South East Asia Research, 17, 3, pp 489–509

The good, the bad and the ugly:‘eastern spaghetti’ in Thailand1

Thanes Wongyannava

Abstract: Just as Spaghetti Westerns gained popularity in Thailandin the 1960s, so too did certain types of Italian cuisine, most nota-bly macaroni and pizza. In present-day Bangkok, Italian food hascome to dominate the lifestyle of the middle and upper-middleclasses, albeit frequently adapted to Thai tastes: hence ‘easternspaghetti’ and pizza tom yam kung, with tomato ketchup on theside. It is commonplace for national cuisines to be adapted on im-portation into another country. Besides, Thai diners do not appearto be particularly concerned with authenticity – so much so thatone Italian restaurant in the Silom area, a business district of Bang-kok, even placed a big banner in front of the building advertising‘inauthentic’ or ‘hybrid Italian food’ under the slogan: ‘Italian Foodwith Thai Flavour’. Moreover, the most revered foreign cuisine inThai culinary history was not Italian but French (and to some extentEnglish), dating from the two visits made by King Chulalongkornto Europe in 1897 and 1907. Nor does the current ‘Italmania’ forfood in Thailand come as a result of close diplomatic ties with Italy,but rather as a consequence of the popularity of Italian food in theUK and the USA, dating especially from the era of the VietnamWar. However, no matter how much Thais might love Italian cui-sine, they prefer not to eat it on a daily basis, and many feel it to betoo rich and greasy [lian], especially when living abroad with lessaccess to familiar Thai dishes. Just as Chulalongkorn brought hisown food supplies with him to Europe, so too do outbound Thaitour guides carry chilli paste and fish sauce. Former Thai PrimeMinister Khukrit Pramoj summed up the experience of travellingabroad by noting that as a Thai he wanted rice, not bread. Of all

1 I would like to thank those who commented on this paper during the conference onThe Ambiguous Allure of the West and the Making of Thai Identities, hosted by theSoutheast Asia Center at Cornell University in November 2004. I am also grateful toThanapol Limapichart, Farung Srikhaw, Kamoltip Chaengkamol, CheerapholKetchumphol, Sutharin Koonphol, Sumon Wongwonsri, Thongchai Winichakul andPatrick Jory for their remarks on the piece, and Thak Chaloemtiarana for the won-derful hospitality. South East Asia Research would also like to thank Mulaika Hijjasfor her editorial work on the article.

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the aspects of human behaviour, food habits are among the mostdifficult to change; nevertheless, change they do. Thais, especiallythe elite, do not have a ‘monotheistic cuisine’. If one can pay re-spect to Brahminism, animism, Buddhism, monarchism andChristianity, then one can also eat a variety of foreign foods.

Keywords: culinary authenticity; Italian cuisine; French cuisine;King Chulalongkorn

Author details: The author is a Lecturer in Political Science at the Fac-ulty of Political Science, Thammasat University, Bangkok 10200,Thailand. E-mail: twongyannava@hotmail.com.

The 1966 movie Phet tat phet [Diamond Cuts Diamond] is the title ofone of the most popular ever Thai action films, its success marked bythe fact that a Thai restaurant even named itself after the film; andwhen Sergio Leone’s For A Few Dollars More was released in Thai-land, it took the related title, Meu peun phet tat phet [TheDiamond-Cuts-Diamond Gunman]. The same applies to The Good, theBad and the Ugly, which was named in Thai ‘Meu peun phet tat phetII’. Leone’s success, as well as the influx of other ‘Spaghetti Westerns’such as Sergio Corbucci’s Django and Duccio Tessari’s Ringo, to namebut two, was making Hollywood Westerns redundant for Thai movie-goers.

Italian cowboy films did indeed pose a threat to the American filmindustry. The term ‘Spaghetti Western’, coined by the Americans, wasmeant to be pejorative. The Italians defended themselves by using theterm ‘Macaroni Western’ instead. The popularity of using culinary termsto label ‘inauthentic’ or alien westerns spread: there were ‘SauerkrautWesterns’ (produced in West Germany), ‘Paella Westerns’ (internationalco-productions shot in Spain), ‘Camembert Westerns’ (France), ‘ChopSuey Westerns’ (Hong Kong) and ‘Curry Westerns’ (from India).2

Although American westerns could be considered ‘authentic’, sincethe genre was the one type of film in which Hollywood could claimoriginality and ‘Americanness’, the western in fact came to be repro-duced in many parts of the world.

Almost four decades after the Italian appropriation of the classic

2 Christopher Frayling (1981), Spaghetti Western: Cowboys and Europeans from KarlMay to Sergio Leone, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, p xi.

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American film genre created the Spaghetti Western,3 Italian food hasbeen adopted and adapted around the world. In Bangkok, Italian foodhas come to dominate the lifestyle of the Thai middle and upper-mid-dle classes. According to the Thai manager of one Italian restaurantchain with 35 outlets, Italian cuisine ‘is now part of their lives’.4 Yetwhile the authenticity of Italian cuisine served outside Italy may beimportant to Italians and their government,5 it is of little interest toordinary Thais, who prefer their Italian food to have a Thai flavour –what might be called ‘eastern spaghetti’.

From the time of King Chulalongkorn (r 1868–1910) – who trav-elled to Italy, but for whom Italian food held no appeal – to the presentday, when Thai restaurant-goers prefer their pizza with tom yam kungtopping, Thai judgments of foreign cuisines have not been concernedwith issues of authenticity. That Italian food in Thailand is so differentfrom how it is in Italy has to do not only with the commonplace adap-tation that any cuisine undergoes when imported into a foreign country(the food served in Thai restaurants in Europe and America comes tomind), but also with the fact that the most revered foreign cuisine inThai culinary history was not Italian but French. English cooking wasalso influential. In addition, the influence of a third country shaped thekind of Italian food served in Thailand – namely, America. This paperexplores the stages of Thai contact with Italian food, Thai consumers’judgments of that food, and the evolution of ‘eastern spaghetti’.

