What do Lao people like to eat?
For many, particularly in poor country areas, a meal consists of sticky rice with a jeow (spicy dipping sauce) to add flavour. More substantial meals are eaten communally and typically consist of a soup, sticky rice, a meat, fish or poultry dish and a vegetable dish… and of course jeow.
Unlike the soup/entrée/main/dessert sequence of Western meals, dishes are served simultaneously and shared by all, with everyone dipping in with spoons or fingers. Chopsticks are reserved for noodle dishes. Generally, drinks are not served at the same time as food. Water may be offered at the conclusion of a meal.
Dishes may be set out on low rattan tables or a woven mat, and a convivial feast takes place. Food serves as a central focus for social interaction. (As does alcohol: no one enjoys a party more than the Lao, and drinking potent lao-lao whisky and famed Beer Lao serves as the inevitable catalyst for enjoyment, music and good humour.)
The major sources of protein are chicken, fish, duck, pork, buffalo and goat. Dried and fermented meats are popular. In Luang Prabang the most common fish now come from pond farms, as river-fish are becoming less available.
Apart from the delicious dishes you will eat as part of your exploration of Lao food, there are a host of less accessible foods to learn about. As with most poor countries, every edible food source is consumed, including many parts of the animal that you would not encounter at home. A tour of the market often reveals, in addition to the offal selection, congealed blood squares, pig and buffalo uterus, animal foetuses, bitter bile for meat tenderizing and a wide range of uses for buffalo skin. Wildcaught animals, rodents and farmed frogs, birds, bugs and insects are all eaten. (For those interested to try more unusual Lao foods, both animal and vegetable, check out Tamarind’s “Adventurous Lao Gourmet” experience.)
Strong flavours (bitter, salty, spicy, sour) balance the blandness of sticky rice, which is eaten in large quantities at each meal (and at every opportunity in between). Chilli provides heat, measured by the number of chillies in a dish. The important bitter element is provided by a variety of plants: small pea eggplants (aubergines) and many bitter greens and herbs, often served on the side. Dill and mint feature heavily as herbal accents, and are not to be found in neighbouring Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. One of the most distinctive ingredients in Lao food is padaek, strongly flavoured fermented fish ‘sauce’ that provides saltiness and is used as a flavour enhancer to many dishes. Other ingredients that are popularly used as flavour enhancers include Thai refined fish sauce, stock powder and monosodium glutamate (Tamarind doesn’t use MSG in the restaurant).
Fresh vegetables and a large variety of greens are integral, as are many fragrant herbs. Depending on the timing of your visit, extensive cultivation of vegetables in the rich riverbank soil can be seen. Visiting the food markets will reveal the large assortment of green leafy vegetables. A wide range of plant foods, seeds and leaves are used, some all year round, others seasonally. Fruits are collected wild or cultivated. In the right season, you will see young boys scaling the tamarind trees around town, collecting the delicious sour sweet pods. Seasonal fruits appear spontaneously at roadside locations: a truck heaped with melons, or piles of jicama for those who enjoy their sweet crunch, stalls of hops, popular for chewing. When oranges are in season, huge mounds of the fruit are displayed beneath canopies along the Mekong, where orchardists remain day and night till all the fruit is sold.
Sweet dishes are eaten in between meals as snack foods. Snacks of all kinds are popular, and a range of sweet confections made from coconut, sticky rice, tapioca and banana are for sale at stalls around town.