Pad Thai

History

Here's the surprise: pad thai probably dates only to the 1930s or 1940s. Author Mark Padoongpatt describes it as created in that period to rally national feeling ¹.

The man behind it was Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, usually called Phibun, prime minister and military ruler. Between 1939 and 1942 his government issued twelve cultural mandates to build a unified Thai identity. The first, on 24 June 1939, renamed the country from Siam to Thailand; others told people how to dress and to honour the Thai language ⁵.

Food joined the campaign. During the Second World War, floods and war caused rice shortages, and Phibun's government urged people to eat noodles instead of rice ¹⁴. The Nation adds that rice had become expensive to produce ⁴. Out of this push came kuai tiao pad thai, later shortened to pad thai ¹.

Now for the twist. Those noodles aren't originally Thai. Kuai tiao comes from the Teochew Chinese word for flat rice noodles, and rice noodles arrived with Hokkien and Teochew immigrants ¹³. Stir-frying in oil also came with Chinese migrants: traditional Thai cooking of the Sukhothai, Ayutthaya and early Bangkok eras didn't fry in oil ³. Food writer Kasma Loha-unchit points out that a dish named "Thai" in its own country hints at a non-Thai origin, and suggests Thai Chinese cooks created it ¹.

So who invented pad thai? The claims differ:

• A Thai government-backed site says Phibun created the dish to build nationalism from a Chinese one ³.
• Kasma Loha-unchit credits Thai Chinese cooks ¹.
• Bangkok's Thipsamai restaurant, which started as an unnamed street stall on a charcoal stove and opened formally in 1966, is credited with the original recipe; the story goes that the prime minister ate there and praised the noodles ⁴.

Each tells part of the story. What's clear is that a Chinese technique met Thai flavours under a government campaign.