King Chulalongkorn’s encounter with Italian food

Chulalongkorn’s first trip to Europe, in 1897, seems to have been anarduous experience with regard to food. At sea, he was unable to eatanything except boiled rice with nam phrik phao [red chilli paste mixedwith shrimp]. But by the time of his second and final visit a decadelater, he was very satisfied with the well prepared Thai and Europeanfood.6 On the voyage, he surprised all the Westerners on board by eat-ing Thai food that he had brought along. Even after two-and-a-half

3 Frayling, supra note 2, at p xi.4 Bangkok Post, 30 March 2005.5 See, for instance, efforts to protect the authenticity of Neapolitan pizza, reported in

‘Italy’s Pizza Police’, Newshour, BBC Radio, May 2004. As Thai food has becomemore popular internationally, the Thai government has followed the same path, al-beit with respect to the economy first and to culture only secondarily.

6 King Chulalongkorn (1973), Klai ban Vol I [Far Away From Home, Vol I], PhraePhithaya, Bangkok, pp 15–16.

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months in Europe, the King was still able to enjoy Thai meals, even ifit was just simple food such as fried eggs dipped in shrimp sauce. Onone occasion, he lamented that his entourage had thrown away the fishsauce that had been brought from Bangkok, but later admitted that evenleftover chilli paste was better than none at all.7 During his trip to theScandinavian countries, he had to cook nam phrik himself, but foundthe taste almost unbearable, declaring in a letter that he would cer-tainly not have eaten it had he been in Bangkok.8

In the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, King Chulalongkorn enjoyed Frenchbaguettes, and even wished that they could be made in Siam.9 But how-ever much he enjoyed Western food, he lamented that in Singapore heate his last Thai meal and chewed his last betel-nut quid before he wasforced to abandon everything Thai.10 After Singapore, he realized thatthe pleasure of eating Western food would diminish because from nowon it was his only option. The further away from Thailand he was, theless he enjoyed Western food. In other words, he enjoyed Western foodas long as it was only one choice among many, especially when ac-companied by Thai food. Furthermore, eating Western food was lessfor enjoyment than for demonstrating his sophistication to Western elites.

Arriving in Naples, the King was surprised not to find people dressedup in top hats, but rather only the ‘bad classes’: old people carryingbelongings, children with ragged clothes playing in the streets and gam-bling with the money that they had obtained from picking pockets.11

Neapolitan food proved just as disappointing, with the King remarkingthat the local restaurants were so dirty that he had to eat at interna-tional restaurants instead. In this, he was probably no different fromthe many tourists who did not care to taste local Neapolitan cuisine.The King observed that large numbers of English tourists flocked toItaly and stayed in hotels with English names.12 He noted that the Ital-ians were so poor they had to rely on tourism, and particularly uponEnglish tourists.13 The phenomenon of foreign tourists searching out

7 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 626.8 King Chulalongkorn (1973), Klai ban Vol II, Phrae Phithaya, Bangkok, p 97.9 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at pp 21–22.10 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 36.11 Similarly, Prayoon Pamornmontri, one of the members of the coup group that over-

threw the absolute monarchy in 1932, travelled through Italy in the 1920s and wrotethat Italians in the south wore ragged clothes and were without shoes. PrayoonPamornmontri (1975), Chiwit ha phaendin khorng khaphachao [My Life With theFive Reigns], Bannakit, Bangkok, p 91.

12 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 278.13 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 284.

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food familiar to them was the norm at the time, with the idea of seekingout exotic food not yet widespread.14 The problem, therefore, was notonly hygiene, but also that the local Italian food did not suit the palateof either the Thai monarch or the English tourists.

Despite the lavish dishes he was served,15 among all the tastes ofNaples the King enjoyed the spring water more than anything else.16

During the first course of one particular meal, he struggled to eat spag-hetti. In a letter to his children, he described as a novelty the properway of eating it, with the fork in the right hand and the spoon in theleft.17 Since his time, practising how to eat spaghetti has continued tobe a part of learning Western table manners among the Thai elite, espe-cially before going abroad to study.18 While he listed the subsequentcourses (boiled rice with chicken liver mixed with mozzarella and lemon,fried boneless fish with freshwater prawns and squid,19 followed by abeef dish), he found little to report about them. Nor was he impressedby Italian wine, declaring repeatedly that it had no taste (including thefamous Chianti).20

In San Remo, King Chulalongkorn had to eat what he called ‘khaotang’ [rice crust], a dish named by Prince Boripattara in which ricewas formed in a hollow mould, turned out and filled with stuffing.However, he thought that the rice was undercooked, making it inedible– no wonder, he stated, that Westerners had indigestion problems.21

When it came to the question of agriculture, he thought that the Medi-terranean coast of Italy was very unlikely to produce enough food forlocal consumption, because he could not see any fields of corn or wheat,while the water supply was rather low, consisting of only small streamsand creeks.22 In terms of both food and agriculture, then, he found Siamclearly superior to Italy.

14 See Lisa Heldke (2003), Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer,Routledge, London.

15 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at pp 189–191.16 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 195.17 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 195–196.18 M.R. Jakkarod Jittapong (2004), Kao khao su quarter sut-thai haeng chiwit, quarter

thi neung: chiwit tang-tae koet jon banlu nitiphawa, 2487–2507 B.E. [Approachingthe Last Quarter of Life, First Quarter: From Birth to Adulthood, 1944–1964], NanmiPublications, Bangkok, p 85.

19 Surprisingly, the King had little to say about eating this dish, which included squidink, even though generally the Siamese did not eat this. Chulalongkorn, supra note6, at p 196.

20 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 250.21 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at pp 236–237.22 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 265.

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King Chulalongkorn also visited a restaurant for the poor during alocal holiday, but he remarked that the meat soup with luk deuai [Job’stears], garnished with cheese, was tasteless.23 The beef stew containedonly a small piece of beef, contradicting the false assumption that West-erners ate a lot of meat. Ordinary Italian food at the time consisted ofonions or other vegetables sautéed in olive oil, then eaten with bread.24

Not only was the diet of ordinary Neapolitans impoverished,25 in theKing’s view it also contained too much garlic.26 This did not suit thetastes of the Thai elite, as garlic was associated with the Chinese. Alongwith a similarity the king noted between the Italians’ use of olive oiland the use of lard by the Chinese,27 this no doubt brought down theKing’s estimation of the Italian style of cooking.

