How to read a Thai menu: the words that tell you what you're ordering

Most Thai dish names are built from parts: how it is cooked, what is in it, and what it sits on. Learn about forty words and you can read a menu with no translation, and order things that are not on it.

Foreigndly Guides · 9 October 2026 · 9 min read · who we are

A Thai menu with no English, or with English that says only "fried rice" and "spicy salad", is hard to order from because the dish names look like a wall of unfamiliar syllables. They are not arbitrary: most are short descriptions, assembled from a cooking method, a main ingredient and sometimes a flavouring, in a fixed order.

Once you can split a name into its parts, three things open up. You can read a menu without photographs, you can tell a mild dish from a fierce one before it arrives, and at a made-to-order stall you can build your own dish from the same parts. The romanisation here is a simple practical one; ph, th and kh are breathy p, t and k, never f or the English th.

How a dish name is built

Thai puts the main word first and the description after it, so a name is read like a recipe card. ผัดกะเพราหมู (phat kaphrao moo) is stir-fry, holy basil, pork. ต้มยำกุ้ง (tom yam kung) is boil, mixed-and-sour, prawn. ไก่ทอดกระเทียม (kai thot kratiam) is chicken, deep-fried, garlic.

The order tells you what the dish fundamentally is. When a name starts with a cooking verb, the dish is that preparation. When it starts with a base such as rice or noodles, the dish is that base, done in a particular way. So ข้าวผัด (khao phat) is rice that has been stir-fried, which is fried rice: one plate, everything cooked together in the wok. A stir-fry served on rice is named differently, with ราดข้าว (rat khao, poured over rice) on the end, as in phat kaphrao moo rat khao: the basil pork made separately and spooned over plain rice. Likewise ข้าวมันไก่ (khao man kai), rice-oily-chicken, is a rice dish first: rice cooked in chicken fat and stock, with poached chicken on top.

The decoding key

These are the words that do most of the work. Learn the cooking methods first; they tell you more about a dish than anything else.

Two pairs in that table are worth saying aloud. Chicken and egg, kai and khai, are on the same tone and differ only in the puff of air on the k; so are duck, pet, and spicy, phet. Hold a hand in front of your mouth: you should feel air on khai and phet and almost none on kai and pet. A vendor will usually work out which you meant from context, but now you know why they sometimes repeat it back.

A few flavour words finish the set: เปรี้ยวหวาน (priao wan) is sweet and sour; กระเทียม (kratiam) garlic; น้ำมันหอย (nam man hoi) oyster sauce; กรอบ (krop) crispy. Put together, หมูทอดกระเทียม (moo thot kratiam) is pork deep-fried with garlic, and you can read it without ever having seen it.

Reading the heat before it arrives

The single most useful skill on a Thai menu is predicting how spicy a dish will be from its name, because asking for less chilli only works on some dishes.

Where the heat is built in. In a kaeng the chilli is ground into the paste before the cook starts, so a green or jungle curry cannot be made mild on request. แกงป่า (kaeng pa), jungle curry, has no coconut milk to soften it and is among the hottest things on most menus. Yam salads and the Isan dishes such as laap are dressed with fresh chilli and lime; the cook can reduce it, but they start high.

Where the heat is added. A stir-fry gets its chilli in the wok, so phat kaphrao can be made gently. Papaya salad is pounded to order in a mortar, which means the cook adds chillies one at a time and you can name the number: พริกเม็ดเดียว (phrik met diao), one chilli, or ไม่ใส่พริก (mai sai phrik), no chilli at all. "Don't put in" is often clearer than "not spicy", because it names something the cook can leave out.

Mild by nature. If you want a safe order, choose from dishes that are mild as written: khao phat, fried rice; ผัดซีอิ๊ว (phat si-io), wide noodles stir-fried with dark soy; khao man kai; ไข่เจียว (khai jiao), a fluffy Thai omelette; ต้มข่าไก่ (tom kha kai), chicken in coconut milk with galangal; แกงจืด (kaeng juet), whose name means "bland curry" and which is a clear, gentle soup. That last one is the proof that kaeng does not always mean fire.

