Som Tam appears as a signature dish in 1 Thailand cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Som Tam · Bangkok
Som tam is the Isan-Lao pounded papaya salad: shredded green papaya, palm sugar, lime, fish sauce and bird's-eye chilli bashed in a clay mortar to bruise the fruit into the dressing. Eaten with grilled chicken and sticky rice.
Som tam migrated to Bangkok with Isan northeastern Thai labour migration in the mid-20th century and became the canonical Bangkok lunch dish by the 1980s. Som Tam Jay So in Sathorn was Michelin-listed with a Bib Gourmand in 2018, pounding to order in clay mortars from a sai-mok northeastern recipe lineage. Variants now include som tam Thai (Bangkok sweeter style), som tam pu pla ra (with fermented crab and fish sauce), and som tam Lao (with raw aubergine, less sugar, more pungent).
Where to eat in Bangkok:
- Som Tam Jay So
- Soi Polo Fried Chicken
- Or Tor Kor Market food stalls