The rise and fall of French cuisine in Bangkok

Of all Western cuisines, the French has been the most highly veneratedin Thailand, especially within the top echelons of Thai society. KingChulalongkorn undoubtedly preferred the food of France. Neverthe-less, he still thought that the mineral water from Evian that he wasserved was tasteless.28 In Paris, he was impressed by the world-renownedrestaurant, La Tour d’Argent, writing of the popularity of its famouspressed duck (of which he ate two). However, Chulalongkorn’s ran-dom selection of dishes from the menu displeased the French chef, andeventually the King allowed the chef to choose for him. The thick soupand fish with sauce and prawns delighted the King, who admitted hehad never had anything like it before. He praised all the dishes as ‘verydelicious’, words he had never used when talking about Italian cui-sine.29 In fact, Chulalongkorn even preferred English cuisine to that ofItaly – though he found the banquet he attended at Windsor too fastidi-ous.30

The King translated Western cookbooks for the Thai court, althoughit is impossible to establish what books he used as his sources or the

23 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 356.24 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at pp 357–358.25 Carole M. Counihan (2004), Around the Tuscan Table: Food, Family, and Gender in

Twentieth Century Florence, Routledge, London, p 4.26 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 357.27 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 358.28 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 221.29 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at pp 698–701.30 Chulalongkorn, supra note 6, at p 718.

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date of the translations. Some of the recipes – for oatmeal soup andbarley soup, for instance – were suggested by a Western doctor as be-ing beneficial for the King’s daughter.31 The King’s translation, probablythe first Western cookbook in the Thai language, was first published in1936.32 That the recipes in the royal cookbooks were not only for Frenchbut also for English cuisine shows the cultural as well as political in-fluence of the English. Isabella Beeton’s The Book of HouseholdManagement was used by the Siamese elite from the late nineteenth tothe mid-twentieth century.33 Under the influence of English cooking,savoury puddings became very popular, especially sheep brains andtongue pudding.34 English cuisine was a part of everyday life for manyof the Siamese elite, whereas French cuisine was mainly for specialoccasions such as state functions. In contrast, the only Italian dish toappear in King Chulalongkorn’s Western cookbook was macaroni, thenknown as ‘paeng lort’ [literally, ‘tube flour’] and considered a dish forspecial occasions.35 On the whole, however, Italian cuisine was notserved at royal or state banquets. The royal chef, Khwankeo Vajarodaya,trained in Switzerland and cooked French cuisine. The influence ofFrench haute cuisine continued as late as 1972, when the state banquetheld for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburghfeatured Consommé Royale, Mousse de Jambon, Glacée Monte-Carlo,Caneton Braise à l’Orange, Pommes Croquette, Salade de Betteraveand the local innovation named after the Bangkok palace, BombeChitlada Petits Fours. Both the white and red wines were French (PulignyMontrachet and Chateau Mouton Rothschild) and the champagne was

31 Chulalongkorn (2002), Tamra kap-khao farang [A Cookbook of Western Food], AmarinPrinting, Bangkok, p 9.

32 Khwankeo Vajarodaya, ‘Preface’, in Chulalongkorn, supra note 31. One of the firstgeneration of the Thai cookbooks, Mae-khrua hua pa [The Lady Chef] by PlianPhatsakorawong, the wife of Chao Phraya Phatsakorawong (Phorn Bunnag), ap-peared in 1907, but prior to this well known ‘lady cookbook’ came another Thaicookbook prepared by an American missionary in 1898, together with Tamra kapkhao khorng Sam Jean (Rachanupraphan), which was published in 1890. However,the recipes of this missionary cookbook involved Western rather than Thai food.Nak-rian Darunee, Rongrian Kunlasatri and Wang Lang, eds (2003), Pathanukromkan tham khorng khao khorng wan yang farang lae siam [Anthology of CookingMain Dishes and Desserts in Western and Siamese Style], 2 ed, Sri Panya, Nonthaburi.

33 Thanes Wongyannava (2003), ‘Khwam pen anitjang khorng ahan jin chan sung naikrungthep: kan doen thang khorng ahan ‘prachathippatai’ [The impermanence ofChinese haute cuisine in Bangkok: the path to democratic cuisine], Sinlapawatthanatham, Vol 24, No 4, February, p 134.

34 Mae Ob (1927), Tamra kap-khao phiset [Cookbook for Special Dishes], Kasem PanichPublisher, Bangkok, p 5.

35 Chulalongkorn, supra note 31, at p 107. Mae Ob, supra note 34, at p 7.

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G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge. Only the sherry was English (Sandeman).36

Italian cuisine and wine were almost unknown at Thai state banquets.

The rise of Italian food in Thailand

In today’s Bangkok, however, Italian food is far more popular thanFrench. An Italian chef who owns a small Italian restaurant in Bang-kok claimed that probably ‘one Italian restaurant opens every month’.37

The number of Italian restaurants has grown so drastically that in 1999Italian chefs decided to establish the Italian Chef Association of Thai-land. Italian restaurants setting up in luxurious premises, such as hotelsor shopping malls, are inevitable nowadays. Many of the five-star hotelsin Thailand have Italian restaurants, though not necessarily French ones.Many big cities in Thailand also have Italian restaurants; and in 2009,nearly 1,000 were to be found in Bangkok alone.

Although the first French restaurant in Bangkok, Le Chalet at theErawan Hotel, was established as early as the 1950s38 and a Michelinthree-star French restaurant was opened on the top floor of a hotel over-looking Lumpini Park in 2004, French restaurants have not done aswell as Italian restaurants. Of the almost 200 restaurants listed in Bang-kok: Dining & Entertainment, 2004, only 13 are French.39 Many Frenchrestaurants in Bangkok have gone out of business because French foodis considered too complicated and pretentious, even among the Thaiupper-middle and upper classes.

As the number of Italian restaurants has dramatically increased, Ital-ian food products, from cheese to wine, coffee to olive oil, etc, havealso grown enormously in popularity. Between 1998 and 2002, for in-stance, sales of olive oil grew by 146.49%, while cheese sales leapt650%.40 Demand for imported Italian foods has increased so rapidlythat occasionally there are shortages, and local producers of Italianspecialities have emerged. Mozzarella is now made in Hua Hin andmascarpone is produced in the North East. Like macaroni, which has

36 Thawatchai Theppituck (2004), ‘Wine kheun toh maha-ratchini’ [Wines on the tableof the great queen], Taste: Krungthep Thurakit Newspaper, 13 August, p 15.