Many cooks quietly tone down a dish for a foreigner without being asked. If you want it as it is served to Thai customers, เผ็ดแบบคนไทย (phet baep khon thai), spicy the Thai way, makes that clear. And if the vendor answers your order with เผ็ดมากนะ (phet mak na), "it's very spicy, you know", take it as information rather than a challenge.

Ordering at a made-to-order stall

Many small restaurants are ร้านอาหารตามสั่ง (ran ahan tam sang), literally food-as-ordered shops. They often have a short wall menu, but the cook can make nearly any combination of the parts above, so you can compose your own dish: method, flavour, protein. Phat kaphrao kai. Phat phrik kaeng moo, pork stir-fried with red curry paste, often with long beans. Khao phat kung. Then add a fried egg on top with ไข่ดาว (khai dao, "star egg"); it is the standard extra and costs a few baht.

Curry-and-rice shops work differently. Trays of ready-made dishes sit behind glass, and you point: ข้าวราดแกง (khao rat kaeng), curry over rice, with one, two or three choices on the same plate. สองอย่าง (song yang) means two kinds.

Noodle soup in four decisions

At a noodle stall there is often no menu at all, just a glass cabinet of noodles and toppings. The vendor needs four answers, and Thai customers give them in this order.

1. Which noodle. เส้นใหญ่ (sen yai), wide flat rice noodles; เส้นเล็ก (sen lek), thin rice noodles; เส้นหมี่ (sen mee), rice vermicelli; บะหมี่ (ba mee), egg noodles.
2. Soup or dry. น้ำ (nam) in broth, or แห้ง (haeng) dry, with a little sauce and the broth in a separate bowl.
3. What goes in. Usually pork, beef, chicken or fish balls (ลูกชิ้น, luk chin), named on the cabinet.
4. Size. ธรรมดา (thammada), regular, or พิเศษ (phiset), special, which is a bigger bowl or more topping for roughly ten to twenty baht extra at the time of writing.

The whole exchange can be this short:

• Vendor: เอาเส้นอะไร (ao sen arai?), which noodle?
• You: เส้นเล็ก น้ำ หมู ครับ (sen lek, nam, moo, krap), thin noodles, soup, pork. Women end with ค่ะ (kah).
• Vendor: ธรรมดาหรือพิเศษ (thammada rue phiset?), regular or special?
• You: ธรรมดา (thammada).
• Vendor: กินที่นี่ไหม (kin thi ni mai?), eating here?
• You: กินที่นี่ (kin thi ni), here, or กลับบ้าน (klap ban), literally "go home", to take away.

The bowl arrives under-seasoned on purpose; the caddy of fish sauce, chilli, sugar and vinegar on the table is for you, as the Thailand field kit explains. Taste before you add.

Two words for special diets

Vegetarians should know two words and one catch. มังสวิรัติ (mangsawirat) is vegetarian in the familiar sense. เจ (jay) is the stricter Chinese-Thai Buddhist diet: no meat, fish, dairy or eggs, and traditionally no garlic or onion either. Shops serving it hang yellow flags printed with เจ in red, and they are a reliable find for vegans. The catch is fish sauce: a dish without meat can still be seasoned with nam pla, so add ไม่ใส่น้ำปลา (mai sai nam pla), no fish sauce, when it matters.

At the end of the meal

To say it was good, อร่อย (aroi), delicious, or อร่อยมาก (aroi mak), very. When someone offers more, อิ่มแล้ว (im laeo), I'm full, is a complete and polite answer. To pay, catch the eye of whoever served you and say เก็บเงินด้วย (kep ngoen duay), please take the money, which works at any stall or restaurant. Where foreigners are common, the English-derived เช็คบิล (chek bin, "check bill") is understood too, and so is miming a signature in the air. At a street stall you usually pay the cook directly, and saying what you ate is enough: เส้นเล็กหมู (sen lek moo), one bowl.

For the sounds behind these words, the tones and the breathy consonants, start with the Thailand field kit; then take this page to the first stall with no English on the board, and read the names before you look at the pictures.