Hey everyone good morning hope you're having an amazing day. It's mark queens, i'm in the beautiful village of banrak tai, which is in the mountains surrounding a lake in the mehongsan province of northern thailand. And this is a chinese yunnanese village, which was founded by kmt uh fighters who fled communist china in 1949.. It literally looks like you are in yunnan in a chinese atypical chinese village, a beautiful chinese village.

They brought with them their cultures, traditions, architecture and they also brought tea from yunnan and so you'll find tea plantations throughout the mountains, but, most importantly for you and i they brought with them traditional yunnanese food. So today we're going to go on a yunnanese chinese food tour, we'll be eating everything from yunnanese noodles to a yunnanese hot pot to a salad made with tea to pork, which is cured with the morning dew. So i'm excited to be in this beautiful village and i'm gon na share all of the food with you today, starting now, so i woke up this morning in bangrak thai, a blanketed in fog over the lake, and i believe that the lake is a man-made. It's a reservoir lake uh water storage.

It was in 1949 when the komintang or the kmt fighters. They fled communist china and they came south. We're actually very well relatively quite close to yunnan china here, if you just head straight north, so they fled communist china in 1949. They came south through burma and ended up in northern thailand, settling in this village in the mountains here and also additionally, we are just.

I think we're less than one kilometer. Oh i'm like, i think we are less than one kilometer uh from the border of myanmar man. This lake really looks like a like a painting like a watercolor, with all the reflections, the mirror glossy top of the lake. It's it really is beautiful, spectacularly beautiful when the chinese community they settled in this village, they brought with them their customs, their traditions of yunnan.

They brought yunnanese tea, which is the origins of tea, and so they planted tea on the sides of the mountains. They brought with them eunini's authentic food and many people, especially the older generation, still speaks chinese in this village as well, and then one more part of the history of this village is that historically well not so long ago. Historically, this was a strategic village in the drug trade and drug trafficking, as well as the trade of jade from myanmar. But luckily now the village has really turned to tourism, and so it is really one of the most popular places in me, hong kong.

It's an extremely famous place to visit, especially for thai tourists. Okay, so that was a lot of history wrapped up really briefly, and that has made me hungry uh we're gon na go straight to eat yunnanese noodles for breakfast, you guys already started yeah with monto micah how's, the montage yummy, okay i'll pit. So this is the the eunice noodle restaurant right here on the corner. Auntie is so friendly.

The menu is here you order at the front here she has a variety of yunnanese, noodles and she's gon na prepare them right now. Oh man, that gets the mouth juices. Watering in the morning uh, but it's served as a dry style noodle. So what she does is she just blanches some vegetable.

I think it's mainly choy sum or yuchoy, along with some of the egg noodles. She blanches them real fast in the hot water uh. Then she puts it into a bowl. She adds all the seasonings some salt a little bit of sugar.

I believe those are crushed sesame seeds, garlic, oil, chili oil and then, when she hand mixes, it, gets all the juices flowing coats, all the noodles. Oh that looks tasty in the morning. Then she puts it onto a plate. She adds minced pork.

She adds a half a boiled egg, a sprinkle of seasoning herbs, coriander and green onions, sprinkles it with some lime juice and then serves it with a hard-boiled egg, and they do have a full dining room right here in the main section. But they also have a couple of tables some seating over here in the empty lot over here. So i think we'll sit over there. Auntie is so friendly and the noodles smell and look extraordinary, especially definitely some locals, are here for breakfast in the morning and she did like fully mix it.

You could see. Oh look at the juiciness and all the chili oils and all the seasonings that she added to those noodles on the bottom. Oh yeah. Oh, that's going to be flavorful: oh wow, okay, that is tasty the chili oil, the fragrance of the sesame in there and she did add a sprinkle of sugar, so it does have kind of a tangy, sweet and sour taste to it.

But it's so balanced. All that flavor is just coating, the noodles, oh man. Yes, that is warming and tasty in the morning. That sauce is just a harmony of flavor, the black sesame, the sticky coating qualities of that sauce.

And let's follow that bite with a spoonful of the soup which looks thick and rich and porky? Oh wow, that soup is really good and then finally yunnanese tea local from the mountains. Here. Oh, it's really good to you too. Ah yeah very fragrant, very floral.

It's very good. Next up, we also got the yampak, which is a vegetable salad, which is mainly, i believe, chayote leaves, or i think, chayote shoots she added in chaos. She added in also the same seasoning plus slices of pork, there's chili oil there's sesame seeds in here. I think it's like a tomato sauce.

