Home-cooked authenticity

While in Bangkok last month, my fellow travellers and I sampled food from upscale Thai fare at the elegant Baan Khanitha on Sukhumvit 23 to the street stalls outside Platinum Fashion Mall. Some dishes were delicious, others decidedly lacklustre and no amount of chilli or spices could disguise their blandness. But the one place where we truly tasted authentic Thai cooking was at the Ruean Jaisai in Nakhon Ratchasima. This is a Buddhist meditation retreat roughly 200 kilometres from central Bangkok. Tourists don't normally visit there unless they go with a purpose. It’s nearly a four-hour journey to get there and another four to get back, but utterly worth the effort.

Because monks live at the retreat, each morning and midday devotees arrive to make dāna offerings of home-cooked food. By tradition, the monks eat only until lunchtime (at some temples it’s a bit later but never after 1 pm) and consume nothing substantial thereafter except permitted liquids and even then, there are rules to follow. So everything that is laid out will have been prepared fresh in people’s own kitchens. How much more authentic can the food get? When we visited Ruean Jaisai on 21 April 2025, we joined the lunch dāna and experienced the ultimate Thai-food moment. Simple yet sublime, every dish spoke of generosity, tradition and genuine home cooking. For that alone, I’m truly glad I was there.