Hi there all,

Pok Pok  is now accepting reservations for New Year's Eve. We will be doing a prix fixe Northern Thai menu, reservation only with 2 seatings at 6:00pm and 8:00pm. Please call us at 232 1387 or go to pokpokpdx.com to make a reservation. The menu is as follows and is $50 per person, not including beverages or gratuity:

Snacks and complimentary glass of bubbly

Naam Phrik Num
Northern Thai charcoal roasted green chili dip with sticky rice, steamed vegetables and pork cracklings.
Laap Plaa Neua
Northern Thai minced Tilapia salad with laap spices, fried shallots and garlic, sawtooth, mint, cilantro and crispy fried fish skin.
Kaeng Hung Leh
Classic Northern Thai sweet pork belly and pork shoulder curry with ginger, palm sugar, tamarind, turmeric, Burmese curry powder and pickled garlic. Rich and exotically spiced, made with Carlton Farms natural pork.
Kaeng Awm Kai
Spicy Northern Thai chicken soup with  lemongrass, galangal, garlic, shallots, smoke-dried chilies.
Kaeng Phak Kad Jaw
Northern Thai preparation of Chinese mustard greens, stewed with chilies, tua nao kaep and tamarind and topped with fried shallots.
Sunny’s Khanom Jiin Phat
Our friend Sunny Bovornwat’s family recipe for stir-fried rice vermicelli with soy, oyster, fish sauces and shallots, fried in pork fat.
Sticky Rice

 

Khanom Thai
Assortment of house made Thai sweets
Phonlamaay
Fresh fruit

 

As the 24 hour news cycle inevitably turns it's attention away from Burma and the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, thousands upon thousands of Burmese people continue to live rough with no shelter, little food and little in the way of help from their own government.  I am writing this to urge you to consider donating to aid agencies to help alleviate the problem. At this time Save The Children and other aid agencies are making renewed calls for donations as the government is finally being more cooperative and the need is as strong as ever. Also, please consider donating through the Burmese temple here in Portland. The Burmese monks have been leading the way in both relief work and political reform. Here is their website: http://www.portlandbuddhisthub.org/sirimangala/index.shtml#contact

http://www.worldvision.org/   http://doctorswithoutborders.org/  http://www.unicef.org/
http://www.savethechildren.org/

Recent update in pictures of the Burmese people's plight: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/in_pictures_surviving_cyclone_nargis/html/1.stm

    Dear Pok Pok customers,
    We are changing the way we cook our birds from now on, and here’s why: We are burning somewhere around 400-500 pounds of mesquite charcoal a week at this point. While the flavor achieved by cooking over hot charcoal is undoubtedly hard to replicate, the good of switching certainly outweighs the bad.
     First of all is the carbon/environmental footprint aspect; we are making a pretty big one both by burning and buying so much mesquite charcoal (which is linked to deforestation of the Sonoran Desert). Next cleanliness; the whole joint is covered with dust and soot 24/7 which fouls up filters, AC units, refrigeration etc. To top it off, the rotisserie is known to suddenly break in the middle of service!
    So, the recipe stays the same, but we will be spatchcocking and roasting the hens on a natural gas grill with lava rocks. We are holding the birds in a cleaner-burning pellet smoker BBQ to give the smoke flavor back that is lost by taking them off the charcoal. Our tests have been very successful and I am happy with the new product.
    We will continue to use some charcoal for the sateh grill and the clay stoves
for now, though we are testing other charcoals that burn hotter and cleaner than mesquite and hope to switch if we can get a steady supply.
    Thanks for understanding and please let us know what you think of the birds when you come in to eat.

Best, Andy

PS: The rotisserie will be kept around and used for special events and off-site functions in the future.

We will be exhibiting photos by Jerry Redfern in the Living Room, the upstairs dining room here at Pok Pok, starting the week of June 9th. All photos are pertaining to food culture in Southeast Asia and will be for sale.