This looks and smells delicious as well. Oh wow! Yes, it actually has almost the same flavor same dressing components as your noodles. Just instead of noodles, it's the blanched crispy vegetable and for me, what really makes it the sesame seeds back to the noodles, i'm going to have ying just quickly season, and definitely when there's chili oil on the table, adding more chili oil is the right thing to Do a little more chili oil goes on and also a little more lime juice. Oh wow, you can never have too much chili oil, oh yeah, the hard boiled egg is a nice addition as well.

So ah that was delicious. An extremely tasty way to get this yunnanese food tour started in bangraktai the noodles a little bit on the sweet side, but the balance of flavor was so incredibly good. The harmony of flavor, highly recommended auntie is so nice. This is the perfect way to get your morning started in ban raktai from here.

We are walking down the lake and we're going directly to the next restaurant to continue this food tour in bandraktai, okay, so a quick walkthrough. I guess this could be considered. One of the main streets, especially the touristic streets, red chinese lanterns - there's a variety of restaurants. There's a number: well, the entire side is lined with gift shops, selling, preserved dried fruits, tea, which is grown here, overlooking the lake and surrounded by the mountains, and we're just passing by this rare famous for eunini's hot pot, and we are gon na eat here.

But first we're gon na go to another restaurant, which is right next to it, and i love her restaurant here. Open tables, open air kitchen right next door here. One of the things that she specializes in is a tea leaf salad. But then she has a variety of thai.

She has a variety of chinese yunnanese dishes and she also has some things drying at the front of the restaurant, including some herbs, including some pickled vegetables. She was just talking to me and i told her that i'm half chinese, my mom is chinese, but i don't speak any chinese. Unfortunately, i ended up ordering the tea leaf salad as with fresh tea leaf salad, as well as pickled mustard greens. I believe uh, which she's gon na fry up stir fry up with minced porks, uh, so she's chopping up some tomatoes.

Some coriander goes in. He has a bag full of tea which are picked from the bushes right here, but it's fresh tea. It's not pickled tea. Tea leaves and she's just mincing them up really mincing them up.

You can see the oils the juices coming out of the leaves if she chops it up, it doesn't have a strong aroma, but you can you definitely can smell it. So then, she also has some boiled chicken uh, which she also minces up, adds to the leaf salad to the tea leaf, salad, uh chops up some dried chilies, those go in and now she's chopping up, some green onions. Oh my god. One of the things.

That's very common to eat in yunnan and something that you'll see all the time in yunnan is preserved. Vegetables pickled preserved a variety of different vegetables, especially mustard greens, and so it's very common in this village to find preserved mustard greens. So she makes the preserved mustard. Greens herself, she grows the vegetables herself, she pickles them kali aromatic sour preserved, aroma of the pickled mustard greens, the chilies and garlic sizzle down the seasonings.

Oh, that smells so good. That's gon na be extremely tasty, with layers of flavor from the fermentation, and i love this restaurant, her style and her friendliness as well, two main dishes that we got and then mike also got some fried rice which she stir-fried up. But i cannot wait to try the tea leaf, salad and then to finish it off. She garnished it with some coriander and some more fresh, chilies right there.

So it's a straight up mince of tea leaves bringing out their oils bringing out their juices. Oh man, with all the other ingredients with the minced chicken in there with chilies dressing and then for the dressing she added sugar, she added salt and msg. She added in dark soy, sauce and light soy sauce. She added oh shallot oil.

That was one of the cool things that she added is shallot oil. That is amazing, it's so green and herbal and crisp the tea. It doesn't have like a really strong herbal taste, but it kind of has a a little bit of a chalky crunch to it. But so fragrant, so good, and especially mixed with all of the the dressing and the seasoning, oh and lime juice, a lot of lime juice in there too, and garlic just to balance.

If you just chewed on, for instance, a tea leaf like yeah, it kind of has a a little bit of a chalky astringent. It's astringent is what it is, but then, when it's minced up like that, when it's mixed with all of those dressing ingredients, that's what really makes it and it lessens the astringency and just balances the entire mix and the amazing green taste. Okay and next up for the pickled mustard greens, which again she fried up with garlic, chilies and chopped up chicken, and you can smell the aroma of those greens - oh yeah, that's tasty a little bit of a sweet and sour preserved taste. The chicken chopped up in there the fragrance of the garlic she added in some shallot oil there as well - that's just like simple comforting food written in chinese, but you will notice this restaurant because we're right across the street from the lake and just her bubbly personality.

