Bangkok Schmear

Bagel, Lox & Cream Cheese, Bangkok Style

Normally, at the end of every visit, I post an entry that I call the food porn entry.  This is a photo collection of the incredible foods that I’ve eaten, mostly at our hospital sites, during my stay.  This tradition will continue at the end of this visit, but I felt compelled to tell you about one meal I had outside of the walls of our own facilities.  This is a special food edition of the Bangkok Blog.

Just up the street from my apartment, there’s a restaurant called Chikalicious Café.  It continues the tradition of strange Thai names for shops.  (The Little Pig, Holy Sheet Hostels or the famous Cabbages and Condoms Restaurant, for example.) This little restaurant serves mostly Thai food, but does have a small assortment of international offerings.  It also has lots of desserts.  I think this place might be part of a chain, but I’m not sure.

One of the international dishes served is bagel, lox and cream cheese – I suppose the Bangkok version of Schmear.  I have never seen a bagel in Bangkok.  That’s not to say that there aren’t any.  Bangkok is a huge city.  I decided to do a few seconds of research and it appears there are lots of places to get bagels, as discussed in the two following websites. (Link 1 and Link 2). But I haven’t come across these places, so I have no personal knowledge of Bangkok bagels. [note]The bagels mentioned in the websites, I suspect, are modelled after New York style bagels and not Montreal bagels, which makes them immediately suspect as to bagel authenticity.[/note]

I decided, as an on-going research project, to head into Chikalicious and order Bangkok schmear.  What I got was pretty bizarre.  The ‘bagel’ was actually a croissant shaped like a bagel, but definitely tasting and feeling like a croissant.  The lox was lox and it was good.  The cream cheese was different, but tasty.  The capers were good as were the added onions.  The French fries, served as a side, were also very good.  Actually, it was all good, but it was not the schmear I’ve come to love.  It was a bagel shaped croissant, with lox and cream cheese.

I don’t think I’ll have a chance to try out the so-called authentic bagel shops during this visit.  For now, I have at least had a chance to taste one version of Bangkok schmear.  Like traditional Toronto schmear, it’s okay if not totally real. [note]Montreal bagels, in. my opinion, are critical to ensure authenticity.[/note]