Thai dishes such as tom yum soup, pad thai, and Thailand’s many curries have gained immense popularity all throughout the world and have made Thailand a prime tourist destination. Thai cuisine is notable for its vibrant colors, careful layering of textures, wide variety of flavorful ingredients, and its unique blending of the sour, salty, spicy, and sweet flavors. Central to Thai cuisine are a number of ingredients not commonly found in the West. Perhaps the most essential is nam pla, a pungent, clear fish sauce that imparts a sour, fermented taste. There is also galangal, a peppery cousin to ginger; and lemongrass, an aromatic shoot with a citrus flavor; as well as a huge variety of fruits, including papaya, jackfruit, pomelos, coconuts and more.
Thai cuisine is best seen as four separate regional cuisines. There is Central Thailand cuisine, which has extensive Chinese and European (especially Portuguese) influence. This region is characterized by its rich river deltas, and so the cuisine makes use of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables as well as freshwater fish. This is the region from which tom yum soup originates, as well as green curry. Southern Thai cuisine is frequently heavily spiced and relies on tropical fruit and seafood such as lobsters, crabs, fish, and prawn. There is the cuisine of the arid Northeastern Isan region, where sticky rice is most common (as opposed to the Jasmine rice preferred in central and southern Thailand) and the use of chilis is particularly prominent. Lastly, there is the cuisine of the mountainous Northern region, in which herbs and roots play a prominent role, as does boiled meats, freshwater fish, and egg noodles.