Her friendless friendliness is what stands out and just yet so far the two places that we've gone, the food has been delicious, but they've added a huge heaping spoon of sugar to both dishes, which for me, was a little too sweet. So definitely next time at both places, i would just kindly ask to omit the sugar so just depending on what you like, but maybe because of the tourism, because especially popular as a thai tourist destination, where uh bangkok tourists enjoy a little bit on the sweeter taste. They've adapted to that taste, okay, next up conveniently on this food tour literally right across the street, is the yunnanese hot pot restaurant, which we're gon na eat. Next.

You know something good has to be happening at this restaurant when there's a literally a hot tub sized. Oh, it is, you could actually use it as a hot tub, a hot tub, sized uh hot pot at the front of the restaurant, and this restaurant is called jili uh. It's a legendary yunnanese, hot pot, restaurant and when i was looking for places to eat this is probably the number one restaurant i was looking forward to eating. There's no way you can miss it.

Do you hear anything like that? I think we just kind of wait here and wait for somebody to come. That being said, oh, oh, yes, the seats are really comfortable for waiting and i do love the look of this place. Oh, that tea is really nice. Very floral.

Sweet naturally sweet like floral, sweet, the jazz jasmine, you taste jasmine in there, i think, along with tea, oh yeah, it's really good hot pot. The tsuki yunnanese style suki has arrived. It's a beautiful traditional steamboat style with the charcoal in the middle boiling away, and this is something i don't think i've i've had this before. It looks like kind of a meat roll-up, but i think that's an omelette, a thin omelet, which is then wrapped with pork, looks like a pork minced meat mixture on the inside wrapped up into a roll, and then sliced into pieces smells really good.

Smells porky smells meaty and then it's served. The set comes with all the different vegetables. There's some pea sprouts there's some napa cabbage. I'm not sure if these are what are these in here, these uh and then also some, maybe some uh.

Could these be noodles from the like sweet potato noodles? Maybe i'm not totally sure or mung bean noodles uh and then it's also served with a sauce, but the main event is the bubbling fire pot. So i think we can explore here. First, let's dig a little bit: oh there's bones: there's bean curd pieces of tofu, maybe pieces of oh there's, even taro down in the broth. Oh that's going to be some flavor through mushrooms chicken.

I think there's chicken! Oh, it's like a mix of everything and i definitely did see yeah there's some taro, the unity's ham. I believe, okay, but we got ta. Try that meat roll first egg meat roll. I should probably dip this in the sauce.

First, you can smell the sesame oil in that or the sesame seeds in that dressing yeah. I probably am going to want to let this blow this a little bit before taking the bite. That's going to be flaming hot, it's in a boiling boiling pot. Oh yeah, the sauce and the sauce is not sweet at all.

Just sesame oil and tangy. Oh, and that's like a egg roll meat roll-up omelette around the outside. I think pepper in the meat i'm gon na add some of these. Next and again he said that they're all home-grown vegetables and i'm just oh yeah.

It smells like peas or some kind of pea pod sprouts, but this is a broth of many proteins. Definitely some chicken and pork and taro and ham a rich meatiness, but not too herbal, not too spicy, just pepper in there. I believe, maybe i'll add this to my bowl and then i want to scoop up some of that taro, some of the other goodies below there. Maybe some of the noodles.

You can feel the elasticity of these noodles as you pick them up quick dip in the soup broth and then they should be pretty much immediately ready. I don't know if they're sweet, potato noodles yeah all right, that's a nice little bowl going i'll. Add some of the sauce, the sauce is amazing, tangy spicy sesame, but not sweet, oh yeah! That sauce is fantastic. That is awesome.

I love the simplicity of it, the meatiness of it and just like the the home comforting aspect of it, flavor of it and those vegetables. Those pea sprouts are delicious, noodles have a really nice chewy texture to them kind of gummy and elasticy, really good noodles, and then i love those pea sprouts which i'm guessing they're pea, sprouts, uh, they're, crisp, they're, crunchy, refreshing, they're, organic they're, local really green says. I need to add more broth and they give you the entire kettle yeah that stock you can taste the richness of the the bone stock. I'm honestly not totally sure what that is some of the chinese broccoli going.

I believe let that simmer over on this side and maybe move in some for some more of the bean curd while we're at it. Oh it's hot. I love the texture of those, the snap of them, what an ultimate relaxation of a hot pot. I think.

