This meal-size soup which originated in the Chinese-leaning city of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand is stunning in its savor and mellowness, using a homemade yellow curry paste and freshly pressed coconut milk. There are soft noodles in its depths and fried ones on top, and the dish is accompanied by pickled greens, chile oil, cilantro, and lime juice.

Tart, garlicky, and supremely delicious, this sausage is one of Thailand’s best bar snacks. It’s served with fresh ginger, cilantro, lime, toasted peanuts, and lettuce, for wrapping it all up so can eat it with your fingers.

One of the most curious dishes in the Thai canon, homok (sometimes spelled “amok” as in “running amok”) is an airy orange mousse of fish and coconut milk, mildly curried. Nothing better for lunch.

The pork has been pulled from the leg in big, deeply flavorful hanks, interspersed with bits of jellied skin and herbs. This soy-saucy concoction shows the influence of Chinese food on Thai vernacular gastronomy. And it’s damn good.

This dish features toasted coconut, dried shrimp, peanuts, and fiery chiles that you enwrap in a betel leaf, a material you may have previously associated with Indian smoking habits. With the pungent dipping sauce, the effect is stunning.

A Thai waitress once told me that this Siamese ceviche of shrimp, basil, crushed peanuts, and bird’s eye chiles (way hot!) was the result of the influence of dining rooms in Japanese hotels in Bangkok.

Steamed fish sounds so dull, doesn’t it? But when it arrives, you’ve got a party on a plate: a sizable red snapper sluiced with a strong cilantro-and-green-chile sauce, and topped with pickled garlic.

You can’t get into Red Hook’s Pok Pok mothership, either? Well their modest noodle offshoot on the Lower East Side offers several exemplary versions of the much abused noodle dish pad Thai, of which few other good versions are to be found. Customize as you see fit with fish sauce, raw sugar, soy sauce, and crushed chiles.

Harold Dieterle has remade this Isaan classic – substituting ground duck for pork or chicken and ramping up the flavor with toasted rice, chiles, and shallots, while adding crunch with romaine and long beans.