Of the nine countries normally referred to as Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Indonesia, and, stretching it a bit geographically but not culinarily, the Philippines), the cuisines of the first two are by far the most well-known over here. But despite far more American contact with Vietnam than with Thailand in recent times, owing both to the war and to immigration of refugees afterward, Vietnamese cuisine has never caught on as widely as Thai. True, Thai food does have a rep as the most sophisticated of all Southeast Asian cuisines -- and deservedly, a main reason being Thai cuisine's relatively seamless incorporation of influences from at least half a dozen other Eastern and... More >>>