Actually, the vegetables are my favorite part of the hot pot they're, so natural tasting so sweet. You can just tell the freshness the locality of the vegetables from the garden 100 meters away or even 20 meters away highly recommended a classic restaurant and cooked in that meaty broth. Just for a smoky wok taste. I also really love the chunks of tarot in there.

Those pea sprouts are my entire, my favorite part of the entire hot pot. Okay, but then she was telling me that they actually grow the tea that we were drinking. They grow it themselves. They added uh, it's oolong tea, oolong green tea, but then they also added some jasmine flowers and that's why it's so flour, that's why i could taste the jasmine.

It ended up buying a bag of tea from here. We're gon na take a little walk around we're gon na, maybe take a little rest this afternoon, and then we've got one more restaurant that we have to eat at to complete this yunnanese food tour of ban raktai and oh man again, it is something i am Looking forward to eating welcome to what i believe is the main square of banrak thai and you get more of a feel of the local community here, uh specifically, there is one restaurant here, uh right off the side of this roundabout area that has some pork hanging Up at the front of the restaurant, which in thai is called munam kang, which actually means do drop or do pork. This restaurant is amazing. She has mustard greens turnips drying in the sun.

The pork is hanging from the rafters, the dew drop, pork and the whole kitchen. There's some pot smoking, you smell, ginger, there's tea laying around there are supplies, there's uh all sorts of ingredients here, but you can tell oh call call my cup oh and she brought up the scale. Maybe you have to order it by weight before you eat it? I need they basically said that she takes the the dew drop pork and just fries it with nothing, and so it's kind of like a snacking pork. I believe uh, so we're gon na get half that, and then i also wanted to try.

Well, we've already had some pickled mustard greens, but she looks like the the master of pickled greens of vanrak thai. What a cool shot, though i love it and auntie is amazing. This this is the real deal. Auntie also makes noodles, which you can order here too specializes in noodles.

I love everything about this place. It's kind of half warehouse, half restaurant, but you're, not even totally sure. If it's a restaurant, they have just a couple of odd tables here and there and to be honest, the i guess i mean i ordered a whole half. It was a whole half a stick of dewdrop pork like this long, but i guess it kind of when she fried it.

She sliced it thin and then fried it. Maybe a lot of fat came out. So it's not that much, but that's actually kind of good, because i'm still pretty full from the hot pot. Let's try some of the dewdrop pork first, just on its own, oh yeah! She fried it to a crisp.

Well, it only took like five minutes, but it's crispy smells and looks like bacon aged, oh wow. Yes, you taste that age and again it literally does sit in the morning dew to get that moisture but then dehydrates again within the sun. I believe throughout the day. It's like dry, aged ham, okay and then on to the pickled mustard greens with the pork as well with that same dewdrop, and i think that auntie here must be well known for her preserved greens uh, her pickled vegetables, because even some other uh, ladies came by Buying just bags of the pickled vegetables and she makes it definitely not just i mean for the family, but she makes a lot more, a bigger batch to be able to sell as well.

Oh wow, yes fermentation in the pork, the vegetable, the crunch. Both dishes are delicious, that pork is really tasty, yeah, salty and very rich and oily. So you really do need rice to eat this with wow without a doubt, one of the ultimate bubbly beverage snacks, that is a snack food, a little bit on the oily side. I mean even the pork is at least fifty percent, maybe eighty percent fat, but it is extremely tasty and auntie is like blending, spices and she's.

Really, i think, she's making a batch of some type of pickle or something cardamom. Oh, they said that's the spice. That goes into the pickled mustard greens, as well as the munam kang, oh, and then also. I learned that the pork hangs in front of here uh for one month, so it's aged for one month.

That's why it has a very dry aged complexity to it. Is it good that age of the pork, oh man and i guess the dewdrop, the dew - does make it even better the controlled fermentation rotting, pork, mold, wow, yeah that pork, that hint of sourness and on that bite of just ultra flavorful pork fried pork, i'm gon Na end, the yunnanese food tour of the beautiful ban, raktai yunanese village right now, uh, it's been an amazing day and definitely being here has brought back some amazing memories of visiting yunnan and the incredible food and cultures of yunnan a few years ago. I'll have those videos in the description box that you can a link to those videos you can check out if you have some time, definitely check out some of the yunnan videos and i want to say a big thank you to you for watching this video. Please remember to give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, leave a comment below i'd love to hear from you and if you're not already subscribed, click subscribe and also click the little bell icon and that way you'll immediately get notified of the next video that I publish thanks again for watching goodbye from bandra thai in me hongsan, and i will see you on the next video.