English is not spoken ubiquitously in Thailand, so you often have to rely on the large colorful placards in front of the restaurant to indicate which dishes are served. Upon being seated, you’re often handed a plastic coated smaller version of the menu out front. After spending several minutes narrowing down your choice from a variety of attractive looking dishes, you point to the item on the menu for your server to see and, invariably, you hear the response,  “‘insert food here’, we no have”

This denial of your desired meal continues until you finally ask, “what do you have?” You think the server might have mentioned when she gave you the menu what items are not available before you spent the 10 minutes thoughtfully pouring over the amazing choices presented. What you eventually learn is to have your top three picks ready and, generally speaking, you can get one of them.

I was near the sea yesterday so I decided to try fish. Chicken and rice is the staple meal here, and Thais seem to be capable of eating it three times a day everyday with, what appears to my Western eye, little variation in how it is served.

It was eight in the morning, a time ideal for serving fresh caught fish I thought, but when I asked my server for rice soup with fish, she responded, “fish, we no have”. If you don’t have fresh fish available first thing in the morning at the coast, when exactly do you have it available?

I ordered chicken and rice, and a memory fluttered forward. There’s a Thai food cart in Portland called Nong’s Khao Man Gai. It’s considered by many to be the best in Portland so I was disappointed when I tried it to find the only thing they serve is chicken on rice. True, it represents authentic Thai food, but I’m determined that the next time someone recommends I go there, I am going to respond, “Chicken and rice, I no having”.