Noodle Soup- The Polite Way

A common lunch here in Laos is noodle soup. There are a couple of different varieties. This one is called Kao Piek (wet rice). It consists of broth, thick rice noodles, meat (usually chicken or pork), fried onion, and spring onion. You can ask for it with or without coagulated blood.

1. First, you must decide how to dress your soup. The choices are: fish sauce, soy sauce, hot sauce, tomato sauce, vinegar, hot peppers, pureed ginger, sugar, MSG, ground pepper, lime, and bean sprouts.

2. I chose ginger, bean sprouts, and lime.

3. Pick up a noodle with your chopsticks. This can be tricky as the noodles are very thick and slippery.

4. Place the noodle in your spoon. If the noodle is too long to fit, cut it with the edge of your spoon.

5. Add to your spoon anything else from your bowl that you would like to eat. I added a fried onion. (The thing that looks like a leg is actually a delicious fruit shake. You can a bit of it in step 7.)

6. If you get a beautiful chunk of meat like this one, it’s easy to eat. If you’re foreign, they’ll often give you the nicer pieces of meat. The lady serving us actually said “Tooay nee samlap falang dur!” = “This bowl is for the foreigner!”

7. If you get pieces like this one (more common), you’ll have to use your fingers to make sure to get every bit of meat off of the bone.

One bowl of delicious soup costs 12,000 kip = $1.50.


So how do you take your Kao Piek?