Pad Thai as Nation-Building

Pad Thai is a global staple and, as food writer and critic Alexandra Greeley notes, a slightly odd mascot for Thai cooking: both its stir-frying technique and its main ingredient, noodles, came from China. Its modern career was made by Plaek Phibunsongkhram — the authoritarian mid-twentieth-century prime minister usually called Phibun, credited with creating the pad Thai phenomenon. Greeley writes that among his moves was a national dish built from eggs, bean sprouts and peanuts, ingredients that could be bought from Thai farmers or produced in home gardens. A plate of noodles was also, in other words, a piece of domestic policy.