Michelin-starred street food in the heart of Bangkok. At the helm of Raan Jay Fai is one woman, Supinya Junsuta, also known as Jay Fai, the winner of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Icon Award in 2021. In addition to these accolades, she was even featured on Netflix’s Street Food: Asia in Bangkok.
What makes Jay Fai so iconic, besides the ski goggles, is her innovative approach to street food. Surrounded by other market stalls, Jay Fai stood out from the crowds by insisting on using only the best quality and most premium products in Bangkok. Oh, and she has the wok skills to match these ingredients.
When you visit, there are other staff prepping ingredients and taking orders but there’s only one person allowed at the wok station and that’s Jay Fai. So, if you ask for your Khai Jiao Poo or your dry Tom-Yum, you know that it will be cooked by Jay Fai and you can even watch her make it.
Expect classic Thai dishes at Raan Jay Fai with curries, noodle dishes, soups and all manner of stir-fries gracing the menu. Yes, they’re a lot more expensive than what you can get at other nearby stalls. I mean, £14 on stir-fried Chinese broccoli or £23 on a seafood Tom-Yum, you could probably find them for almost a tenth of the price elsewhere. But then does that stall use premium Japanese abalone in their broccoli stir fry, or pack their seafood Tom-Yum with the freshest king prawns in Bangkok? The price represents the quality of these ingredients and the care she takes in making the dishes. It’s justified.
Table of Contents
The Menu
The Legendary Khai Jiao Poo
Crab Meat Omelette
This is Raan Jay Fai’s iconic dish, a deep-fried crab omelette. We had heard it was big, but we weren’t expecting it to be almost a foot long. Surely it has to have some filler? But, no! It’s just crab, pure crab, wrapped in an omelette and deep-fried.
Biting into this crispy omelette, revealed chunks of moist, succulent and sweet crab. Two main flavours dominated my mouth, crispy egg from the omelette and crab. That’s it, no other bells and whistles. If you like crab, then this is heaven. Oh, and if you want there’s a sweet and spicy chilli sauce on the side.
This dish was definitely worth the hype, and if you stand outside long enough in the queue, you can probably catch Jay Fai making it too. Check out the cross-section below.
Ka-Nar Phad Pao-Hue
Stir-Fried Chinese Broccoli and Japanese Abalone in Oyster Sauce
We knew we would be getting some noodle dishes, so to round off our menu we were set on a vegetable “side” dish. Our choice – stir-fried Chinese broccoli and shiitake mushrooms laced with morsels of soft and buttery Japanese abalone, tossed in a perfectly seasoned oyster sauce dressing.
The broccoli had this savoury smokiness from the wok, with little crispy bits of heaven on the leaves and florets where the sugars had caramelised. You could taste the char on the meaty shiitake mushrooms and again, the chunks of abalone gave a buttery sweetness to the dish.
But, the sauce brought the whole plate together and I had to spoon up every last drop. Clinging to the broccoli florets and shimmering on the abalone, this sauce was like an umami bomb from the oyster sauce and filled the mouth with a sesame aroma.
Tom-Yum Hang Goong
Traditional Thai Hot and Sour Prawn Soup, Served Dry
You can find Tom-Yum at pretty much every Thai restaurant, but here at Raan Jay Fai you can ditch the soup and turn it into a stirfry. All the classic hot and sour flavours were there; plenty of chillies (probably the hottest dish), lots of fresh herbs like lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime leaves and plenty of lime juice. And finally, nestled in this big herbaceous garden were huge, sweet and juicy prawns.
This was my least favourite of the four dishes we ordered. I don’t think that’s a fault of the dish but rather just my personal taste buds.
Sen-Yai Krob Phad-Kee-Mao Talay
Stir-Fried Crispy Rice Noodles in Hot and Spicy Sauce with Seafood
This may have been the best dish of the four dishes. It was the whole package, delivering on both texture and flavour. Big chunks of squid, lumps of crab and the same prawns from the Tom-Yum were stir-fried in a deliciously sweet and sour, soy, spicy sauce. It was like taking that amazing, smoky and umami-rich sauce from the Chinese broccoli dish, and adding some tamarind sweet-sourness and spiciness.
The red chillies that interlaced the dish only provided a little heat, so you could happily experience the full flavour of lots of stir-fried chillies without burning your head off. The little pieces of fried hot basil gave little crispy pops of anise-like flavour.
And then there were the noodles. Super crispy, extra-wide, flat rice noodles. You crunch into them, causing the glistening globs of sauce, sticking to the crunchy crags to explode in your mouth. Finally, there’s the subtle chew of the rice noodle as you finish your flavour journey.
Everyone recommends getting her drunken noodles (Phad-Kee-Mao), but how about you take it up one level, by getting the rice noodles crispy-fried. That’s essentially what this dish is. Get it.
Chrysanthemum Tea with Honey
Floral flavours of chrysanthemum and a sweet almost molasses-like flavour from the honey. I’m not sure if they brew this amber drink in-house, but it tastes similar to the iced teas you can get in the 7-eleven. Still good though, and a refreshing break from the spicy Tom Yum!
The Experience
Unfortunately, you can’t book online (we tried their website and it doesn’t work). So, when you come expect a long queue, even if it’s not peak time. We tried coming on a weekday at around 3 pm and this was a mistake. Many people had turned up around lunchtime, and the spillover into the afternoon resulted in a 2-hour plus wait time. So, we decided to come back the next day.
We arrived the following morning at around 10 am and put our name down on the reservations list where we could see how many tables were in front of us. There was a slight queue, but we were seated within 20 minutes, during which you’re able to pick what you want to order. There is an option of indoor and outdoor seating, but you’re given whatever the next available table is.
At the table, you can see the chefs prepping the ingredients, hear the sounds of a flaming wok and smell the smoky aroma. You may be able to see Jay Fai at the wok station, cooking the next crab omelette although we found the walls of the restaurant hid her a bit. Otherwise, you can walk around the restaurant to see her in all her glory cooking on the street.
You generally get each dish one by one, as she’s the only chef on the wok. But, they cook the entire table’s order in one go so you won’t be waiting too long – and stir-fries are quick!
Closing Thoughts
She definitely looks like a force to be reckoned with when she’s cooking and her premium street food certainly reflects her passion for it.
However, I’ve heard mixed opinions from Thai locals about Raan Jay Fai. Some say it’s amazing street food, others have the opinion that you can find better that’s cheaper. As a foreigner, I reckon I’d struggle to find that random street food stall that served better, and unfortunately, I don’t have the nostalgia of my mother’s Tom-Yum. So, I’m happy to settle for Raan Jay Fai. You know you’re gonna get great food here using the best ingredients available. Worth a trip.
Raan Jay Fai Booking, Location and Pricing Details
Supposedly you can book a table at Raan Jay Fai using this website. But, it didn’t work for me. So, we used the tried and tested method of turning up and walking in. To avoid crazy long wait times, head in the morning instead of waiting for lunch.
Price:
- The average cost of a dish is 1,000 THB / £23.33 / $29.
- The stir-fried crab in yellow curry is the most expensive dish at 1,500 THB / £35 / $44
- The iconic crab omelette is 1,000 THB / £23.33 / $29.
- For the 4 dishes we ordered, we spent 3,300 THB / £77 / $96. (We were full up by the end of it).
Address: 327 Maha Chai Rd, Samran Rat, Phra Nakhon, Bangkok 10200, Thailand.
Thanks for reading!
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