37 Interview with Chef O, 24 August 2004. The real names of the chefs interviewed forthis paper have been withheld.

38 Bangkok Post, 2 July 1960.39 The restaurants listed in this magazine seem to be only those considered suitable for

Western tourists.40 Thailand’s Trade Information System, Office of the Permanent Secretary, Ministry

of Commerce, Thailand.

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been popular since the late nineteenth century, in the late twentiethcentury Italian pasta, especially black pasta, overtook macaroni as apart of middle-class Bangkokian meals. Squid ink dishes, particularlypasta, have become some of the most sought-after dishes among Thaifans of Italian cuisine. Tiramisu, although considered very rich by someThais, especially the older generation (due to its creaminess)41 has be-come the most popular Italian dessert in Thailand. In addition, varioustypes of Italian coffee have followed in the wake of Italian cuisine, butits growth is due to the expansion of American companies that haveintroduced Italian coffee to Thai customers, rather than the Italiansthemselves. For Thais, macaroni, rather than spaghetti, is most associ-ated with Italy.42 From schools to business cafeterias, macaroni hasbecome a part of Thai daily food. Thai fried macaroni, whether withshrimp or chicken, is always mixed with ketchup and onion. Mean-while, macaroni tho [macaroni in a bowl],43 was a popular dish in the1960s, although it is little heard of now.44

In Thailand, ‘Italmania’ for food is not a direct result of relationsbetween Thailand and Italy itself. Unlike America, the UK or evenFrance, Italy does not have a sizable expatriate community in Thai-land, and the Italian Embassy does not have an organization promotingits culture on a par with the Goethe Institute, the Alliance Française orthe British Council. Italy never had particularly close ties with Siam,except in terms of the arts and architecture. Even this influence hasbeen supplanted with the predominance of the American influence inart and architecture since the 1960s. The era of ‘the far-sighted “geo-political” vision of Chulalongkorn’ who ‘turned to Italian artists andarchitects to counter-balance the expansionism of other European

41 Si Mon [the pseudonym of Maliwan Simon] (2003), Ahan thai bon toh farang [ThaiFood on the Western Table], 2 ed, Wiriya Company, Bangkok, p 116. Si Mon’s arti-cles on food were published in the legendary women’s magazine Satri san beforeappearing as a book.

42 Thidarat Noisuwan (2001), Sip thalay [Ten Seas], Amarin, Bangkok, p 115. Manydecades ago when international football matches were televised, the announcer wouldcall the Italians the ‘macaroni team’, and the term ‘macaroni’ is still used to referinformally to Italians.

43 The closest Italian dish I can think of is probably Baked Timbale of Ziti Pasta, whichis a typical dish made for weddings in the province of Caserta in Campania. SeeAntonio Carluccio and Priscilla Carluccio (1997), Carluccio’s Complete Italian Food,Quadrille Publishing, London, p 161.

44 Anusorn nai ngan chaphanakit sop nang sao Sangiam Khunakom na wat plapachai[Cremation Volume for Miss Sagiam Khunakom at Wat Plapachai], 9 June 1966, p29.

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countries’45 is today just a reverie of Thai nationalism. While manyThai artists were once trained in Italy and accepted Corrado Feroci(known among Thais as ‘Silpa Bhirasri’) as the founding figure of modernThai art, today’s younger generation of artists whose names are knowninternationally no longer have an Italian education. The former appre-ciation for Italian arts and architecture has vanished, while Italian cuisine,which was never previously appreciated, is now highly regarded. Whatcan have brought about this change?

The ugly Italian? American fast food and Italian cooking

The expansion of Italian cuisine in Thailand has in part been a conse-quence of the popularity of Italian food in England and more particularlyin the USA. Also, as a healthy diet has become a major concern amongthe educated class, olive oil has been widely publicized as being healthy,which has complemented the image of Italian cuisine as healthy. ‘Ital-ian’ cuisine outside Italy, especially in the USA, is the cuisine of northernItaly. The revival of Italian cuisine in the USA in the 1980s46 has had amajor impact on the expansion of Italian cuisine in Thailand from theearly 1990s by introducing only northern Italian food and chefs. Thisis not the first time that the Anglo–Americans have played a major rolein the popularization of foreign food in Thailand.

Pizza parlours have in fact been around for more than 40 years, withearly examples such as the Pizza Shack and Mario’s Pizza, which openedas a result of the American presence in Bangkok at the beginning of theVietnam War. Mario’s Pizza is probably the oldest pizza restaurant inBangkok, serving not Italian-style but American-style pizza. When theVietnam War ended, the American franchised eating places closed, dueto the unpopularity of the food itself as well as the problem of the lowincomes of Bangkokians at that time, which made it difficult for themto afford expensive fast food.47 In Bangkok, fast food was never asso-ciated with cheap food. Eating out in Bangkok was generally consideredexpensive.48 It was not until the late 1970s, after economic growth and

45 Leopoldo Ferri de Larara and Paolo Piazzardi (undated), Italians at the Court ofSiam, Amarin Printing, Bangkok, p 73.

46 Linda Civitello (2004), Culture and Cuisine: A History of Food and People, JohnWiley & Sons, New York, pp 302–303.

47 Ponsawan Wongkanchanakul (2000), ‘An empirical analysis of a franchise systemin Thailand focused on the fast food business: case study of the Pizza Public Co Ltdsuccess franchisee in Thailand’, unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Eco-nomics, Chulalongkorn University, pp 7–8.

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the expansion of the Thai middle class, that franchised fast-food out-lets were re-established in Bangkok.49

The first American franchise pizza outlet opened in Pattaya in Dec-ember 1980.50 Its target group was foreign tourists, because the franchiseholder, William Heinecke, was uncertain whether pizza would beaccepted by Thais. As Heinecke noted, ‘if Thais were not willing tocome to our restaurant, then we could rely on foreign tourists and the[US] marines’.51 American franchise pizza aimed solely at foreign touristswas based on the assumption that Thai people could not accept fastfood as a full meal.52 American pizza in Thailand, therefore, was madefor the Americans.

