From ba chor claypot rice to ice cream with lettuce
A roundup of my favourite 2024 Bangkok Vegetarian Festival eats, six months later
If there’s one thing no one can ever accuse me of, it’s having my shit together and getting things out of my brain in a timely manner. It can take years of thinking and experimenting, with long pauses in between, before I settle on a recipe (if you saw my copious notes on vegan fish balls you’d understand). My point is posting about something only six months later is me making pretty good time.
If you follow me at all, you’ll know I go to Thailand every year for the annual Vegetarian Festival, or tetsagan gin jay (tetsagan gin pak in the South). This is a roundup of some of my favourite snacks and meals from the 2024 festival. I’ll only mention festival specific dishes and menus. In other words these are either things restaurants only serve during the festival, or from vendors who pop up around Chinatown in that time. There’s no guarantee the same vendors will be in the same place in 2025 onward, but they often are (hence including stall numbers when I remembered them).
Restaurants
Tip: if you’re an indoors only eater, hit up any big mall and you’ll have masses of choice.
Claypot King
Okay, this one’s not in a mall but I’ve come here for a meal in both 2023 and 2024 and I love it. Their speciality, which you may have guessed from the name, is claypot rice. During the festival the entire menu goes vegan. In 2024 I tried the ข้าวอบบะช่อ ba chor claypot rice. Ba chor is a localised Teochew word for lightly formed meatballs that aren’t bouncy like so many Thai meatballs. The claypot is served with a generous layer of seasoned vegan pork that’s a bit 5-spice-y, with some chopped fresh Chinese celery on top. Don’t forget to add generous amounts of their fragrant chilli oil.
Tasty Congee & Noodle Wantun Shop
Chicken and mushroom jok (congee). I’d typically roll my eyes at the Michelin brag (I’m over it), and yeah it’s a pricey bowl of gruel, but damnit this was perfect. The jok was silky smooth and creamy, with the perfect balance of salt and umami. It contained a generous quantity of small cubes of vegan chicken (enough for some with every bite) as well as thin slices of Chinese kale stem. There were a couple chunks of quartered rehydrated slippery dried shiitake with a burst of ginger flavour hiding at the bottom of the bowl – a nice surprise.
There are three locations of this Hong Kong chain in Bangkok, but I went to the one in ICONSIAM.
Din Tai Fung
I’d have probably skipped this had a friend not insisted I go, and I’m glad I did. The jay menu during the festival was sizeable, with heaps of vegan dim sum options. Favourites included the deep fried bean curd (yuba), deep fried tofu with water chestnuts and mushrooms (they mashed it all together and fried it), and dry noodles tossed in special sauce.
Easy Buddy บั๊ดดี้
มาม่าผัดกะเพราหมูกรอบเจ mama pad gaprao moo grop jay. Mama are a Thai brand of instant noodle, but the name is genericised to mean wheat based instant noodles, which are what formed the based of this dish. The egg white was tofu based with a pumpkin or carrot yolk, the whole lot wrapped in rice paper and then fried. Not hugely flavourful on its own, the egg texture was great. Instead of stir frying the holy basil through the pork belly, the leaves were deep fried and piled on the side. The dish is served with prik nam pla, a common condiment made of (vegan) fish sauce, lime juice (sometimes omitted), and fresh chillies. Salty, oily comfort.
Yaowarat, Chinatown
Evenings are heaving, with people crammed into makeshift pathways separating cars from pedestrians, but there’s a greater variety on offer at this time of day. You’ll move at a snail’s pace. Lunchtime is far more civilised, with time to browse properly without being carried away by the tide of people. There’s a little bit of variation between what’s available in the daytime (e.g. some takeaway curry rice vendors) versus evening, and some of the most popular spots don’t open until the sun starts getting lower in the sky.
Sukhothai noodles from stall no. 6
A perfect place to start your evening, right up at the top of Yaowarat near The Chinatown Gate. Table space is at a premium, so you might need to wait for a little while, but it’s worthwhile. I ordered, as my friend suggested, the dry bamee (wheat) noodles (you can ask for soup on the side if you’d like). They came tossed with toasted ground peanuts, toasted dry chilli powder, sugar, salted preserved radish, sliced long coriander, lime juice, rehydrated dried shiitake mushroom slices, mock roasted pork, and pork rinds. The only thing that could have made it better would be fried garlic oil, but you won’t find garlic and onion anywhere as jay food doesn’t allow for alliums.
Yentafo from stall no. 55
I’m a yentafo snob, so this isn’t the style I’d normally go for, but a friend recommended it. To me, the seasoning for yentafo should contain a lot of fermented red tofu, but that’s not really the fashion in Bangkok. Anyway, this particular stall is by a well known yentafo dealer and it’s quite special to be able to grab a vegan version from this company. The seasoning sauce is much thinner than I prefer, but I appreciated the umami nuance of its hugely tomato forwardness. Also, yentafo is typically seasoned with dried toasted chillies, but they go in with heaps of the fresh stuff here and that’s a nice touch.
The bowl contained a couple of crispy wonton triangles, wood ear mushroom, lots of Thai water spinach, a few slices of tofu puffs, a couple fish balls, one of those weird vegan shrimps that’s just a flavourless orange konjac horseshoe, some slices of rehydrated shiitake, and sen yai (hor fun) noodles. It’s objectively tasty, just not yentafo as I know it.
P.S. here’s my recipe for vegan yentafo.
Takoyaki from stall no. 27
It’s takoyaki. It’s vegan. What’s not to love? They have a tonne of fillings to choose from, including squid, shrimp, chicken sausage, seaweed, shiitake mushroom, and pork sausage. The sausage fillings were my favourite.
April’s Bakery
Didn’t take note of the stall number.
The winter melon kanom pia is an extremely flaky but soft pastry with a not too sweet filling with some crispy sesame seeds and some pieces of candied winter melon. I get this and the salty fermented red tofu kanom pia whenever I’m in Bangkok for the festival.
ING Teahouse – stall no. 19
Taiwanese peanut ice cream roll. I was so surprised and impressed by this. It’s a thin popiah style wrapper with finely ground peanut, lettuce, and taro ice cream. It’s not common to find a vegan version (I triple checked the ice cream was actually vegan). 10/10.
Yaowarat Soi 6/Soi Charoen Krung 16
This small soi, connecting Yaowarat Rd to Charoen Krung, is a great place to shop for vegan goods year round, ranging from stewed dishes like gana chai กานาฉ่าย (mustard greens stewed with Chinese olive, mushroom, and lots of oil) to dried goods and pantry staples like curry pastes. There are always some stalls selling konjac seafood analogues and gluten based mock meats, but during the Vegetarian festival there are two stalls that are worth my entire trip.
Leng Muay Aahaan Jay เล่งหม่วย อาหารเจ
They sell moo daeng (roasted red pork) and pet yang (roasted duck) by the kilo. They are both so juicy and light years ahead of nearly every other version I've tried, especially the duck.
Hia Guang restaurant ร้านเฮียกวง
They sell the best vegan moo daeng I've ever tasted. I actually stumbled across this place in 2023 while looking for Leng Muay. This place is only vegan during the festival and is well worth (as is Leng Muay – convenient as they are only a stone's throw away from each other) a visit. This moo daeng doesn't feature the signature red exterior, but don’t let that put you off. You can either buy a skewer or by the kilo.