[x_section class=”pan man” style=”margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0 0px 0 0px; “][x_row inner_container=”true” marginless_columns=”true” bg_color=”” class=”pan man” style=”margin: 0px auto 0px auto; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; “][x_column bg_color=”” type=”1/1″ class=”pan man” style=”padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; “][x_custom_headline level=”h2″ looks_like=”h2″ accent=”false”]Oh, crab![/x_custom_headline][x_text]
Hua Hin’s best kept secret is this kitchen that serves fresh crabs from the creek that runs behind it
By C Y Gopinath • June 6, 2015
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If you want to taste the best crab in the world, try and get to latitude North 12.19420 and East 99.99381.
Following these coordinates will put you down on a winding country road in Pranburi, a district of Thailand’s Prachuap Khiri Khan province, barely 45 minutes by car from the popular beach resort of Hua Hin. The ocean is visible a few hundred metres off the road; you can smell the salt in the air, but it comes blended with the teasing aromas of seafood and Thai spices.
The road is lined on both sides with the sedans and SUVs of Thais and tourists fortunate enough to have stumbled upon this latitude and longitude — and now feasting on some truly exquisite crab, oyster and other seafood dishes.
The restaurant — Yok Sod, according to the Thai script on the signboard — is a roadside eaterie like hundreds of others in Thailand.
A high thatch roof dominates the entrance and provides cover to a spacious open kitchen, where a motley crew of Pranburi villagers toil at their woks. Buckets of the day’s catch — trussed blue crabs, catfish, lobsters, soft-shelled mud crabs — line the kitchen. A woman with a cleaver is presiding over the last moments of several crabs, with sharp clacks of her instrument.
Along the front, where the cooking burners are blazing, several Thais are cooking, but a swarthy man in spectacles stands apart from the rest. Clearly not a local. And Dr Thacharat Muttamara, Roj to friends, is definitely an outsider.
On a visit to Pranburi some months ago he was struck by two things — the abundance of fresh crabs in the creek, and the equal abundance of unemployed villagers. The result of his reflections on these themes was Yok Sod, arguably the finest crabmeat and seafood restaurant I have had the pleasure of dining in.
The eating area, beyond the entrance, is a serpentine gallery that follows the curve of the creek it adjoins. We took a table looking out on the mudflats; the tide was low, so the silt was exposed. As our eyes adjusted to the drab color, we began to see mud-colored life moving on the mud — mud crabs, salamanders, and other tidewater creatures.
What to expect
The crabs served at Yok Sod are caught fresh from the creek every morning. To ensure perfection, only ones about to most are picked.
One day you will sit at one of these tables and order from this menu, so I should share a few more observations about what it feels like —
1. Yok Sod is not casual dining, even if you happen to be living in Hua HIn, because getting there and back alone would take the better part of two hours. If you were traveling from Bangkok, the round trip alone would be between three and four hours. In other words, a Yok Sod lunch has to be planned single-mindedly as a Yok Sod lunch. It has to be the main event of the day.
2. The only air-conditioning at Yok Sod is the balmy breeze that blows in from the ocean, whose downside is that on a still day, it could get pretty hot, as on the March day we were there. This has two implications — first, you really need to be a crab-lover to want to eat at Yok Sod; and second, once there, you would need lots and lots of beer.
3. It’s popular with Thais — there’s your testimonial. We were the only non-Thais at Yok Sod on the Sunday we went. This is great news, by the way, because it means that Thais think this place is worth the long drive, and would come with their entire families and friends in tow.
Blogs such as this may change that, and one day Yok Sod may have its own air-conditioned room and ATM machine, and offer discounts to Lonely Planet and TripIt members, but for now, it is pristine and unspoilt. Dr Tacharat still drives down every weekend and gets his hands dirty with all the men and women of Pranburi who make Yok Sod what it is.
Dr Tacharat, chef extraordinaire and Professor of Logistics at a Bangkok university, dreamed up the restaurant to fight ruthless middlemen who were fleecing the poor crab-catchers of Pranburi.
