sauce or no sauce

Definitely sauce. That's the way Thais eat. We put sauce on everything and anything. I took my parents who are visiting from Thailand to Mexican restaurants, to BBQ places or even to Chinese restaurants, they will bring some sort of spicy sauce with them there so they can pour it on everything. "No flavor", my dad said when we went to eat some Mexican food. BBQ sauce is not flavorful enough they have to pour their own spicy sauce on it.

Here are some common condiments that you will see everywhere in Thai restaurants, especially in Thailand. They are there so that you can spice up your food or adjust the dish to your preferred taste, be it spicier, more tart, saltier, or sweeter. Yes, there are actually sugar bowl on every table at restaurants in Thailand, not for your tea or coffee but for your noodle dishes. Not all Thai food are spicy nor all Thai people love spicy food. That is why the condiments are there. A lot of people assume that all Thai food is spicy and when they eat Thai food that is not spicy, it's not authentic.

In the picture, the two bottles on the left are soy sauce and Sriracha sauce. Sriracha is the name of chillies used to make the sauce and it is also the name of a town in Thailand. In the condiment ring, there are pickled chillies, just chillies and white vinegar, any spicy ones like Jalapenos or Serrano are fine. Then there are Thai chillies in fish sauce (yep, just chillies and fish sauce, sometimes though, we add a splash of lime juice in there too but it will not keep for very long), peanuts for noodles soup and Pad Thai and chili flakes which is made from roasted dried Thai chillies. The steps to make those chili flakes is in my Pad Thai post.