Logically Sound Thai Supermarket Sells Noodles and More

When I walked out of St Austell's new Lanna Thai Supermarket on Saturday I was given some advice by the proprietor. It is, and I quote verbatim:

"Things are more like today than they ever have been before."

If you think that's strange, wait until you hear how she gave me this advice. She... get this... printed it on a piece of paper and then baked it in a small crispy cookie shell parcel! No lie, brothers and sisters, no lie.


Sure, it was a weird thing to tell me, but her logic couldn't be faulted. I had every reason to trust her, and now I have been there three times in as many days. This is what I have found.



I don't feel like chicken tonight.

As well as 3-D Macrospectrometry, the Asians invented the food paste. They were the first, and the consensus is they still are the best. Nobody can pack more flavour, colour and aroma into a paste, powder or sauce as the Asians. One jar of paste is worth four jars of the Western version of oriental sauces you get in Asda et al. You can get various curry pastes in the Lanna Thai Supermarket, as well as non-curry dishes and soups.

We got a jar of Tom Yam paste on Saturday and some thick white wet noodles (from Japan) from the new shop. We nashed to Lidl and got some veggies. Stir fried the veggies and the noodles, added two tea spoons of paste and some water and it was delicious.

St Austell Packet Noodles

I also got some little packet noodles. These are about 40p, so, much more expensive than in Lidl or Asda. I had one for lunch on Monday, upgraded with a bit of spring onion. I eat a lot of noodles and these were really good as well - the one I had today had three separate sachets in with the noodles. If someone is will to go that extra sachet mile for me, I'm happy to pay the extra twenty pence.

Dinner for the kids tonight was Thai packet noodles, one packet of chicken flavored (40p) as recommended by Uri for kids. I added the chilli sachet by accident -the two- year-old thought it too spicy, it made her cry a little. Goal! The four year old loved it.


I can believe it's not butter

The best drink in the world is the King Coconut, or Thambili, from Sri Lanka. If that sounds really pretentious, I'm sorry, but I can't get across what a magical elixir of life and goodness this stuff is. I go to Sri Lanka a lot and its one of the things I really look forward to. The Lanna Thai Supermarket sells them, well, it sells the slightly inferior but still just divine Thai baby coconut. So nice. The babies cost two quid and are really environmentally unfreindly so snap them up before the EU whacks a supertax on foodstuffs that are 95% packaging, even if in this case it is natural.


They also sell the cans of the not quite as nice processed version which is still yummy - I bought one can and we had a family row over it, which was only solved after buying two more.

Green Thai Ruby


Uri said she had two types of green curry, one the Rolls Royce and one the BMW. I asked her what Asda sold, she thought for a bit then said "Vauxhaul," with a big smile. She also gave me the coconut cream I would need, some fresh baby aubergines, some weird stuff called something like "ong choy". I also got some green noodles, another can of cocconut drink and potted verbal instructions on how to make the green curry. It was simple and soooo nice.


One night in Bannock and the world is your oyster mushroom etc etc

I have been to Thialand a few times and it has so much to offer: the people, the temples, the ladyboys, the food....The food is especially yummy and the fact that it's so easy to cook at home, if you have the ingredients, makes it a double-whammy yummy. These supermarkets that dominate the town from its edges might be convenient but they don't have the kind of food or community contribution that Uri's, Smorger's Delicatessen or even the butcher's in Vicaridge Place has.

Good luck to Uri and Lanna Thai Supermarket.