South-East Asian cities are waging war on street food

THE taxi-driver parks in the way a drunkard falls asleep: suddenly, with little regard for his surroundings. He leaps from his cab, eyes alight with anticipation, striding toward Jae Deh. She shouts at him, pointing at the bucket of bones at her feet: “You’re late! All finished!” The cabbie, who has the gelled hair, tinted aviator glasses and raspy voice of a low-level mafioso from New Jersey, staggers backwards as though he’s been shot: “I’ve been coming here for ten years! You didn’t save any for me?” Ms Deh’s mock-stern look collapses into merriment. She points him towards the nearest table, handing him a plate of rice and a bowl of braised pork. He helps himself to a couple of chilies and a coriander frond, keeping up a steady patter with Ms Deh and her husband, Suchit.

The couple has been selling khao kha moo (rice with stewed pork shanks) on Soi Thong Lo, a side street off one of Bangkok’s main roads, since 1987, when they were just 16. Now their adult daughter works alongside them. The family is not rich, but Mr Suchit says that on a good day they clear around 4,000 baht ($113). Like many of Bangkok’s street-food vendors, they came to the city from Isaan—Thailand’s poor and dusty north-east—in search of a better life. And they have built one, shank by shank.