Photojournalist Jerry Redfern grew up in Montana and worked at a newspaper in southern Oregon for a few years before pulling up stakes and moving to Southeast Asia. That was 10 years and many, many bowls of pho ago. His work appears in The New York Times, Gourmet, GEO, Der Spiegel, Wildlife Conservation Magazine and Archaeology magazine, among many others. His work has been exhibited at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia, the Angkor Photography Festival, the Tokyo Metropolitain Museum of Photography, and several of his images are part of the permanent collection at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan. He is a member of OnAsia photos, of Bangkok.

Jerry shares a website with his wife, author Karen Coates, at www.redcoates.net, and a new house near Albuquerque, New Mexico, though they still spend more than half the year in Asia.
You can reach him at jerry.redfern@gmail.com
 

The Tour:


Like eating at Pok Pok? Interested in learning more? Going to Thailand for a vacation? My friend Sunny and I will lead culinary tours of Chiang Mai and it’s environs. Private, gritty and personal, the tours will emphasize the regional and seasonal cuisine of the North of Thailand and will include first hand knowledge, hands-on cooking classes, market tours, farm tours, village tours, factory tours and lots of eating at restaurants, roadside stalls, and fresh markets, in both country and city. We offer an informed and in-depth view of Thai food and food culture that is opaque to the average tourist –be forewarned that this tour is not for the unadventurous, timid, or those seeking a luxury outing!


Our next tour will be in early April, scheduled to coincide with Songkran, the Thai New Year, a very important event which of course calls for the preparation of special foods and is celebrated by an enormous, free-for-all water fight in the streets, amongst other festivities. Songkran falls on April 13-15 and the days/weeks leading up to it is when we would like to kick this tour off.


The maximum number of people we can accommodate is 6, and we would prefer to have a group of folks who are acquainted so as to minimize potential personality/schedule conflicts, but we are flexible on this as long as you are. Tours will be 4 days in length and would be best done as a part of a longer vacation.


The cost for the April tour will be $125 USD per person, per day not including flights, hotels, alcoholic beverages or gratuities unless otherwise noted in the itinerary or contract.

The Guides:

Andy Ricker visited Thailand the first time as a backpacker in 1987. He has spent several months each year since his second visit in 1993 traveling, eating, cooking and studying food culture in Thailand and neighboring countries. He is the owner, executive cook and landlord of the award winning Pok Pok Restaurant in Portland, Oregon which opened in 2005. Prior to Pok Pok, he spent a good portion of his life working in restaurants all over the world before settling in Portland in 1990. A semi-retired rock musician and fully retired housepainter, he spends any spare time he has catching up on sleep and traveling when possible.

Sunny Chailert was born in Baan Mai near Chiang Mai, Thailand into a family of cooks, where he still lives in a small house on the Ping River with 14 dogs he has rescued and bred. Raised by his aunt who, with his mother, had spent time as cook's helper in the Royal Nawng Haan Palace in Chiang Mai, Sunny has had a lifetime interest in cooking. While earning his bachelor's and master's degree in information management he supplemented his income by selling food he made at home to his classmates and teachers, a practice he continues to this day in his position as head of serial publications at Chiang Mai University. Among his many talents Sunny speaks six languages and a few more dialects, is in the midst of writing a Northern Thai cookbook in English, is an active tour guide inbound and outbound from Thailand, and is involved in the Lanna Food Project for CMU and the Thai Government. Sunny is a well of information about Thai food, a great cook and a wonderful character to boot.


Itinerary:

Day 1
• Transfer to the hotel/GH by tour guide from airport/train or bus station, orientation to Chiang Mai city, concierge service between client and lodging. We will get you settled in, help in any way we can to make your stay comfortable, and then leave you to relax at your hotel and get acclimatized until the evening.

• Pick up at hotel, and out to dinner at a great Northern Thai restaurant. During dinner we will discuss the history, culture and food of the area and talk through the itinerary of the tour. After dinner, we will go hunting for Northern Thai sweets at roadside markets. Then to a local pub for drinks and some Thai drinking snacks.

• Return to hotel. Gonna need some sleep.

Day 2
• 7am muster at hotel for a trip to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai’s famous mountaintop temple, to make traditional morning food offering to monks, receive blessing and to view Chiang Mai Valley at first light from the temple.