In 1966, however, a Thai pizza franchise was born. The first restau-rant was the Narai Pizzeria in the Narai Hotel. Before the explosion ofItalian food in the early 1990s, this was Bangkok’s most popular pizzaoutlet, and its success led to the establishment in 1987 of a franchiseindependent of the hotel. By the year 2000, Narai Pizzeria, which runsunder the slogan of ‘The Best Pizza in Thailand’, had 23 branches,compared with 116 Pizza Huts.53

Between 1990 and 1996, the four major segments of the fast-foodmarket consisted of fried chicken, making up 40% of the market; pizza,25%; hamburgers, 20%; and doughnuts, 15%.54 Fried chicken seemedto suit Thai tastes already familiar with roasted and fried chicken. How-ever, the second most popular form of fast food, pizza, was somethingquite new to the Thai palate. Although, as indicated above, pizza hasbeen sold in Bangkok for more than 50 years, it was originally limitedto the upper and upper-middle classes in Bangkok. But as the numberof students graduating from the USA has grown, American culturalinfluence has spread to all areas of life.

Traditionalism and innovationWhile the pizza served in Bangkok from the 1960s was American style,by the 1990s local franchises had created the new ‘khi mao kai pizza’,

48 Margaretta B. Wells (1966), Guide to Bangkok, Christian Bookstore, Bangkok, p 126.49 Mister Donut was the first successful pioneer, appearing in 1978. Ponsawan

Wongkanchanakul, supra note 47, at p 9; and from the mid-1980s, McDonald’s tookBangkok by storm.

50 Ponsawan, supra note 47, at p 54.51 ‘Pizza cuts a big slice of success’, Bangkok Post, 28 January 1999.52 Ponsawan, supra note 47, at p 9.53 Ponsawan, supra note 47, at p 22.54 Ponsawan l, supra note 47, at p 21.

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topped with stir-fried chicken with holy basil and lots of chilli, a dishnamed after heavy drinkers [khi mao] who love to eat very hot food.Following this successful innovation, more new toppings have beenintroduced to suit Thai tastebuds, including tom yam kung [hot andsour prawn soup] topping.

Apart from these innovative toppings, many Thais prefer to haveketchup on their pizza. Fast-food pizzerias always give four or fivesachets of ketchup to customers. S. Tsow, a lecturer at ThammasatUniversity, defended the Thai culture of ‘mixing things up, food-wise’in an article published in The Bangkok Post in 1999. He said that forAmericans or Italians, putting ketchup on pizza was blasphemy andcompletely unacceptable, but suggested that:

‘… if these intolerant foreigners would just try some ketchup ontheir pizza, they would find that it actually tastes pretty good. I wasideologically opposed to this innovation myself, until I tried it. Ordi-narily the Thai habit of mixing things up, food-wise, is an entirelypraiseworthy phenomenon. To take two or more existing productsand combine them in new and imaginative ways is a sign of clever-ness, of ingenuity indeed, of creative genius.’55

Like many other Thais, Tsow claims that ingenuity and adaptation areessential components of the Thai character. He also believes that ‘theThais have been so far too restrained in the adaptations they have madeto Western foods’. He thinks that ‘they should go much further’. Tsow’sadvocacy of intensified localization would no doubt displease Italianpurists (it should be noted that Tsow himself has limits, since he con-siders mixing Scotch whiskey with Coca-Cola to be ‘the ultimate sin’!)Innovation is not, however, out of the question for the Italians. On thecontrary, as Nino Bergese, the most celebrated Italian chef of the twen-tieth century once said, a chef has to be ‘inventive and refined….’ anda ‘great cook, at once a faithful interpreter’ of traditional cuisine and‘capable of exceptional new dishes’.56

The absence of a tradition of Italian cooking makes culinary innova-tion by chefs in Bangkok almost inevitable, especially as Thai dinersare not concerned about the authenticity of their food. Authentic cooking

55 S. Tsow, ‘Mixing things up, food-wise’, Bangkok Post, 20 June 1999.56 Jeffrey Steingarten (1997), ‘Hail Cesare’, in The Man Who Ate Everything, and Other

Gastronomic Feats, Disputes, and Pleasurable Pursuits, Alfred A, Knopf, New York,pp 207–208.

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that does not agree with Thai tastes will be considered bad. For in-stance, Thais who visit Beijing believe that Peking duck in Bangkokrestaurants is definitely much better than it is in its homeland. Thaichefs who cook foreign food seem as little concerned with authenticityas their customers. As Vipavee Charoenpura, the owner of one Italianrestaurant said, ‘our food is not fixed, it is adjustable. For example,salmon can be eaten with “jaew”, a hot-chilli-fish-sauce.’57 In fact, sucha combination does not occur only with Italian food, but also with Ger-man cuisine. For example, schweinehachse, a German dish of deep-friedpork knuckle, can be found in many Thai restaurants, where it is eatenwith ‘hot and spicy fish sauce’ rather than with mustard. Chef T, a veryfamous and popular Thai chef who cooks Italian food in a Thai style,also confirms the business imperative to adapt to suit the Thai palate.Even in high-end Italian restaurants designed in a minimalist and mod-ern style, Chef T claims that the Italian chefs eventually have to adaptto Thai tastes by, for example, adding chilli to their dishes.58 This Thaiattitude is the opposite to that of the feminist philosopher Lisa Heldkewho invokes the attitude of the ‘food adventurer’ in order to attempt tounderstand ‘faithfulness to a culture not one’s own’.59

Nevertheless, since 2002 the Italian Embassy in Thailand has madeattempts to protect the authenticity of Italian cuisine, setting up a pro-gramme to train Thai chefs and others interested in Italian food.60

Culinary traditionalism is not restricted to the Italians: the Thai gov-ernment has also tried hard to set standards for self-proclaimed Thaitraditional cuisine, because it knows perfectly well how much moneycan be earned from national cuisine, domestically and internationally,once people, especially Westerners, wish to eat authentic cuisine.