I got the GPS coordinates to Yok Sod from a blog that described the food here as “sophisticated food cooked by simple folk” — a phrase that captures perfectly the nuanced fare here. Already Yok Sod stands out in my gastronomic memory as the place where I first tried raw oysters; and where I first had crab that tasted like manna from heaven with no help from any spices or gravies.
The ins and outs of eating crabs
Dr Thacharat, a professor at a Bangkok University, started Yok Sod to bring employment to poor fishermen of Pranburi, and free them from the stranglehold of middlemen
So what sophisticated food did the simple folk of Pranburi cook for us that day? Well, crab more than anything else, for certain.
I googled out some information on crab chemistry and learned that the nutty, popcorn-like taste of cooked crab owes a good deal to the amino acid glycine, which crustaceans accumulate in their cells to balance the salt water. Glycine lends a sweetish taste to the crab’s flesh. The downside is that once a crab dies, its muscles are rapidly turned to mush by its own amino acids and enzymes.
If you’ve ever wondered why they keep crabs alive until they’re ready for cooking, now you know why.
If you’ve ever wondered why they keep them trussed up, you disappoint me, my friend. They tie ‘em up so that they don’t scarper back into the creek.
There are many ways to murder a crab. You can smother it in mayonnaise, add red pepper, salt and spring onions, and freeze it, cut in into cakes and bake it, and pretend it’s still crab.
You can mix it with mustard and Worcestershire sauce, and pretend it’s still crab. You can take it to the ball with cream cheese, Nando’s sauce, whipping cream, green chillies, tomatoes, and pretend it’s still crab.
You can fry it up in balls with ginger, garlic, soy sauce and eggs, and pretend it’s still crab.
But if you’re a person of integrity, you will know that the only time a crab is a crab is when it’s steamed and served in its shell, with two or three inspired spiced sauces on the side. If it’s a failure, you’ll know at the first bite. And if it’s spectacular, you’ll know as the spoon moves towards your mouth.
At Yok Sod, Dr Thacharat has taught his team to pick the crabs with most meat just before they are ready to molt. He steams them in batches, with a sharp and failure-proof instinct for picking each one out at exactly the right moment. The recently deceased crustacean goes straight to heaven, and when you crack the shell open, creamy, sweat and savoury angels come dancing out.
I also had, for the first time in my young life, oysters. Served on a bed of spicy betel leaf, topped with shallots fried golden crisp, and dried shrimps, sweet basil leaves, and a twist of lemon.
The ingredients had married quietly before I rolled them up, and broke out in joyous juicy dance as they touched my tongue. Oysters, topped with golden fried shallots, coriander and basil leaves, and dried shrimp with a touch of a spicy sauce, and served on a bed of betel leaf.
While there, be sure to order an oddball vegetable soup called Gaeng Som, sour because of the orange-colored spice mixture used, and sweet in a seagoing kind of way because of the small crabs that have been sacrificed to the soup.
I encountered at Yok Sod, again for the first time in my life, a green sea vegetable called seablite that grows on the salt marshes along the coast. It is listed among ‘the useful, unwanted flora of Thailand’, and says it is salty enough to replace white salt in food, but what I ate was sweet, crunchy and unforgettable, stir fried with a little garlic, or tossed up with dried shrimps.
Why no one knows about Yok Sod
There is a small history of troublemaking to Yok Sod, and it will help you understand why the only way to get there is with its GPS coordinates. Before Dr Thacharat took matters in hand, local middlemen, it is said, used to buy crabs cheap from poor villagers and sell it to big hotels at flamboyant prices. Dr Thacharat began buying up local crabs from villagers at thrice the price they were getting from middlemen and serving them at Yok Sod at throwaway prices.
The middlemen struck back, tearing down his signage and setting fire to things. The good doctor smiled and look the other way, the Buddhist Middle Way. Over time, peace returned, but it was tacitly understood that the doctor would keep a low profile. This explains somewhat why so few people know about Yok Sod.
Besides Dr Thacharat is interested in the food more than the cash register — so as long as you book your crabs ahead of time and show up on time, chances are that you’ll have the meal of several lifetimes.
Both you and your wallet will leave with a big smile.
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