We Tried Bangkok's Legendary Crab Glass Noodles

It's a rainy day in Bangkok

and we're here to see the master at work.

We're here to get some crab with glass noodles.

This hall has been here for 38 years

and they've been making this stellar, well-awarded dish.

So here's the setup.

Four burners going on at once.

These modern iterations of the clay pot,

stainless steel pots, loaded with aromatics.

And chef has a very zen-like approach to the cooking.

This is one of my favorite places to stand

because you get to watch a master at work.

I mean, he's cooking with one fork.

This is maybe the coolest thing I've ever seen.

And he's slowly watching the doneness of the glass noodles.

It's a really simple dish,

which means that every single ingredient

needs to be perfect.

A lot of people have this idea

of what street eats is supposed to be.

It's frenetic, it's the middle of the street, it's crazy,

it's, like, all sorts of things going on, it's chaotic,

but this is one the most serene, clean,

and beautiful places to eat street food in Bangkok.

Look at how polished these pots are.

Like, there's no drippy droppy anything anywhere.

Like, look at these, like, live crabs.

They're sorted.

By the way, they have a limited number of them every day.

That's when you know the ingredients are good,

and they're rare.

These are what I know to be flesh crabs.

They're known for their big, juicy, sweet claws.

And because they're female,

these crabs are also juicy filled with roe.

Come over here.

In each of these clay pots is layered aromatics.

On the bottom is the lard to keep things from sticking.

White pepper and Sichuan peppercorn.

There's little cloves of Thai garlic.

Trimmed scallion and a little bit of cilantro,

and, importantly, cilantro roots.

And when an order comes in, a butcher will kill the crab,

get rid of all the parts that he doesn't want,

cleaves it in half one more time, takes off the claw.

He's cracking it so that it cooks quickly

and also that it eats quickly.

Layering it precisely over the aromatics.

One entire crab per clay pot.

That's the roe, orange.

The green, that's the tomalley, or crab fat.

But this is all going to cook quite consistently.

This stack here next to chef,

that's how he knows what to make.

So the beginning of the cooking process

is all about dry heat.

As the heat comes up from the bottom,

the lard starts to render

and the aromatics start to activate.

If it were to be wet, you wouldn't get the same aromas

and you wouldn't get the same flavors, that's important.

Baking in the Chinese or Asian sense of the word

means putting a lid on top of a pot

so that it cooks by convection inside.

Once that lid goes over the top of the clay pot,

the baking process begins.

Come look at this.

That's the basic seasoning for the glass noodle.

First, a heaping scoop of oyster sauce,

Thai-style oyster sauce, so a little bit lighter in color,

a dash of Maggi, a squirt of oil,

a little bit of white pepper, and a little bit of water.

That's when he adds glass noodles

that are soaked in a little bit of water

that he tears to the specific length

that he needs them to be.

You have to measure the amount of moisture that's going in

because too much, then you dilute the flavor,

too little and your food burns.

Sizzle. Lid.

And he's slowly watching the doneness of the glass noodles.

He's flipping it

to put the less-cooked noodles on the bottom,

not only to make sure

that the noodles themselves are fully cooked,

but to use it as a cover

for the different parts of the seafood

to encourage them to cook at a faster rate.

The noodles are the lid, right?

They're also literally conducting heat

up through hot liquid

through this noodle on top of the crab

so that the crab itself cooks.

Also see that that liquid on the bottom

is getting thicker and thicker and thicker.

That's good for a couple of reasons.

For one, when it's thicker,

it means that water's evaporating.

The stuff that is left behind

is therefore more condensed in flavor and more flavorful.

Second, as it's getting thicker and thicker,

it's going to start coating the noodles

and coating that seafood.

What's causing it to coat is not an addition

of cornstarch or any, like, slurry,

but rather the things that are coming off the crab

and the seafood itself.

Look at the scallions.

It's only the center of the scallion,

of young scallions at that.

Scallions are a very Thai-Chinese way of seasoning seafood.

Chef's got an internal clock.

He knows which pot went on first.

He knows which pot to take off first.

He knows when to add the noodles.

He has a sixth sense for when to add the scallions.

The scallions will begin to wilt,

they'll become bright green, and at that point,

the noodles should be fully translucent

and it should be done.

So pretty.

[chuckles]

When people think about street food in Bangkok,

people think about chaos.

They think about, like, these streets bustling,

all the energy, all these things happening at once,

but this place is not like that at all.

Here at Somsak,

the cleanliness and the meticulousness of that chef

seems to permeate as energy throughout the street.

It's just you and the food.

Oh, gorgeous!

[exhales] The crab has really given a lot of itself

to this broth.

They give you two forks because all the noodles are here,

translucent and brown, all together,

and to divide them up,

you're gonna have to split them up like this.

There you go.

That lard that's been rendering on the bottom

with that sauce, you want to make sure

that your noodle really sops that up.

[slurps]

[whispering] Stupid.

The first note that you get

is a little bit of that salinity, that saltiness,

and then savoriness, it just blooms.

Starts slow, but you can taste that sweet,

well-rounded, full-palate, full-mouth flavor,

and that's just the noodle.

Now, the crab itself, this is the best part.

That's that roe, and that's that tomalley, or crab fat.

That's the best part of the crab.

It's rich. It's buttery.

In Japan, we call this crab miso, kara miso.

Beautiful.

Tender.

So sweet.

Sort of like uni, you know, that deep savoriness?

Also that fattiness.

The other parts that a lot of people like to go for

are the claws.

Nice, sweet, perfectly-cooked flesh.

This dish is served with nam jim seafood,

green chilies, bit of garlic.

A lot of places have it.

Yum! [chuckles]

It's like a kiss from the ocean.

Because of this dish's Thai-Chinese roots,

we need to remember

that the chili pepper didn't arrive in Thailand

until relatively recently.

For the longest time, it was just peppercorns.

Peppercorns are native to Southeast Asia.

Sichuan peppercorns are actually really interesting here.

It's tingling in your mouth.

That's what that Sichuan peppercorn does.

But that white pepper, fermented white pepper,

those are the earth tones.

Mm, the sweetness that's coming from the allium,

the onions and the garlic,

and then you slowly realize that there's spice.

It hits every single flavor note,

sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami.

The glass noodles, nice and slippery,

and the pure sweetness of that crab.

Usually the central body part,

I just bite in the whole thing

and, with the powers of oral dexterity,

remove the shell from your mouth.

Here's to everybody who's commenting

Lucas doesn't know how to eat crab,

I've lost every crab eating competition

I've ever been a part of.

[laughs]

It's not how many crabs you can eat,

it's how clean you can get the crabs.

You owe this beautiful, delicious, fresh crab

to eat every single piece

because this place is freakin' worth it.

So good!

I didn't expect

to like this dish this much when we got here.

You look at the photos online.

Oh, cool.

Crab. Glass noodles.

But with simple dishes,

it always comes down to culinary technique.

Chef here is a legend for a good reason.

The dish itself is so simple,

but when the ingredients are this good

and when the chef is this thoughtful about the cooking,

you can't go wrong.

By the way, you can get takeout here,

in classic Thai fashion, in heat-resistant plastic bags.

You can get the entire dish packaged to go

and delivered to you on a moped.