There is probably no authentic foreign cuisine in Thailand, even includ-ing Indian and Chinese cooking. For Chinese cuisine, which has beenin Thailand for hundreds of years, localization and adaptation to Thaitastes has been inevitable.61 When a Michelin-starred French restau-

57 Rera [pen-name of M.L. Jirathorn Jiraprawat] (2004), Pakasinlapa: reuang khorngsen [The Art of Cooking: The Story of Noodles], Srisara, Bangkok, p 51. VipaveeCharoenpura started experiencing Italian food while she was studying in England.

58 Interview with Chef T, 17 September 2004.59 Heldke, supra note 14, at p 26.60 The course is no longer open to non-professionals.61 See Thanes Wongyannava (2001), ‘Cooking modernities: cooking Thai, cooking

Chinese and yum-ing them all’, paper presented at the International Symposium on‘Everyday Life Experience of Modernity in Thailand: An Ethnographic Approach’,13–14 January, Suan Bua Thani Resort, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

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rant opened a branch in Thailand, the manager of the restaurant wassurprised that customers mainly wanted to order rocket salad, eventhough the restaurant had more sophisticated salads to offer. All res-taurateurs in Bangkok know the limitations of their customers’ tastes.In 2004, the managing director of the Montien Hotel group, MontienTantakit, opened a Chinese restaurant, saying that Thai customers didnot want to eat authentic Chinese food, which emphasized meat andpoultry dishes and was very greasy.62

For Giannmaria Zanotti, the chef and owner of a famous Italian restau-rant in Bangkok,

‘The taste of our food does not need to be adapted. The taste weserve here is traditional. I don’t think that Italian cuisine needs toadapt itself to Thai tastes. And Thai cuisine does not have to adaptitself to the palate of Italians. Whatever kind of ingredients a cuisinehas, one must stick to those ingredients. If this changes, it is not thenational cuisine.’63

Authentic here therefore means replicable, either in terms of method oringredients.64 But following a particular method and set of ingredientsis not necessarily the way to authenticity. Zanotti admits that the big-gest problem is that the flavour of food that is prepared by differentpeople will vary accordingly. He also notes an important aspect of cook-ing foreign food in Thailand:

‘Thai food has a Thai flavour. Italian food has an Italian flavour.French food has a French flavour. This is the problem of the restau-rant… If I am a chef and I want to study Thai cuisine, I will take twoor three weeks, then I will be able to do it because I have the basicsin cooking Thai food. But after a while, I will automatically addsomething which is an Italian technique into it… This is the sameproblem that is happening to my Thai chefs two weeks after I allowthem to cook…But this is not a major problem that can’t be solved,since we have not prepared something different from the tradition.’65

This means then that only Italians are able to cook Italian food authentic-

62 Post Today, Section D, 13 August 2004.63 Rera, supra note 57, at p 34.64 Heldke, supra note 14, at p 2965 Rera, supra note 57, at pp 34–35.

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ally. That is, unless it is cooked by an Italian, authenticity in Italiancuisine in Thailand is unsustainable, because the Thai who is employedin an Italian restaurant in Thailand has not grown up in the tradition ofItalian cooking. To implant the tradition may not be a big problem forthose who run the business, but it also requires tight control and disci-pline after the long process of training. As long as there is no strictsupervision, the cultural transmission of foreign cuisine thus becomesa major problem. To have authentic Italian cuisine, one needs iron-fisted control, rather than the relaxed attitude to cooking that is portrayedby the rich and famous in glossy magazines.66 Cooking as a professionis not for relaxing and enjoyment, so a laissez-faire attitude is incom-patible with the ideal of authenticity, especially when the chefs are notnative Italians.

The Italian chefs who own the restaurants do not generally cook fortheir customers. Instead, those who cook are Thais – trained by Italians –whose ability to reproduce true Italian taste is therefore subject to doubt.Most Italian dishes sold in Bangkok, even at five-star hotels, are notsophisticated or complicated, but are mainly simple home-style cook-ing.67 The Italian chefs will only prepare food for important social andpolitical figures, for whom they cook speciality dishes. Culinary tradi-tionalism with regard to Italian food is not just a question of authenticity,but also of business, and the chefs will not instruct their Thai counterpartson how to prepare these dishes. In the world of haute cuisine, wherecompetition is great, even if all the techniques employed by ‘authentic’master chefs are passed on, none of the employees are thought or trustedto be able to reproduce their effects. The Thai method encapsulated in thesaying ‘khru phak lak jam’ [when the master takes a break, one steals andmemorizes], which is a well known method of knowledge transmission,is therefore necessary for Thai chefs. But the ‘khru phak luk jam’ methodrenders authentic cultural transmission impossible.

Thai views on Italian food

No matter how much Thais might love Italian cuisine, they could notstand having it every day; nor does the popularity of Italian cuisine in

66 From the British Independent Television (ITV) series, Hell’s Kitchen, it is evidentthat world-renowned chefs have an authoritarian way of conducting their business.

67 Interview with Chef S, 7 September 2004. This Italian chef has been working infive-star hotels in Thailand for three years. Like Chef B and Chef O, he is also fromthe northern part of Italy. It seems that most Italian chefs in Bangkok come fromnorthern Italy.

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Bangkok mean that every Bangkokian appreciates it. After living inSienna for six months and eating pasta at every meal, Jakkai Siributr, awell known Thai artist specializing in textiles, felt that Italian cuisinewas ‘lian’ [rich], despite his initial feeling that he could never tire of it.The thought of having Italy as his second home eventually vanished;he admitted that it could only be a place that he would like to visitfrequently as a tourist.68 In the end, he could not change his palate, andhis efforts to transform himself into an ‘Italian’ proved impossible.Reow Kittikorn and his friends, who work for a Thai film company,once had to attend the Milan film market. When there, Kittikorn foundthat he could not eat Italian, but only Chinese food. In a Chinese res-taurant, they met a Thai businessman who was in Milan to buy filmsfor his company; and who also wanted to eat only Chinese food whilethere. After a couple of days in Italy, all had become sick of eatingspaghetti and Italian food. One Thai decided not to eat spaghetti anymore, but Kittikorn, in his own words, had to ‘swallow it down’. Hecommented somewhat sarcastically in his book that this was a goodway to lose weight,69 portraying himself as a person who did not evenknow how to speak English, and had hardly any experience of travel-ling abroad. Kittikorn did not enjoy eating Italian food even when hewas in Italy itself. No matter how much the world praises Italian cui-sine, it is not tasty for Kittikorn.

