Eating Through Jodd Fairs, Bangkok's New Trendy Night Market
Jodd Fair is a fairly new market with plenty of food and clothing stalls.
Sitting right next to Bangkok’s busy Rama 9 intersection, Jodd Fairs is a new and trendy night market that serves up food, drinks, clothing, and so much more.
If you’re starting to get bored of the traditional markets around Thailand then you might want to join in on the hipster vibe and atmosphere of Jodd Fairs. However If you enjoy the traditional retro floating market vibes of Bangkok then be sure to check out the big three: Damnoen Saduak, Maeklong and Amphawa floating markets.
Away from the dark and grimy atmosphere of old traditional markets with wooden buildings and canals, Jodd Fair is a modern market that manages to maintain a vintage retro atmosphere while keeping itself clean and organized.
You’ll find plenty of opportunities to drink, eat, shop, and meet new people and if you haven’t posted on your social media feed in a while, then Jodd Fairs is the spot for you.
The market is catered more towards the younger crowd but make no mistake, everyone is welcomed here, perfect if you want to feel young again.
Exploring The Jodd Fairs Maze
Be careful not to get lost in the many aisles!
The Jodd Fairs Night Market is laid out into multiple sections:
The front begins with an open seating area with many food trucks mostly selling drinks and alcoholic beverages and cocktails
The middle section is mostly clothing, haircuts, nail salons, and all other assortments of typical market goods you can find.
The rear of the market is dominated by various food stall selling all sorts of street food (mainly new and trendy foods).
The whole left side of the market is one long corridor filled with seafood restaurants, and Leng Saap (which I will talk about later on). In fact, there is a disturbingly large amount of shops that sell Leng Saap
The whole right side of the market is also a long corridor where you will find seating areas and food trucks selling mostly beverages
The very back of the market is also more seating area plus more food trucks
The market really comes alive during the late evening/night with plenty of cocktail and drink stalls.
The market is organized into columns, so to make the most of it, walk up and down through all of the columns. It may sound confusing when I explain it but when you’re actually there, it’s very intuitive.
It is really a maze, but one that you’d want to get lost in exploring all the various clothing, trinkets, and food stalls.
So that’s the introductory stuff out of the way, let’s get to exploring and eating all the delicious Jodd Fairs Foods!
Korean Street Food Stall, Eomukguk and Gimbap
Eomuk is a favorite comfort street food of mine.
If you’ve been in Thailand for a while you won’t be surprised to find a multitude of Korean street food options all across Bangkok. Yes, Thailand is currently going through a Korean-fever wave, and their culture has integrated pretty tightly into our food.
The dish pictured above is Eomukguk, a fish cake that has been deep fried and left to simmer in an anchovy based soup.
There is two versions on offer at this stall: the plain anchovy broth, and a spicy version.
Contrary to my love for spice, I went with the plain version because I was saving my tongue for something else down the line.
There wasn’t anything that particularly stood out from the Eomukguk, just a nice fishcake and soothing heartwarming broth. Tasty but I wouldn’t make this your top priority to seek out.
Various types of Gimbap
You’ll also find Gimbap at this stall which are mini rice and seaweed rolls with filling. Honestly the Gimbap here is not great, too much rice (and I think stale old rice as well…) and the filling had no flavor.
What made Gimbaps addicting is that they are brushed with sesame oil, and here the taste of the sesame oil is almost nonexistent…
Crunchy Deep Fried Insects
Are you brave enough to try a crunchy deep fried Silkworm?
I am not brave enough to try this. Definitely some day, but just not today. Or any time soon…
But these little spawns of Satan are very popular in South East Asia, you can find stalls selling deep fried insects everywhere here in Thailand, so of course Jodd Fairs is no exception.
I heard they are pretty tasty though. and they are a really cheap snack that you can eat on the go just like popcorn.
In addition to being deep friend, they are sprayed with soy sauce to add a bit of extra salty flavor.
Taiyaki, Fish Shaped Pancakes With Filling
Have you ever wished that fish was a dessert? No? Yeah same.
