was a Thai-Chinese restaurant called Suda that we had many meals at.  We loved their banana wrapped chicken and their som tum.  Up the street from our apartment on busy Sukhomvit we ate at a Japanese restaurant and had scrumptious pork belly stew and Wagyu beef.

A little further away, our friends took us to the infamous restaurant Soei that Andrew Zimmerman ate at and it was amazing.  We got yellow curry soft shell crab and fried mackerel faces.  I was astonished at how delicious the mackerel faces were, they tasted like bacon!  The crab curry was a little sweet with just enough spice and kept you yearning for more.

My absolute favorite restaurant was P’Aor for their Tom Yum Goong with a large prawn and shrimp wontons. The sweetness of the shrimp combined with the herbs makes this broth the most favorable, delicious soup I ever tasted.  Surprisingly, it looks spicy but its not. If that was not enough, they had another dish that was shrimp with a crab topping.  The butteriness of the crab combined with the fresh shrimp made this the perfect combination.  I think about this restaurant all the time and cannot wait to go back.

I loved the food in Bangkok and am so grateful that I am fortunate to have had this experience.  I cannot wait to go back and encourage anyone that loves food to please go there.