On 27 November 2009, Bangkok Street Food, Cooking & Traveling in Thailand, a new travel and cookbook by Mr. Tom Vandenberghe and Ms. Eva Verplaetse, was launched at eetavontuur, a cooking studio, in Gent.
Consul Akrapong Chalermnon from the Royal Thai Embassy, Mrs. Aroonwan Kosiyakul, representative of the TAT office, food writers and more than 300 invited guests were present.
Tom first went to Thailand about 13 years ago and hesitated to try local street food. One day, a Thai spicy salad has changed his life! In his words ?this dish blew him away! Back home, he tried making the dish to surprise friends at a dinner party, hoping they would all enjoy the same sensation?. One thing of course led to another. He later decided to spend a year in Thailand, finding new places to eat, learning how to cook Thai food and organizing culinary tours. Back home, he has set up a cooking studio, known as ?eetavontuur or Eating adventure? where he teaches Thai cooking.
Consul Akrapong and Mrs. Kosiyakul commended Tom and Eva on the uniqueness of the book. Both the travel part and the recipes reflect fully what Thailand and Thai cuisine, even the local street food, can offer to tourists and visitors.
Everybody also had a chance to sample exotic and authentic dishes such as, spicy prawn soup, papaya salad served with grilled chicken and sticky rice, stir fried chicken with Thai basil served with Hommali rice and northern style sausage, all of which both the Consul and the TAT representative have reassured that they were very ?aroy? or delicious in Thai.
The book, published by LANNOO Publishers, appears in two versions, one in Dutch and another in English can be found at
