Why Trang in Thailand is obsessed with breakfast

Huge fans stutter on once-white walls. A lady wearing red lipstick and a silk dress settles into a plastic chair and points at tiny saucers on the marble table in front of her. There are two or three pork dim sum on each; she jabs one with a small fork, swipes it through a sauce that matches her outfit and pops it into her mouth. It’s 6.30am. 

In the southern Thai town of Trang, breakfast has been underway for several hours. And here at Sin Jiew, one of the city’s most popular dim sum joints, school children, newborns, dogs and office workers gather before dispersing to continue their day. It’s still dark outside, where roadside stalls smoke with tiny pancakes and large chunks of dough bob in pots of scalding-hot oil.

Trang is a pilgrimage site for food obsessives — mostly from Bangkok but occasionally also international travellers detouring from the region’s pretty, under-visited beaches. The day starts early — 4am early. And breakfast reigns supreme. I meet Winnie, a friend of a friend of a friend, who’s excited I’m here, and, naturally, wants to meet over a meal. “In other parts of Thailand, funeral celebrations last three days,” Winnie says, signalling for more dim sum. “But here they last 10 days, so there’s more time for food. It’s the Trang culture. And people aren’t going there to pay respect,” she laughs. “They are just going to eat!” 

Like thousands of others, Winnie’s been dining at Sin Jiew since she was a young child, having dim sum for breakfast before school every day, often returning for dinner. It’s normal here, she explains, to start the day eating in restaurants instead of at home — a tradition established by rubber workers in the countryside nearby. Tapping rubber trees is best done between midnight and 4am, when the maximum amount of liquid can be drawn. Afterwards, the workers need to refuel, so the town’s been shaped by these working hours. “They eat at 7pm, 10pm, midnight, 4am, 6am, 9am, 12pm,” Kuang, the owner of Sin Jiew, tells me. “Now it’s normal for Trang people to eat nine times a day.”

They aren’t short on choice. Passing pastel-coloured townhouses and roads crisscrossed with electricity cables, I reach Jeeb Khao, another of the 70 or so dim sum restaurants in town, where policemen, and pensioners in kaftans and Crocs settle in for their first, second or third breakfast of the day. The fourth-generation owner, 32-year-old Mae, was born in a room upstairs, and runs the restaurant with the same enthusiasm as her great-great-grandparents did 90 years ago. “We think breakfast is such a big deal,” she says, pouring boiling water over a cup stuffed with chrysanthemum flowers, discarding the first cup as “too sharp” and handing me the second. “It gives us energy for the day.”  

Jeeb Khao’s longest-standing customer, a 91-year-old, sits by the door, sipping on her tea. She’s been coming here for over 60 years, day in, day out, says Mae. After her husband died, her daughter started accompanying her. 

Mae points out the diligent folding of the dim sum wrapper, and the traditional steaming method — dozens of balls, including fish with tofu, and pork-stuffed bitter gourd, tucked in next to each other over a pot of boiling water. I respectfully admire it, before popping a parcel in my mouth, the perfect combination of soft, slightly sweet dough and juicy, peppery pork inside. You’ll find dim sum in plenty of towns in Thailand, but the flavour here is different — heavy on the pepper, with a side of kam chueang, a coral-red sauce unique to Trang. Every restaurant concocts its own version, using varying quantities of cassava, vinegar, salt and sugar. 

Everyone’s fiercely loyal to their favourite spot, and no two are alike. At hangar-sized Ruen Thai, dim sum is served in metre-high stacks of bamboo baskets. Four-person portions of rad na, a Thai-Chinese noodle dish, are on virtually every table. Unlike the version you find further north, it’s made with seafood instead of meat — a recipe created by the grandfather of the owner, Kaja. Like many of Trang’s original dim sum restaurant founders, he arrived from China in the early 1900s, part of a generation of immigrants who played a key role in popularising Chinese-influenced cuisine. “He was 10 years old, travelling on his own on a ship to Malaysia,” Kaja tells me. He made his way up the coast to Trang province and worked the docks. “By the time he was 20, he’d saved enough money for a small vehicle, and he started selling this rad na.” 

It’s comforting and delicately flavoured, laden with sea bass, prawns and octopus, and sprinkled with crab. Soft, thick noodles are submerged in a rich, peppery gravy, made slightly sweet by pork-bone broth and pork fat. The full recipe? Top secret, of course. 

Another day, I head to Trang market for 7am, where Yu Pi is almost done for the day. Dressed in a floral blouse and back brace — the 60-something is on her feet 16 hours at a time — she expertly chops moo yang (crispy pork, the town’s signature breakfast dish). It’s so vital to Trang’s identity that it’s mentioned in the province’s slogan. I’m handed a sticky chunk of mahogany-coloured meat, which is tender, sweet and fragrant with spices from a Chinese pharmacist (Yu Pi won’t go into specifics, but there’s a hint of cinnamon and clove). Shards of crackling threaten to detach my fillings. Yu Pi tosses everything onto the scales; the price here at Moo Yang Ko Pao is 600 baht (around £13) a kilo, some 200 baht pricier than stalls elsewhere. It’s the best in Trang, though. People will pay. Customers squeeze between stalls to collect their packages of the caramelised ‘sweet bits’ from Yu Pi; others exchange wads of cash for whole pigs for family celebrations. With her phone on loudspeaker, Yu Pi takes food orders from her husband, who’s at home.

While Yu Pi works in the market, other Trang residents gather for prayer. Dotted around the mosque, women in headscarves prepare crumpled rotis and chicken curry. Nearby, I meet Wan at her restaurant, Terrang. “There are many Muslim people in Southern Thailand, and they want to eat dim sum for breakfast, too. But everywhere serves pork,” she explains. Spotting an opportunity, she began serving chicken and prawn dim sum to Thai Muslims — both locals and visitors.

But not everyone in Trang wants dumplings for breakfast, some want something sweeter. At Kopi Sombat the owner is pouring can after can of condensed milk into dark-brown tea — made with Malaysian tea leaves, he tells me, proudly. The result is cha nom ron, a fudge-coloured, caffeinated concoction that’s one reason why the shop is so busy. The other? Fried dough. Not the modest chunks I’ve spotted at every breakfast table in Trang. These are the size of a large forearm. Outside, where people are selling bananas and eggs from their car boots, a team of three preps the dough, before slipping on protective goggles and twiddling it with chopsticks in a vat of treacle-coloured oil. 

A small saucer of coconut custard is placed in front of me. The thick paste covers half the saucer. I wipe the dough through it — with the crispy moo yang tucked inside it’s the perfect combination of salty, soft, sweet and crunchy. Beside me, a teenager slurps iced tea through a straw. ‘Today’s a dough day’, her T-shirt reads. In Trang, I think every day is a dough day.