• Breakfast at Jok Sompet, a very popular rice porridge restaurant back in town, supplemented by excellent fresh fried savory “donuts”.

• Visit of tour guide Sunny Chailert’s village, near Mae Rim outside of Chiang Mai. Baan Mai is a typical Northern Thai village where farming is the traditional occupation and where cottage industry contributes to the economy, much of it food related. There are curry paste makers, a rice liquor distillery, several makers of ready-made foodstuffs for the markets, flower growers, and artisans. After a walking tour of the village, we will have lunch prepared by Sunny’s family and friends and then tour of the local khanom jiin (fresh rice vermicelli) factory.

• After lunch back to Chiang Mai for a Thai traditional massage administered by blind masseurs, said to be the best practitioners of this art, and then back to the hotel/GH for a nap.

• Dinner at the food hawkers in the night markets around town, sampling different street foods such as noodles, seafood, sweets, grilled items, etc.

• Return to hotel for the night, early wake up call in the morning.


Day 3


• Early morning (7 am) muster to visit one of the largest fresh markets in the city, Talaat Muang Mai. First is breakfast in the market at a Chinese/Thai raan kafae featuring strong Thai coffee, rice soup, tea, grilled bread, and other morning treats. Then a walking tour of the market, identifying produce, meats and seafood and purchasing ingredients for the day’s cooking class.

• Drive into the countryside to Phrao abut 1½ hours from Chiang Mai to the Nature Lodge where we will spend the night and engage in several cooking lessons, a bicycle ride into the surrounding countryside to visit rice farms, a nearby Hill Tribe village and local market, herbal steam sauna, night fishing in the river, a big self prepared Northern Thai dinner and after dinner socializing, followed by a very quiet country night.

Day 4

• Breakfast at the lodge prepared by staff, then a scenic route back to Chiang Mai via an organic vegetable farming village where we will tour the fields, talk to farmers and learn about collective organic farming, Thai-style.

• Stop at one of the area’s famous prepared foods market to survey the mind-boggling variety of local dishes, and purchase many of them for a picnic lunch that we will eat at either a waterfall or a local swimming reservoir, depending on water levels.

• Return to hotel for rest and relaxation.

• Later, out to dinner at one of Chiang Mai’s hundreds of great restaurants, chosen by the group from a list given by the tour guide (they will all be great, you just choose the style of cuisine). Discussion of tour, question and answer time for anything covered (or not covered) during the past 4 days. Return guests to hotel or transfer to pub or disco (or both!) for a final farewell party.

Day 5
• Leisurely morning (gratis, optional) trip to Wararot Market to purchase cooking tools, ingredients, etc. to bring home from the tour, muster time agreed upon the night before.



“No finer guides exist than Andy Ricker and Sunny Chailert, as I found while part of their gastronomic tour of Chiang Mai, Thailand, and its surrounding fields, farms, and villages. From the vast open-air markets, where we sampled everything from lusciously spiced air-cured beef to juicy pomelos and buttery-sweet mangoes, to the hundreds of street carts selling everything from tiny, delicate coconut pancakes to crisp, slightly searing, sweet and sour pork ribs, each day was filled with delicious surprise. What makes a fabulous tour is passion and excitement, and these Andy and Sunny have without bounds as they shared endless dishes, discussing, comparing, oohing and aahing. I lost count of the times we screeched to a halt in front of a cart selling something extra-ordinary, like toasted coconut milk, spicy shrimp chips, sweetened sticky rice-stuffed bamboo, sauced and fried chicken, fried taro root and banana leaf wrapped sweets. Culture was honored as we climbed to a temple, visited artisans, toured a village, met a rice farmer. From the very first moment, through the tours and cooking classes, right up to that last sip of Thai rum, Andy and Sunny’s rollicking gastronomic tour of the back roads and byways of Chiang Mai was an unforgettably enjoyable adventure.”

-Susan Hermann Loomis, Author of “On Rue Tatin”
http://www.onruetatin.com/index.php