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If you’re in the west and have an itch for ‘tropical’ flavors, you’ll probably order some Thai. If you’re in Yunnan, you’ll likely go out for some Dai.

As the name might suggest, yes, there’s certainly a relation! The Dai1 (傣) are one subgroup along with the Thai (ไทยสยาม) , the Shan (တႆး), and the Lao (ລາວ) among a larger category of Tai peoples. As an analogy, you could think about the Tai in a similar sense of the Germanic peoples — English, Dutch, Bavarians, and Frisians aren’t the same, but the languages are closely related and the cuisines seem to share some similar ideas.

And among the Tai groups? Same deal. Food wise, you’ve got fresh chilis, sour tropical fruits, and a bevy of herbs. There’s thick* *soups (“curries”) and a love for sticky rice. Grills are nearly as common as gas stoves, and much of the kitchen is centered around a large bamboo mortar and pestle.

I… absolutely adore this stuff. If you’ve ever traveled to the north of Thailand and thoroughly enjoyed Lanna cuisine in Chiang Mai or Chiang Rai, the only thing I have to say is... But wait! There’s more! There’s a similarly rich tradition on the Yunnan side of the border, with a diversity of Tai groups — each with their own unique foods.

But really, there’s this whole stretch of mountainous borderlands — from Yunnan to Northern Thailand, from Laos to Shan State Myanmar — that’s got some of my favorite cuisines in the world. And while others might be in a better place to introduce you to what’s going on in Thailand or Laos, I think we might be able to give you a decent look into the Yunnan side of things.

Of course, if you ordered some Thai takeout in America, it’s going to look a good bit different from the fare you’d get in Bangkok. And similarly, if you randomly selected a Dai restaurant in the provincial capital of Kunming, the dishes aren’t quite going to be the same fare that you’d get in the hills of the borderlands.

This is commercialized Dai food. Dishes have been selected and altered to (1) satisfy the tastes of the (often younger) Chinese diner, as well as (2) adhere to the *imagination *of what a ‘Southeast Asian’ cuisine looks and feels like.

There ends up being an odd mish-mash effect, with a number of actually Thai dishes (e.g. fried fish with peanut sauce) and (lime… everywhere) flavors added to the mix. I can already sense that you might be recoiling a bit, but perhaps we should reflect on the existence of the generic western ‘Pan-Asian’ restaurant before judging all too hard.

Authenticity sticklers might turn their nose up at commercialized Dai food, and admittedly, some of these restaurants can definitely get a bit too theme-y. But swearing off the category entirely would definitely be their loss — and not just due to the fact that I’d happily slug a Yunnan Falooda right next to some P.F. Chang’s Dynamite Shrimp.

Because all throughout Yunnan these days? Within the commercialized Dai space, you can also find these Dai Liangban ‘Salad’ stands, and they’re… absolutely fucking incredible:

The Liangban salad stand, of course, is a F&B concept that appears to have gotten its start in Sichuan. At these sorts of stands, you’re greeted with a whole bunch of various ingredients: you select what you like, and they’ll mix and dress it for you.

It’s a concept that really snugly fits into the Yum-like salads that you see in Dai food. They’ll take the basic materials that you might be able to find in a Sichuan *liangban *stand, mix it with some Dai herbs and the like, and then finish with an metric ton of bottled lime juice, rice vinegar, and fresh lime juice to achieve fuck-you levels of spicy-sour.

It might not be traditional, but who could say no to a bit of Sichuan-Thai-Dai fusion? I do give you my word that we will absolutely circle back to these salads someday soon.

For the remaining two, it’ll probably be helpful to look at a map:

Map from Tao Hongfei and Zhou Jingfan’s “Study on the geographic distribution and influencing factors of Dai settlements in Yunnan based on geodetector**”(**https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-59449-x). Hat tip to the ever excellent Christopher Saint Cavish for pointing us to the article :)

From the above map, you can see three major clusters of Dai settlements: the “two cores” areas in the south and west, as well as the “one belt” along the Hong He (Red River)2.

In the western “two cores” area, close to the Myanmar border there are the Dehong Dai***, ***or Tai Nuea. The food here, predictably, shares a lot of crossover with that of the Tai Yai neighboring Shan state — without getting into the weeds too much, there’s nothing more synonymous with this region than the combination of tomato, chili, and peanuts.

Then we’ve got the cluster in the south: this is the home of the Banna Dai, or **Tai Lue. **This area, Xishuangbanna (Sipsongpanna in Thai), was one of the last places to be integrated into China proper. During both imperial China and the Nationalist era, it was indirectly ruled as a ‘tusi’, being controlled by a local Dai chieftain until 1953.

The main urban center of Xishuangbanna is in Jinghong, which over the years has unfortunately developed into a sort of ‘Dai theme park’. Jinghong forms a triumvirate with Lijiang and Dali as ‘the most touristy places in Yunnan’ — and perhaps China at large. If you blindly went into the center of town, you’re probably going to be greeted with mostly commercialized Dai. But if you know where to look, particularly in the surrounding towns, there’s some fantastic Banna Dai food:

Now again, there’s more Dai groups in Yunnan than these, so we are somewhat scratching the surface here. But these are the major three schools, the stuff that’s widely available in restaurants: Commercialized, Dehong, and Banna.

They’re all fantastic in their own right, and there is certainly a good hunk of crossover between the three as well. We’ll be delving into each over time… but first, we wanted to introduce you to a simple dish that you can find across all three: Tomato Nam Mi, a spicy tomato dip.

