A street-side table at Huen Phen

By contrast, Baan Rai Yarm Yen, two kilometers to the northeast, offers a faux-“country” setting of wooden tables, fairy lights, gnarled old trees, a waterfall, and a live band complete with banjo to round out the thai cowboy fantasy. The food is rustic, garlanded with mounds of leafy greens, and extremely spicy. A raw-beef laab has me reaching for the nearest beer, while a platter of deep-fried bamboo grubs comes with a fiery red dipping sauce. But while the menu is extensive and the tables are packed, one gets the impression that food is not the first order of business here.

The same restaurant serves unctuous curried egg noodles (khao soi), here made with pork

Facing a similar sort of dilemma is Baan Suan Rim Ping. Owned and designed by architect Chulathat Kitibutr, the quiet, leafy restaurant is nestled in a crook of the Ping River, and modeled after a northern Thai village, with dining rooms set in a series of multi-leveled porches. It’s so beautiful that it can distract from the menu—a fusion of local favorites interspersed with western dishes like “beef on a bell,” slices of meat cooked on a cast-iron bell set over a fire and fitted with tiny spikes to hold the beef in place.

Lovely as all this is, however, it’s not the food I grew up with. When i mention this over the phone to my dad in Bangkok one night, he suggests I visit a place on the outskirts of town that cooks “just like aunt Priew,” one of his Chiang Rai cousins. I find this hard to believe. My Aunt Priew is, in my completely unbiased opinion, the best northern Thai cook in the country. Could anyone possibly compare?