Bangkok: Cabbages & Condoms – Support a good cause

Cabbages & Condoms is a fun restaurant down Sukhumvit Soi 12. The first time I ate there was back in 2009 with Poul, and I try to make time for a visit each time I’m in Bangkok. Do you think Cabbages & Condoms is a strange name for a restaurant? Well, let me explain.

Cabbages & Condoms was originally founded to support the activities of the Population and Community Development Association (PDA), including family planning issues and different projects such as AIDS awareness and prevention. Put shortly, this means that every time you’re having a meal at Cabbages & Condoms, you’re supporting a good cause.

It was AC’s first visit to Bangkok, so I wanted to introduce her to proper Thai food, but I didn’t want to scare her off with too much heat. Cabbages & Condoms was therefore a perfect choice for dinner the first evening, as the food there is usually not very spicy.

Around the entrance of the restaurant, different condom characters are displayed. Our favorite was the condom Santa, made entirely from colored condoms. I took a picture of AC, which I would’ve love to show you, but I have promised her not to. I guess “Me & Condom Santa” pictures don’t go very well with Linked-In, personal-brand-grooming Corporate World.

You can either sit inside the restaurant or outside in a beautiful garden (these are the best tables), but we suspected it was going to start raining, so we asked for one of the roof-covered tables upstairs. Our built-in weather radar didn’t fail, and minutes after we were seated, it started raining heavily.

Because the staff had to evacuate the diners in the garden, it therefore took quite a while before we could place our order, but that was ok, as the menu was enormous, and it took quite a while to go through all the tasty-looking dishes pictured in the menu.

Thai food is usually ordered family style, and you pick a little of everything; a soup, a salad, a curry and maybe some fried fish, which is then served whenever ready and shared among the persons at the table. We were only two persons, but we ordered food enough to feed a big Thai family.

AC got rather attached to the green curry, but I managed to convince her to try Miang Kham, which is a traditional Thai appetizer consisting of finely chopped ginger, peanut, coconut, shallots and dried shrimp, which you wrap in fresh betel leaves and then dip in a tasty, slightly fishy, sauce before eating.

Miang Kham is like an explosion of flavors in your mouth and one of those dishes, which sums up the flavors of Thai cuisine in one mouthful. The food just kept arriving to our table, but we were hungry and supporting a good cause, and nothing could stop us from also ordering sticky rice with mango for dessert. Welcome to Bangkok AC!

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Cabbages & Condoms, Sukhumvit Soi 12, Klong Toey, Bangkok, Tel: +66 (0) 2 229 4610, Hours: Mon-Sun: 11am-10pm

> Visit Cabbages & Condom’s website