Pancakes on a Stick

Thai people love to eat food on sticks. I've had watermelon on a stick, and fish balls, Fanta and Coke popsicles, porks balls, hot dogs (deep fried.... oi), boiled quail eggs (in the shell), and I've even seen fetal chickens - in the shell - barbecued - and put on a stick. Didn't try that one, needless to say. But, this week at the local street market I saw a new take on stick cuisine. Pancakes on a stick.

Because they are Thai pancakes, they are beautiful and fun and anything but dull. These pancakes come with cartoons, of course, but the secret to this cart's success is the jelly swirl embedded in the cake. The pancake-on-a-stick lady squeezes on the jelly swirl then overlays more cake batter from a squeezy bottle to hide it. All this, AND you can have it with jellyfish decoration!

Nearby, the competition offers fish waffles with various fillings. The griddle is just the coolest, and if it weren't cast iron, I'd ship one home. The fish-waffle guy uses little hooks to flip open the hot waffle maker, and the sound is hypnotic, as is the smell. He offers about seven filling flavors all (kind of) fruity and very artificial tasting. The brown one is chocolate. There's a lot of brown-flavored stuff here, no real chocolate to speak of. But, none of the fish waffles actually tastes like fish.


You laugh. Two weeks ago I brought home from the little neighborhood baker some "chocolate chip" cookies. They had curious looking chips, but everything is a little askew here anyway. First bite seemed a little fishy, but I'm a tad sensitive about people sneaking me fishy shit all the time, so I munched on thinking I was just sleep deprived and delusional. Second bite, the chips were definitely chewy and brownish. Dried shrimp, no kidding.

You gotta' watch these Thai people all the time....