Luag Prabang – Part 2: Foods

I have to admit one important reason for me to fall in love with LP is its foods! Like every where I have been, I tried to taste as much food as possible in LP. Laos food is quite like Thai’s for its using of plentiful herbals and spices, for its using sticky rice in every day meals. Bordered by Vietnam and Thailand, Laos food is somehow blended between the two. Luckily, although bordered by China, Laos food don’t show much fusion of Chinese taste, except for the using of chopsticks :D

Laos sticky rice:

Laap: meat (chicken, beef, pork) salad:

The most typical and the one I also love is Laos papaya salad. It’s totally different from Thai papaya salad or that of Vietnam. It’s a mix of papaya, eggplants, tomato, garlic, lots of chili, shrimp paste and fish paste, some vendors even add a kind of fruit I cannot recognize what it is, but it tastes a bit bitter and sour but somehow sweet after eaten. The way Laos people make the salad is also unique: they use the pestle and mortar to mix all the ingredients to make all the spices absorb thoroughly to the papaya. This salad is so popular to Laotians (in LP at least since I haven’t been to any other places in Laos except for LP) that a lot of mobile vendors sell this. I have it for almost every meal while I was in LP except for meals in Tamarind since they don’t have this.

Different "versions" of Papaya salad:

LP people must very be proud of their cuisine that they have a salad called Luang Prabang salad. It’s a mix of green salads, tomato, an cucumber with the dressing made of boiled eggs and other stuffs like chili, garlic, etc. I was impressed by the name and how it tasted when Khone made this for our very first lunch then.

Tamarind seems to be the iconic tree of LP with old and young tamarind trees everywhere in the town, along the rivers, on the outskirt. It is well reflected in the food as well. A lot of dishes are cooked with tamarind but I love most is the chicken tamarind soup Khone prepared for us for lunch the other day for its tasty sour of tamarind cooked with chicken, the smell of lemongrass and lemon leaves and ginger…

Tamarind is also the name of a Laos restaurant – our favorite in LP. We have at least one third of our meals here and we were kidding that every road leads to Tamarind.

Me skimming the menu at Tamarind:

Tamarind's wall photos:

Cooking stuffs:

They don’t have many dishes to choose from but what they do are always the best (except for the bamboo shoots soup – it tastes like Chinese medicine :P – this soup is one of the local populars and we saw the monks ate them in their meals). Tamarind offers the best of Laos cuisine, both authentic and fusion. What I love most here are the drinks. Very typical and stand out of all other places. They pick the most typical fruit, spices to make unique drinks that anyone can fall for.

Tamarind's delicacies: lime juice with lemongrass:

Tamarind's delicacy: jujube and coconut milk juice - I love this much and have bought a bag of dried jojobe home

Tamarind's delicacy: lemongrass stuffed with chicken:

Tamarind's delicacy: steam Mekong fish:

We also try to taste phở Lào or Laos noodle. It’s a mix of noodle with meat and soup and a lot of raw vegetables. It turns out to be very tasty and we ate it twice in the small vendor in the night market.

We also fell in love with the noisy food street and night market where roasted chicken, Mekong fish, snails, vegetarian buffet, and a lot of stuffs with very cheap or reasonable prices. Backpackers or even people who don't have any idea of saving flocked to this place to find an ambience that they cannot have dining at luxury restaurants. This is a funny experience that cannot be missed when coming to LP

Fruit shake vendors with a lot to choose:

Food streets with lots of roasted stuffs:

Me buying the durian at night market:

Blurry me in food street :P

Other stuffs:

Tofu spring rolls

Dried meat:

Fried River weeds

Fry hot pot