Larb is one of my favorite Thai dishes. Technically, it’s a salad, but since there’s always more meat on the plate than greenery, it works just as well as a main dish for lunch. Plus you can pat yourself on the back (and shrinking waistline) for being good and for having only ordered a salad for lunch. It’s also the definitive Up To You Thai dish; you can order it made with pork, beef, or chicken. You probably can order fish larb too but I tend to block out horrendous sights such as that. An email friend recently dropped me a note about the joy of eating frog larb as a steady diet while visiting Korat. I think he was being satirical. In any case, frog counts as fish when it lands on your plate. And you can only hope it lands on someone else’s plate instead.

I always order larb when dining at a Thai restaurant with friends. I like chicken larb best, but usually order whatever version offers a type of meat someone else hasn’t already ordered. Like most traditional Thai dishes – though technically this one is Lao by way of Issan – regardless of the version you order, it’s an impressive sight, nicely decorated with carved veggies and almost as appealing to the eye as it will be to your stomach. The only thing better than chowing down on larb with friends is chowing down on larb with friends who are new to Thai cuisine. Watching them try to figure out just how they are supposed to eat with the limited and oddly paired set of eating utensils is fun enough. Watching them try to figure out how to eat larb . . . well, it gets better.

Every visitor to Thailand seems to know what pad Thai is. And many exist on the country’s most famous noodle dish for the duration of their stay. That’s a shame. ‘Cuz once you’ve eaten larb, things will never be the same. Which seems apropos ‘cuz when you order larb it is seldom served the same anyway. Besides the difference in meat used there are a thousand variations on the dish. Several of which use raw meat. You may want to avoid those. Usually it comes served on a plate – which is half the trick to getting the right version. Sometimes it comes in a bowl minus all the greenery. I’m sure that style is tasty too but then you miss out on half the fun of eating larb. Which is all about playing with your food.

The version of larb you are most likely to run across when dining in Bangkok is a bit on the spicy side. Mixed in to the minced meat are chili powder, chopped mint leaves, chopped green onions, chopped coriander, and dried roasted chilies. If you are lucky, it will be very spicy. And that’s a good thing. Because served properly larb epitomizes everything good about Thai dining. A good Thai meal tickles your taste buds with an orchestra of flavors that include something sweet, sour, slaty, and hot; larb fills that bill in a single dish.

The meat portion of larb is often served on or next to lettuce leaves. Cucumbers, string beans, slivers of cabbage, and other fresh vegetables round out the plate and serve as crunchy counterpoints that help alleviate the spicy heat of the chopped meat mixture. Sticky rice too is a standard for most larb preparations, as is papaya salad. But it is the veggies that make the dish work. And it’s the conglomeration of the spicy meat and the cool snap of the veggies, all popped into your mouth at once that makes larb such a treat. Okay, so the popularity of drinking alcohol with larb among local aficionados is a big part of the dish’s reputation too. It is, rightly so, considered a party food for good reason.

In middle eastern countries, eating with your hands is common. In Thailand, not so much. I always get a laugh out of Thais who eat fried chicken drumsticks with a fork. And you know when you see a local eat a slice of pizza with his hands – as the gods intended – he’s been hanging around farang. The first time I had larb was at a meal put on by a hotel manager my friend Ann and I had become bosom buddies with. An imperious old Thai-Chinese woman, Can-Can delighted in ruling her kitchen staff and demanded they make meals for us that weren’t on the hotel’s restaurant’s menu. She was equally demanding in our learning the proper use of dining utensils when eating Thai food. I got my hands slapped on more than one occasion when sitting at her table. So it was a bit surprising when the prim and proper lady dug into her salad by scooping a heap of chopped meat onto a lettuce leaf and then chomping down on it like it was a burrito.

Since then I’ve seen locals make a canape out of larb by scooping some meat onto a cucumber slice too. And if sticky rice is served with the larb, Thais will use their fingers to flatten out a small glob of the glutinous rice and then use that to pick up some of the chopped meat. You can also use a fork and spoon as a lot of Thais do, but that’s no fun. And as much as I prefer eating larb with my hands, there is no single right way to eat the dish. Though Ann did learn popping a string bean into your bloody mary instead of your mouth is a no-no. At least according to Can-Can.

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