Taiyakis are little pastries filled with sweet filling that is shaped like a fish, don’t worry there is no actual fish in this.
You can find 2 variants of Taiyaki in Bangkok:
A buttery flakey croissant-type pastry Taiyaki
A pancake-y dense Taiyaki (the more common varaint)
The ones at Jodd Fairs are the pancake version. You can choose from a variety of fillings from Nutella or Vanilla Custard, to Taro paste, or Red Bean Paste.
You can’t go wrong with a nice warm and freshly made Taiyaki, with that warm, fluffy, and cake-y bread and that nice oozing sweet filling.
I ordered a taro filling and my partner ordered one with Nutella. Although we ate ours a while after it was freshly baked, it was still very tasty.
Grilled Skewers, a Classic Staple at any Thai Market
Some grilled intestines and a variant that is stuffed with egg.
Like every other Thai street food market, you can find grilled skewers. Pork, Beef, Chicken you name it.
This stall sells something quite unique, an intestine stuffed with egg. Now I’ve had grilled intestines before, which are awesome, but I’ve never had one stuffed with egg. My partner ordered a few and of course I had to try a bite.
They give you the option to pour a sweet chili sauce on it or on the side as well.
I gotta say, the taste wasn’t bad but what threw me off was the texture of the egg. It was bouncy and sort of crumbly.
Once I got pass the texture it was pretty tasty. Worth a try if you like grilled intestines.
While Jodd Fairs is a modern rendition of a Thai night market, you should know that Floating Markets are the quintessential traditional Thai shopping experience and is something you have to do when you are in Thailand. if you don’t know where to start, book a Floating Market Tour here for a cheap price. This tour will bring you to all of the main markets in Bangkok such as Damnoen Saduak, Maeklong and, Amphawa Floating Market.
Leng Saap
What’s better than a mountain of meat and chillies? A larger mountain of meat and chillies.
Now this is what I was saving my spice tolerance for.
If you don’t know Leng Saap is a modern Thai dish that is made from simmered pork spine and a deliciously spicy pork bone soup with plenty of green bird’s eye chilis.
Spicy, sour, meaty, and oh so good. The Leng Saap you will find at Jodd Fairs isn’t just some pork bones in a bowl oh no.
It’s a mountain. Like Mount Everest or Kilimanjaro.
The picture above isn’t the largest size, don’t be fooled. The largest size easily stands as tall as a child.
Related: The Essential Guide to Thai Food
This dish makes good use of ingredients that would otherwise be thrown away (the pork spine). You’ll be gnawing and picking out the meat from the bones and crevices, yes you have to work to get your food but it’s worth it. Plus they provide you with plastic gloves so no need to worry about getting your hands dirty.
The broth is spicy and sour, and a little meaty. If you can’t handle spicy then be careful. Eating this dish is like treading on a minefield.
The meat is so tender that you can just give it a little push with your finger and it will fall right off the bone.
Eat this with a plate of rice and you got yourself a satisfying meal.
But what I find kind of funny, is that the majority of sit down restaurants at Jodd Fairs advertise Leng Saap as their highlighted dish. It’s as if Leng Saap was a sponsor for Jodd Fairs.
Mango Sticky Rice Flavored Khanom Krok!
If you have never tried a Khanom Krok then you, my friend, are missing out.
Khanom Krok is my favorite Thai dessert and for good reason.
It is made using coconut milk and coconut cream plus some batter. The mixture is then griddled in a Krok (the griddle itself) to form this cup shape where the outside is crispy and crunchy while the inside remains warm, creamy, and custardy.
Usually Khanom Krok flavors come in: corn, green onion, plain. But here they have Mango Sticky Rice!
The Khanom Kroks are topped with a tiny scoop of sweet sticky rice and then sprinkled with bits of chopped mango.
You can order a mixed set that comes with all the flavors they have or a plate full of only Mango Sticky Rice flavor with which they give you an extra container of coconut cream to drizzle on.
It’s tasty, of course it is, it’s Khanom Krok. Sweet, salty, imagine mango sticky rice but all in one bit and with added coconut creaminess and a crispy crunch.