Kittikorn is like many other Thais and people in various parts of theworld who cannot adapt their tastes when they travel abroad. Just asChulalongkorn took his own food supplies with him, over a centurylater most outbound Thai tour guides still have to bring along driednam phrik [chilli paste], fish sauce and dried chillies to please theirThai clients who are generally unable to eat any other kinds of cuisine,except Thai or spicy food. Former Thai Prime Minister Kukrit Pramojonce revealed that when he travelled abroad he wanted to eat the localfood and tried to avoid any kind of food that suited his palate, but inthe end he could not do it. He realized that he was strongly attached tothe tastes that were familiar to him. As a Thai, what he wanted wasrice, not bread.70

68 Jakkai Siributr (2003), Deum din kin daet [Drinking Earth, Eating Sunlight], Rawangbanthat, Bangkok, p 51.

69 Reow Kittikorn [pseudonym of Kittikorn Reowsirikul] (2004), Tak nao thi festival[Winter at the Festival], Dork ya, Bangkok, pp 40–42.

70 Kukrit Pramoj (1968), Nai loke khorng phom, lem 1 [In My World, Vol 1], Kao naPress, Bangkok, pp 66–67.

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Kukrit differs completely from the Director of the Tourism Author-ity of Thailand, Jutamart Siriwan, who prefers to eat the local food asmuch as possible whenever she travels, wanting to discover local tastes.71

Yet she admits that local food is generally a problem for those whotravel, regardless of nationality:

‘Eating and food are a major problem for those who travel abroad,no matter whether they are Thai or farang [Western] or other nation-alities. The cause of the problem is that the taste of the food of differentnationalities is different. As the monks would say, we are attached toour taste. When we go to a place that does not have food which hasthe taste we are familiar with, it causes us difficulty.’72

As Director of the Tourism Authority of Thailand who has to travel tomany countries to promote tourism for Thailand, Jutamart undoubt-edly needs to develop her own palate to suit Western cuisine.Nevertheless, she also desires ‘authentic’ foreign food, such as Italianfood, in Thailand, and she knows the places where she can eat ‘authen-tic Italian food’. But she never gives any comment on the differencebetween the authenticity of Italian food in Bangkok and in Italy. Ac-cording to Kukrit, who said that ‘the longer one stays abroad, the moreone desires to have rice; once one returns home, one longs for Westernfood’,73 Jutamart’s desire to eat ‘authentic foreign food’ is thus theresult of her experience in travelling abroad for long periods of timeand starting to acquire a new taste for foreign food. The ability to havea taste for foreign food is seen as a reflection of the cosmopolitan life-style of the Thai upper-middle class; whereas Thai commoners preferto have inauthentic, localized Italian food.

The authenticity of foreign food is a disappointment when it comesto Thai consumers, who discover that food in Italy is not what they hadanticipated. For Jakkai, the food and wine in Italy were like ambrosiaand nectar. But when Si Mon travelled in ‘the dreamy land of Italy’where one could dine under the sunlight, she found instead that her lifewas full of bitterness, not only in terms of the poor quality of the food,but also price-wise. She commented that the liquid that she had in thehotel did not smell like coffee, and turned grey when she added milk to

71 Kanokwan Phornphiranon, ‘Thiaw sanuk rap pi mai kap phu-wa thor-thor-thor’ [En-joy travelling at New Year’s time with the Director of the Tourism Authority ofThailand), pp 38–39.

72 Kukrit Pramoj, supra note 70, at p 66.

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it. Good Italian coffee, she believes, does not exist in Italy, but only inher fantasy of Italy. She recalled that every time her husband paid thebill it made him realize that the food at home was incomparable withthe Italian food served in restaurants in Italy.74 Furthermore, she thoughtthat even Italian food in Germany was much better than in Italy, espe-cially in terms of price. For Si Mon, having said that the best Italianrestaurants were to be found outside Italy – according to her, the bestItalian restaurant, especially in terms of atmosphere, is in Kowloon,Hong Kong.75 A review of Mario’s Pizza in Bangkok by ‘Friar Tuck’published in the discontinued English newspaper Bangkok World in1969, concurred, stating that the country of origin did not produce thebest Italian food. ‘It is a curious fact that, by and large, Italy is not theplace to go to eat the best pizza, pastas, spaghetti, and lasagna’. Headded this absurd tale, which reveals something about tastes in cuisine:

‘There is a story, probably apocryphal, of a state-side couple thatwent on a car trip of Italy who stopped for the night at a small townhotel and were given a spaghetti dinner. When the guests had eatentheir fill and conveyed to the manageress/cook how wonderful it hadtasted, she beamed and pulled out the box from which she had takenthe spaghetti to show them. “It should,” she said with pride, “It’s thebest American kind”.’76

According to these Thai diners, there is no guarantee that the best nationalcuisine is to be found in the country of origin; on the contrary, the bestcuisine may in fact be found elsewhere. The best Italian cuisine is inthe country where one lives, such as the USA or Germany, but not inthe country of origin, the country of authenticity. Following this line ofthought, it is no surprise to hear some Thais assert that the best Chinesefood is to be found in India, or even that the Thai food in Los Angelesis much better than that in Bangkok. Despite the fact that the belief thatgood Italian food lies elsewhere seems to be too vulgar for those whosearch for authenticity, inauthentic food is also desirable for many.

Although the number of Italian restaurants has grown so much thatItalian food now appears in up-market food courts on the top floors of

73 Kukrit Pramoj, supra note 70, at p 68.74 Si Mon (2003), Phak-chi, bai horm, horapha, saranae [Chinese Parsley, Spring Onion,

Sweet Basil and Mint], 2 ed, Wiriya Company, Bangkok, p 146.75 Si Mon, supra note 74, at p 149.76 Friar Tuck, ‘Mario Pizza Restaurant’, Bangkok World, 25 July 1969.

