The Moo Kratha Thai BBQ Eating Experience!

Thai BBQ restaurants are well known about, always bustling, moving and social places, you can’t help notice these restaurants when you drive or walk past one at the side of the road.

Phanganist decided to try out the Moo kratha restaurant on the way to Thong Sala, you will find ‘Thai Food Buffet’ a few doors up from the well known Food Factory.

We’ve looked into the real name of this restaurant or what it says on the sign, which is ‘Krua Suphan’ and apparently this translates to ‘Kitchen Gold’ or maybe ‘Gold Kitchen’...?!

It is a golden kitchen experience that’s for sure!

Between us, the Phanganist team, we can read, speak and understand a bit of the thai language so we discussed the name ‘Mookata’.

Moo means ‘pig’ and kratha translates as ‘pan’ as in a cooking pan so it’s a pork pan, a place where you cook pork and also other foodstuffs.

There is a large selection of food including veggie options like mushrooms, liver, chicken, pork of course, bacon, squid, shrimps and other seafood which sometimes is hard to recognise if you’re not Thai.

The moo kratha is a combination of a Korean BBQ and a Chinese hot pot, this is why it has the ring around the edge which cooks the delicious soup called thai suki.

The whole thing is heated with charcoal which creates a lovely smoke to perfume the meat as well as cook it.

Gathering some friends together and going to enjoy a moo kratha is a great social get together, there’s something nice about selecting your food and sharing the same pan as others which makes a dinner that bit more interactive and exciting.

Now you may wonder what that lump thing is that they put on the top of the BBQ that then melts, it’s pork lard, fat basically.

There is a practical reason for this as when it melts it oils up the BBQ so that the meat you put on it doesn’t stick plus the added benefit to this is that the juice falls into the soup which adds flavour!

We’re not sure if there is an alternative for vegetarians with the fat, it’s worth asking though and let us know if they offer a solution!

Once you have selected what you are going to eat, then comes the mission of precariously placing your chosen ones onto the BBQ.

We all used different tools including chopsticks, tongs and forks and you have to keep an eye on the cooking of these things as well.

You can put all sorts of things to cook in the soup like kale, mushrooms, cabbage and other vegetables or noodles, whatever you like really! This soup gets really delicious after a while of being infused with all of these yummies.

There are thai dipping sauces to choose from called nam chim, some spicey and some not, plus soy sauce and all the usual thai condiment suspects so you can really make your food to your own taste.

After we had finally decided, for about the fifth time that yes, we had finally had enough (then had a little bit more) we washed all of this goodness down with some vanilla ice cream and lime sorbet.

Then we found it hard to move, but in the most satisfying way possible.

Enjoy your moo kratha!!!