More Plain Congee

No MSG in this plain congee

Plain Congee (with extra spring onions and fried bread bits)
$8 ($4 per bowl)
CityU Canteen

While waiting in the chow line one morning, I overhead one of the canteen staff tell another customer that all the congee save for the plain congee were doused with MSG.  And then this revelation hit me like a tin to the head: small wonder the other congees in the canteen as well as the (best) plain congee in Hong Kong were so delicious: they themselves were drowning in flavor enhancer, and no more stood on their own original merits than a professional athlete relies on his own physique for performance; MSG is a food steroid!

Indeed, to test this hypothesis, I ordered these two bowls of plain congee and without the chemical enhancement of MSG, they truly tasted like insipid, clear soup with rudiments of vegetable and starch in them.  MSG, therefore, it goes without saying, makes everything in the bowl, from the spring onions to the rice grains, taste better!

Food is Food: The Factory Gourmet

Any dish with as much rice as you want: 20 baht (0.60 USD)
Bottle of soft-drink: 9 baht (0.27 USD)


A lot of my work involves traveling to clients, and we’re often out of the office or even in a different province altogether. The past two weeks I’ve been out in Ayudhya, the old capital of Thailand. In addition to its history, there are several massive Industrial Parks, in which industry is encouraged to congregate in exchange for tax breaks and other benefits.

The past two weeks here have been gastronomically dull, as the cafeteria attached to the client’s factory was only one store. The price of food there was very low though, costing only 20 baht (0.60 USD) for side dishes with as much rice as you like. It is common in factories in Thailand to provide their workers with as much rice as they’d like for lunch as a form of benefit.

I would normally order fried rice or stir-fried noodles, all for 20 baht. Although they had a daily set of two side dishes to choose from, they were often spicy and so I didn’t want to risk it. In addition, the level of hygiene within the cafeteria itself was questionable, and I figured a freshly cooked meal was better than food they had prepared before in the day.

In addition to the food itself, drinks such as a bottle of Coke or Sprite would set you back another 9 baht (0.27 USD). Although it’s extremely cheap, the wages of the average factory worker would only average 8,000 baht (241 USD) a month, and once food, transport and accommodation is factored in, very little is left.

Despite being that cheap, the taste was nothing to die for. The oil they used was reused from their frying earlier on in the day, and they would use the darkened oil unless you asked them to use something newer. Flies flew around and vegetables were simply rinsed rather than washed, while meat was left outside in a Tupperware box. The important thing was that when it was cheap, when it was the only store on the factory and when you were hungry, food was food, no matter how bland it tasted. Nevertheless, I'm certainly looking forward to heading back to Bangkok for some really good food.