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well known department stores in Bangkok, not all Italian food is ac-cepted by Thais. Polenta is not particularly popular, and risotto is anotherrelatively unacceptable dish. For Thais, risotto looks like ‘dog vomit’,which is too disgusting to eat.77 Who would like to eat a dish that lookslike ugly ‘dog vomit’ [uak ma]? Not so many, of course. One Thai chefwho cooks Italian food himself does not like risotto, though he cooks itfor the customers in his restaurant.78 Vipavee Charoenpura more deli-cately describes risotto as being like ‘khao tom’ [boiled rice], but shestill likes the taste of risotto, especially shrimp risotto garnished withcheese.79

The Thai abhorrence of risotto is perhaps to do with its differencefrom Thai rice. Arborio, baldo, carnolli and vialone roma are consid-ered too tough for the Thais, especially the kernel, whether it is theexpensive carnolli or the cheap vialone nano. So Thais think that risottois too raw and hard. Following this food preference, pasta al dente isout of the question for many Thais, as for many British and Americans.No matter how good the risotto prepared by the Italians is, it is difficultfor Thais who are familiar with eating soft rice to enjoy the hardness ofrisotto, or indeed to come to terms with its appearance and flavour.

Conclusion

As Italian cuisine has become popular in Bangkok, its aesthetics hasinevitably ended up with the good, the bad and the ugly of Italian cui-sine produced by various types of people from Italians to Thais. Theproblem of cooking Italian food may be no different from that describedby Friar Tuck almost 30 years ago:

‘The main characteristic of Italian restaurants in Bangkok is that thequality of their offering is so uneven. I have been to each any numberof times, and have been served a hard, dry pizza one time, then re-turned after a while to have a soft, perfectly good pizza placed beforeme, the owner protesting all the while that the chef has not beenchanged.’80

Whether it is an American pizza place or an Italian restaurant, making

77 One of the Thai chefs whom I interviewed made this interesting remark, but hisname must be withheld.

78 Interview with Chef T, 17 September 2004.79 Rera, supra note 57, at p 52. As dairy products have become a part of food culture in

Thailand, cheese has become very popular among urban, educated Thais.80 Friar Tuck, supra note 76.

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pizza or pasta in Thailand is more than simply a question of culturalimperialism. As long as they do not suit the tastes of its local custom-ers, it is useless to identify the authenticity of cultural products. ChefB, who has been working as a chef in a top five-star hotel in Bangkokfor almost a quarter of a century, also pointed out the complexity ofmaking pizza here in Thailand. He argues that the high humidity ofThailand makes pizza soften easily, so it is possible that it is not asgood as in the West where the humidity is not as high. He estimatedthat only approximately 50% of Italian restaurants could be classifiedas good.81 Whether this figure is correct or an exaggeration is hard totell. But what he said shows that even when pizza is made in the Italianstyle, the taste is different.

Italian food in Bangkok is different from in Italy, though the attemptto maintain the tradition is there. One Italian restaurant in the Silomarea, a business district of Bangkok, placed a big banner in front of thebuilding advertising ‘Italian Food with Thai Flavour’. Advertising‘inauthentic’ or ‘hybrid Italian food’ in this way means that ‘authentic-ity’ cannot be sold among the Thais. Persuading Thai customers tocome to taste ‘inauthentic Italian food’ whose taste is not ‘lian’ likemost Western cuisine is completely different from the quest for, as wellas the attempt to sell, authentic food in American and European cities.

Defence of the authenticity of Italian cuisine is an attempt to expand‘monotheistic cuisine’, in which the spirit of ‘cultural culinaryvanguardism’ goes beyond the boundary of the nation-state as Italiancuisine continues to expand. The ‘monotheistic cuisine’ that has beenconstructed and orchestrated through the unified nation-state does notprovide a space for ‘polytheistic cuisine’. The tradition has only re-cently been invented within the sphere and consciousness of the boundednation-state: for example, Italy with tomato sauce in 1830,82 Francewith wine in the nineteenth century83 and Thailand with tom yam kung.Respecting the difference means accepting the bounded nation-statewhose sovereignty needs to be recognized. Respecting the tradition ofnational cuisine is thus a tribute to national sovereignty.

Under the doctrine of ‘respecting differences’, authenticity indicates

81 Interview with Chef B, 24 August 2004.82 Massimo Montanari (1996), The Culture of Food, translated by Carl Ipsen, Basil

Blackwell, Oxford, p 144.83 Kolleen M. Guy (2002), ‘Rituals of pleasure in the land of treasures: wine consump-

tion and the making of French identity in the late nineteenth century’, in WarrenBelasco and Philip Scranton, eds, Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Socie-ties, Routledge, London, p 41.

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the will to convert the other, rather than accepting others. In the age ofculture as a fixed property, the idea of ‘when in Rome do as the Ro-mans do’ has not gone out of fashion, because the new ‘Roman Empire’is expanding as if everyone is under its one overarching roof. Every-one in this new Empire has to be converted to the concept of‘monotheistic cuisine’. Nevertheless, the notion of ‘when in Rome…’also produces the counter-notion of ‘when in Bangkok do as the Bang-kokians do’. In other words, when in Bangkok cook as the Bangkokianseat. This does not mean that one has to venerate the traditions ofBangkokian cuisine, because in Bangkok, as in any other big city, thetradition of eating is a changing one.

Of all the changes in human behaviour, food habits are among themost difficult to change; nevertheless, change they do. Thais, espe-cially the elite, do not have a ‘monotheistic cuisine’. If one can payrespect to Brahminism, animism, Buddhism, monarchism and Christi-anity, then one can also eat a variety of foreign foods. It is in no waysinful to enjoy food that is not at all like mother used to make, as longas it can be localized.

Is it possible for Thais to accept that eating Italian cuisine, or anyother kind of foreign cuisine for that matter, means that one has to be apart of a process of ‘defamiliarization’ involved in enjoying differentcultural products? If it is not possible, does this then mean that if onecannot accept such difference one must eat only Thai cuisine? If so,then even the Thais will have to refrain from eating Thai food becauseit keeps on changing. They will also need to remain vigilant as to theorigins of their own beloved ‘authentic’ national dishes: the renownedtom yam kung with nam phrik phao was probably created only after theSecond World War by the Chinese!