Definitely a recommend when you’re at Jodd Fairs.
All The Ice Cream Flavors You Can Imagine!
Who needs vanilla? How about a baked spinach and cheese flavored ice cream?
Do you like Ice Cream? Of course you do, who doesn’t?
Do you like your ice cream with bits of mackerel fish in it? Of course you don’t, but that isn’t stopping Moodaeng’s Amphawa Ice cream stall from making horrifyingly creative flavors. It feels like
In addition to normal sweet flavors Moodaeng’s experiments with some of the most crazy combinations.
Some flavors you can find available are:
Moo Krata - Thai style pork barbeque
Sweet and Salty Chili Sauce with Mango
Salted Mackerel
Krapao Gai Kai Dow - Stir Fried Basil with Chicken and Fried Egg
Strange and perhaps gross flavor combinations indeed, but it’s all about having fun.
The best thing is that all of Moodaeng’s Amphawa’s Ice Cream are homemade and the flavors rotate by season.
Salted Mackerel Ice Cream
Salty, and with a pungent taste of mackerel. To some it might work but for me this was a hard no.
But I wouldn’t stop you from trying it out yourself though, I mean where else are you going to find these types of Ice Cream flavors?
This place is definitely a recommend, go wild!
Talay Krok, Like Khanom Krok but Savory
Khanom Krok too sweet for you? No worries, Talay Krok is the savory older brother :)
The first thing you noticed is the huge tentacles overflowing from the griddle wasn’t it?
Yes this snack is a variation of Khanom Krok, in Thai Khanom means snack or dessert and Krok means the griddle that is used to cook the dish. So Talay Krok stands for Sea(food) Krok.
Prepared in the same way as Khanom Krok (minus the sweet coconut milk and cream) this snack is topped with various seafoods such as octopus, squid, shrimp, imitation crab, and mussels.
It’s also paired with a sweet chili sauce for you to dip them into.
Hot and fresh, these things are tasty and quite filling because they give you a lot, 2 of each types of seafood, 8 pieces in total.
The seafood is fresh and the batter is slightly bouncy. I recommend you try this one out if you are looking for something filling but don’t want to commit to sitting in a restaurant.
Griddled to Perfection
I really like the crunchy batter, the texture makes all the difference. The amount of food that they give you is also really worth it for the price.
Grilled Halloumi Cheese and Tteok
A common street snack in Korea that has been brought over to Thailand.
Grilled Halloumi Cheese and Tteok was the last thing I expected to see in Thailand. I’ve only had this snack twice and both times was in Korea (and on the same day, it was that good).
This stall in Jodd Fairs was quite popular with quite a long queue of people waiting to try this snack.
If you didn’t know, Halloumi cheese is a cheese made from goat and sheep’s milk, it’s texture is slight firm and bouncy, once grilled it becomes very stretchy almost like Mozzarella, Tteok is Korean rice cake.
Honestly, compared to the one I had in Korea this was pretty disappointing. The one I had in Korea, the Tteok was warm and a little crunchy, the Halloumi cheese was similar in texture. The snack was then drizzled with a bit of honey to give it that extra sweetness.
The difference here is that the stall in Jodd Fair adds Kinako powder which is a bean powder popular in Japanese snacks. It doesn’t go well in my opnion, the Kinako overpowered the taste of the cheese and ttoek.
Also I think it may just be that the vendor was pressured to not keep customers waiting, but our order was not grilled long enough for the cheese to properly caramelised and melt.
You’ll probably have better luck than I did, also maybe ask them to leave out the Kinako…
Details About The Market
Jodd Fairs is open from 4pm to Midnight everyday. The market activity really starts picking up around 6pm when the sun is starting to set, it’s also the most crowded around this time onwards.
Plenty of food, shops, cocktail and bars for a nice and chill evening spent in a trendy night market.
Jodd Fairs is around the busy Rama 9 intersection and sits next to IT City (Fortune Town), if you take an MRT to Rama 9, it’s only a minute or two walks away from the MRT station
Jodd Fairs Location: Rama IX Rd, Huai Khwang, Bangkok 10310
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