This dish was among my first ‘true loves’ in Dai cuisine — the first time we traveled to Dehong, I was guilty of ordering it almost every meal.

It’s just one of those simple, good things: a spicy tomato dip for various fresh or boiled vegetables (or deep fried pork skin, if you’re so inclined). It’s eminently re-creatable — if you’ve ever had Nam Prik Ong in Northern Thailand, it’s sort of a pared down, simpler version of that dish.

I was taught how to make the Dehong Dai version, which is what we’ll cover today. The basic idea is to grill tomatoes, garlic, and fresh chilis, season and pound them, and… that’s pretty much it. You could also use an oven, but I do find this to be an absolutely fantastic dish to grill up on the side for a cookout. It’s super low stress, there’s zero running inside — just bring out the mortar and the seasoning, and you can easily pound the thing on the side over a couple beers.

Plus, with one (easily substitutable) exception, this dish is also almost western supermarket friendly.

*Okay, so the aforementioned ‘easily substitutable’ non-western-supermarket-available ingredient is *Thua Nao, *a.k.a *Douchibing (豆豉饼) — Dai fermented soybean cake.

It’s a really nice ingredient that adds a lot of depth to the dish. That said, push comes to shove? Forget about it. Commercialized Dai food will rarely ever make the inclusion, so really, don’t stress too hard over it. I’d imagine that ‘what you’d find in Kunming’ is probably a good enough quality standard for most recipe writers.

That said, I have two other potential routes you could go, if you’re particularly obsessive:

1. ***Douchi, Chinese Fermented Black Soybeans. *These would be widely available at pretty much every Chinese supermarket (and most Asian supermarkets). The most common kind would be the Cantonese style, labeled “Yangjiang Preserved Beans with Ginger”, which is what we decided to test with. Note that Douchi are not a general substitute for Thua Nao, but the ingredient does go phenomenally with both chili and tomato. I enjoyed this dish more with grilled douchi than I did without anything.

2. Thai Shrimp Paste. In Northern Thailand, sometimes you will see fermented shrimp paste and Thua Nao used in similar applications. They’re obviously not the same ingredient — shrimp paste definitely packs more of a fishy, fermented punch. But similarly, I enjoyed this dish more with Shrimp Paste than I did without anything.

Grill or roast:

400g tomatoes

4-8 spicy fresh red chilis

8-10 cloves of garlic, roots removed

1-2 sheets (25g) Thua Nao, if using

Remember to poke some holes in the tomatoes and chilis to avoid explosion.

If roasting, roast at 185C: 40 minutes for the tomatoes, 25 minutes for the garlic, 20 minutes for the chilis. (If using Thua Nao, you can microwave on medium high for 60 seconds, or until it shows white blisters)

If grilling, grill each ingredient until it looks like this:

Optionally, wrap with tin foil, then grill or roast:

15g douchi -or- half tbsp Thai shrimp paste

1 tbsp tomato paste, if your tomatoes are not high quality

If roasting, roast for 10 minutes. If grilling, grill until fragrant (5-10 minutes).

Peel the garlic. Snip the stem off the chilis, then snip into ~1cm sections. Remove the skin from the tomatoes, and snip out the stem.

To a mortar, add

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp coriander seeds

and the Thua Nao, if using. Pound into a powder.

Add the garlic. Add, if using, the douchi or the shrimp paste. Pound into a paste.

Add

2 tbsp toasted chili flakes -or- chipotle flakes -or- run of the mill chili flakes3

and the snipped chilis. Pound until the grilled chilis are at least mostly broken down.

Add the tomatoes, and (if using) the tomato paste. Gently pound and break apart the tomatoes with the pestle. You do not want to go too hard or else the tomato will get everywhere — a gentle stirring motion is okay. It is also ok to keep it chunky (I like mine smoother). Season with

½ tsp salt

¾ tsp chicken bouillon powder

¾ tsp MSG

¼ tsp sugar

or to your own tastes. It should be ever so slightly on the salty side for dipping.

Optionally garnish with some chopped culantro or cilantro.

You can serve this with either fresh vegetables or cooked vegetables. Ideas for fresh vegetables:

**Cucumber. **Cut into ~3mm thick sheets.

**Carrot. **Cut into ~3mm thick sheets.

**Napa Cabbage. **Slice into ~1.5” wide sections.

Cooked vegetables:

**Cabbage. **Cut a half a head of cabbage into four wedges. Skewer each wedge with a bamboo skewer to hold it in place when boiling. Boil for six minutes, then strain and rinse with cool water to stop the cooking process.

**Okra. **Cut off the stem of the Okra. Boil for one minute, then strain and rinse with cool water to stop the cooking process.

Another classic to eat alongside this is fried pork rinds. So if Chicharrónes are common where you live, they would certainly be a nice thing to dip as well!

1

There are seven commonly recognized groups that are collectively lumped together as ‘Dai’ — the largest ones are the Tai Nuea (ᥖᥭᥰ ᥘᥫᥴ, or 傣那) around Dehong and Tai Lue (ᦺᦑᦟᦹᧉ, or 傣仂) in Banna.

2

The ‘one belt’ is the home of a lesser known Dai group called the Huayao Dai, which we’ll circle back to another day.

3

In southwest China, there are some deeply roasted chili flakes called *hulajiao mo *‘胡辣椒末’. They are almost smokey. I think Chipotle flakes would be a good substitute for this application. You could also just use standard chili flakes if you need however (perhaps a sprinkle of smoked paprika could help get you there).

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