The Cowboy Hat Lady

One evening last week we biked to the Cowboy Hat Lady’s food stall for dinner. She sets up in the late afternoon, on a wide sidewalk along the moat road right outside the north (“White Elephant”) gate. She is joined by about 15 to 20 other food vendors who provide a terrific variety for your dining experience. They set up their kitchens, tables for the diners, tents for the rain, and dish washing areas. Some even string lights and hang fans from posts—don’t ask how they get the electricity. Every square foot of this wide sidewalk is used. It’s known as the Chang Phueak market.

If you haven’t guess it already, the Cowboy Hat Lady wears a cowboy hat. The story is that a few years ago, when her stall was much simpler and not shaded, she donned a hat, a cowboy hat. That set her apart from the other vendors and people started looking for the vendor with the cowboy hat. Local fame led to internet fame (Anthony Bourdain helped a lot), and now tour groups seek her out.

While we prefer a sit-down dinner (although George has still to suggest a restaurant with a real door and actual walls - forget AC!), these vendors also fill hundreds of take-away orders. The left lane (remember, the Thai drive on the left ) becomes a stop-and-go lane just like the drop off departure lane at an airport. The Cowboy Hat Lady attracts vans of tourists, who stop to taste her famous Khao Kha Moo and to take her picture. She is also very popular with the locals who arrive non-stop via scooter. Since our visit 4 years ago she has gotten a new stall, new tables and stools, and a tarp for shade. She also has several employees who help fill take-away orders and bus the tables.

Khao Kha Moo is pork leg stewed in a rich broth with undertones of cinnamon and star anise. Hers is a little sweet but not too sweet. It’s served over rice, with a hard boiled egg, pickled mustard greens, raw garlic and fresh chili peppers on the side. When you order, you can ask for less or more pork fat.

The other vendors around her may not be as famous, but they serve delicious food. Each vendor specializes in a particular food group or dish. After eating Khao Kha Moo I had to have some congee. And since I was unwilling to share with George, he had to get his own bowl. An order of pork bao made for our dessert. Or so we thought. On the way home, we stopped at our favorite smoothie stand in the siriwatana market for a wonderful mango-coconut smoothie.

The Cowboy Hat Lady cooks the pork legs in advance and brings them with everything else to create her restaurant area. She stand on a little stool and chops away serving up dish after dish, until everything is gone.

This is the assistant, filling in for the Cowboy Hat Lady. Cowboy hat or not, the tourists still stop, and the food is still delicious. The fellow in the gray shirt is the assistant’s assistant, and he helps bag up the take-away orders and collect the money from locals who fearlessly zip in and out on their scooters as they head home after work.

This is one of the several sit down eating areas. Lights and a fan create a nice ambiance.

So many eggs. They will be gone very soon since each serving gets an egg.

This dish washing section is set up for a lot of dishes. No dish washing machines, and no hot water. I don’t have hot water in my condo kitchen or bathroom sink!

This lady is thoroughly rinsing rice. There’s another food prep area on the left. All cooking is with butane (the green tank with the steel kettle perched on top). Chiang Mai has no gas mains connections.

This was my bowl of congee. It was so creamy with just the right amount of condiments, I did not want to share a spoonful.

Another place to select your protein and have it cooked.

The customer picks the ingredients all on display for a made-to-order meal.

A truck pulls up and a team starts unloading all the stuff they need to set up a food stall—propane tanks, tables, little plastic stools, woks, tarps, etc. Chang Phueak market stays busy until 10 or 11 in the evening. When the vendors sell out, they pack up and go home, leaving no trace that they were there.

Here we have the moat and the moat road ( Manee Noparat Road). George risked his life to cross the street for this photo. He took many of the photos for this blog post because I was too busy enjoying my congee. What a guy!