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It wasn't the weather that first pulled me back to Bangkok, or the anything-goes atmosphere, or the milk chocolate, mystic river. It wasn't green curries or red light districts. It was simpler than that: I returned for ridiculous fried chicken.

Eight years ago, I was a hapless backpacker fresh off a flight from China. I checked into a hotel on lower Sukhamvit Road, nearby Nana plaza--an ignominious address. On my first stroll out of the hotel, three-wheeled tuk-tuks roared past, choking smoke, along with buses and taxis and shrill little motorbikes. The concrete overhang of Bangkok's skytrain, which runs overhead, brought all the commotion closer. Imagine Broadway if it cut through a concrete parking garage; everything was immediate.

You could smell the chicken from 50 feet down the street--smell the crunch and the spicy, crackling crust. You could almost taste it with your nose.

On the uneven sidewalks, sandwiched between tee-shirt vendors and streetwalkers and creepy sex tourists, there was food. Food of every shape and scent: sweet coconut cakes gently browning and bubbling, and seafood hotpots atop charcoal braziers; bananas coated in candy and sesame that danced in brown oil, and shreds of sour papaya salads tossed through a spicy bath in great wooden bowls. Clack-clap-clack went the mortars, transforming garlic, papaya, and chilies with fishy alchemy. But it was all too much for my senses, so I ducked down an alley. And there was a man with a bicycle that had a burner and gas tank wired to the back. A cooler of slippery marinating chicken sat beside him.

You could smell the chicken from 50 feet down the street--smell the crunch and the spicy, crackling crust. You could almost taste it with your nose.

I picked a thigh and a breast, which he cleanly whacked with a cleaver into five pieces each (once the juices have set, I think this is the best way to eat fried chicken--you get a better ratio of crunch and meat) and handed it to me in a plastic bag.

Then I had a moment. It was nothing short of revelatory.

I returned several times to the chicken man over the years, at his post outside the Foodland Supermarket on Sukhamvit Soi Five. When I brought my wife to this neighborhood several years ago, she too felt wobbly from the overwhelming immediacy of it all. But a few bites of this chicken brought her right back.

This year, I moved to Bangkok and forgot all about the chicken man--until the other night, when we had guests in town, and I smelled that smell, and spotted the bike, and even though we'd all just eaten, we shared a few chestnut-colored bits of chicken.

"That's the best fried chicken I've ever had--it's ridiculous!" said my brother-in-law. I smiled and chewed, as blaring horns and working girls on uneasy heels disappeared in a haze of juicy, deep-fried goodness.

Sukhamvit Soi Five Fried Chicken

Note: You can read more about my fried chicken misadventures here--it took me nearly a week to find the vendor in question. Here's an excerpt:

.I was so eager to get this post up that I wrote it in a flash over Songkran, and then came to a rude realization: the Chicken Man had returned to his village for the holidays. What followed was a stakeout of sorts - I've been back to that unholy stretch of Bangkok three times in the last five days, and last night, at around eleven PM, I finally found him.

And I got his recipe, thanks to my Thai teacher/translator/stakeout companion Jumbo's mastery of flattery (and the fact that we ate seven pieces of his chicken).

Something tells me I should go buy a motorbike, wire a propane tank to one side, a burner and bucket to the other, and start earning.

I've tweaked the recipe a bit, as he gave me a scribbling for a 20kg batch. Mister Pee, as he calls himself, bought this recipe for 2,000 Baht ($56) from a friend in Kanchanaburi Province, eight years ago.

He later sold it to the Royal Benja Hotel down the street for considerably more, and so he gave it to me for free. My translator Jumbo and I did eat seven pieces of chicken before the end of the interview, however.

Ingredients:

    • 2kg chicken legs and thighs, skin on (wings also work well)
    • 4 large coriander (cilantro) roots, very lightly scraped (try using your thumbnail) and chopped fine
    • 10 coriander stems, chopped fine
    • 3 tsp whole black peppercorns
    • ½ tsp red pepper flakes
    • 14 cloves garlic, medium size, chopped
    • 2 tsp salt
    • 2 Tbsp fish sauce
    • ¾ cup plus 2 Tbsp rice flour (important - gives it a crackling crunch)
    • 150ml chicken stock

First, finely chop the coriander roots and stems, and peel and roughly chop garlic. Place coriander and peppercorns into a mortar and pestle and pound to a paste, then add garlic and cayenne pepper and salt, continuing to pound to a fine paste.

Stir in fish sauce and chicken stock and mix well. Then gradually incorporate the rice flour until you have a smooth, wet batter.

Marinate chicken in this batter for at least two hours (ideally overnight)

Take chicken out of the fridge and allow to reach room temperature before frying in oil at 350 to 375°F until just past golden brown. Allow chicken to cool on paper towels for a few minutes, then chop into pieces if you like, or serve whole.

Thai Sriracha sauce makes a nice little dipping sauce, but it's not necessary.