Sharksfin Street

One reasons why I love Bangkok is the availability of interesting street food all around you at every hour of the day! Every hour of the day sees their local buying and eating food! It's a wonder how they remain so slim! Chinatown is especially famous for their sharksin soup. Every restaurant proudly display in their windows trays and trays of fresh sharksfin (with their prices) and some even include the huge dried fin. However, for those who can't afford the sometimes expensive sharksfin from the restaurants, don't fret...because the streets of Chinatown are full of sharksfin soup stalls at night!

Around 8pm, stalls like these will start dotting the streets of Chinatown. And because it's Chinatown, their signs have Chinese characters as well which makes ordering a lot easier for us who don't read Thai! This particular stall does sharksfin in 2 different sizes - THB300 and THB500 (which converts to slightly under RM30 and RM50).

You can order from them according to the prices they quote or you can choose your own sharksfin and they'll quote you the price. The second shelf of the stall is the fresh sharksfin. They lay it out on these flat rattan pieces (if you peer hard enough, you might see the fins which are the lighter brown frilly things on the rattan "plates").

And here it is! This was the THB500 bowl. It came served piping hot in a claypot bowl with a side of raw beansprouts and a very healthy dose of greens - parsley and spring onions. On the table is the omnipresent picked chillies, fish sauce, etc the Thais so love!

I especially fished out a piece of sharksfin to show you what it looks like. They're quite generous with their fins and it is considerably cheaper than eating it in KL. Often, a bowl costing RM80-RM100 gets you a bowl of goopy stuff with only a few fins while these are thick chunky pieces in a not-too-thick, fragrant broth without that same goopiness of the crabmeat-sharksfin combo.

I've tried both - those at the stalls and those in the restaurant and we've reached the conclusion that they're both pretty similar. The main difference, of course, lies in the prices (restaurant ones can sometimes be up to THB3,000 to THB6,000) and the size of the fins (restaurant ones are the real pao chi - thick pieces of fin).

Apologies to the activists out there...but this is one real lip-smacking treat!