Raan Jay Fai, Thanon Mahachai, Bangkok

We've heard mentions of this lady with about five decades of cooking under her belt whipping up not the usual stir fry (not cheap as well if I might add) and so we just had to come to this time capsule of a location (327 Thanon Mahachai, Bangkok, Thailand,  tel : +66 2 223 9384) to try the food. The place isn't exactly Bangkok city centre, but it's located a literal stone's throw away from a certain Thip Samai which is supposedly the holy grail for phad thai. I mean, really? 

That above is their pad khee mao, or also known as drunken noodles. It's actually stir fried rice noodles and that can't really be seen from the picture. The ratio of the chunky ingredients to the said rice noodles are probably 2 to 1.  This stuff was smokey caramelized good if you catch my drift. From the sugars and fish sauce and whatever else that might have added to form that nice browning on the surface of the noodles. A pleasant blend of heat and smokey sweetness with overtones of basil would probably be a good description for the flavours. Oh, those white chunky pieces of meat at the top are neither chicken nor poodle. It's crab. 

That gnarly nugget is their famed crab omelette. Just in case you were wondering, it was a little more than 20 cm across.

And fully loaded with egg and chunks of crab meat. I never thought that I would be crabbed out from this but that was enough flesh to make at least 3 or 4 of those crab cakes from Morton's.

This was described in English on the menu as dry porridge. It was a lot more viscous than most porridges that I'm used too, hearty and delicious. Fascinatingly lightweight in flavours compared to their stir fried dishes and also, loaded with large chunky pieces of seafood. Like!