What Is
Thai Food?

Thai Food Explained

What is Thai food?

This guide is written by the kitchen team at Charm Thai Cafe in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Rin, our Head Chef, has more than 10 years of Thai cooking experience across South Yorkshire, and the explanations reflect how she guides customers through the menu.

Use the contents list to jump to a particular question or read the guide from beginning to end. It explains the main types of Thai food, how the curries and noodles differ, how chilli levels work, which dietary options require checking and what to order on a first visit.

What makes Thai food different?

The balance is what most people notice first, but different dishes create it in different ways. Lime sharpens a Tom Yum broth, tamarind gives Pad Thai its sweet-sour backbone, coconut milk rounds out many curries, and fresh herbs lift salads and stir-fries. Fish sauce, soy sauce and palm sugar add the saltiness, savoury depth and sweetness that hold those brighter flavours together.

There is no single cooking method. Stir-fries and many noodle dishes are cooked quickly in a hot wok, while curries, broths and soups are simmered to build depth. Jasmine rice accompanies many dishes, and a traditional shared meal often places several contrasting dishes in the middle of the table.

Thai cooking sits within the wider Asian restaurant in Doncaster category, but its balance of chilli, lime, herbs, curry pastes, fish sauce and coconut milk gives it a distinct character. Our main Doncaster restaurant page explains what Charm Thai Cafe offers before you book.

What are the main types of Thai food?

Thai food is much broader than curry and Pad Thai. The table below gives a quick guide to the main categories and the dishes a first-time diner is likely to encounter.

What are the different Thai curries?

There are six you will see most often, and the easiest way to think about them is by heat and by whether they contain coconut milk. Green, red and yellow are the everyday trio, all built on coconut milk. Green is herbal and fragrant from fresh green chilli, red is a touch bolder and slightly sweeter from dried red chilli, and yellow is the mildest, with turmeric and a warmth closer to a South Asian curry.

Then come the two rich ones. Massaman is sweet, nutty and barely spiced, with potato and roasted peanuts, influenced by southern Muslim Thai cooking. Panang is thicker and creamier than red, with ground peanut and very little broth. The odd one out is jungle curry, the only one made without coconut milk, which makes it thinner, fierier and the choice for people who want real heat. We break all six down in detail on our dedicated Thai curry in Doncaster page if you want to go deeper.

What is Pad Thai?

Pad Thai is Thailand's most famous noodle dish and the one most people order first, for good reason. It is flat rice noodles stir-fried with a tamarind-based sauce that is sweet, sour and savoury all at once, tossed with egg, beansprouts, spring onion and crushed peanuts, with a wedge of lime to squeeze over. It is not a spicy dish by default, which is part of why it travels so well.

The thing that separates a good Pad Thai from a flat one is the sauce, which should be balanced fresh rather than poured from a sweet bottle. We mix ours per order. You can have it with chicken, prawn, tofu or vegetables, and we do a fully egg-free vegan version too. There is more on it on our Pad Thai in Doncaster page, while our Pad Thai history guide explains how the dish developed.

What are the other Thai noodle dishes?

Pad Thai gets the headlines, but it is one of several. Pad See Eew is wide rice noodles stir-fried in dark soy with egg and Chinese broccoli, savoury and gently sweet rather than sour. Pad Kee Mao, the so-called drunken noodles, is the spicy cousin, loaded with chilli, garlic and Thai basil. Then there are the noodle soups, where noodles sit in a deep broth rather than a dry stir-fry.

Rin's signature here is the dark noodle soup, a slow, savoury broth that regulars come back specifically for. If you want the full range laid out, our Thai noodles in Doncaster page covers the lot, dry and soup alike.

What is tom yum and tom kha?

These are the two classic Thai soups, and they sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. Tom yum is the hot and sour one, a clear, punchy broth sharp with lemongrass, galangal, lime leaf, chilli and lime, usually with prawn or chicken. It is bracing and aromatic, the soup that clears your head. Tom kha is its mellower sibling, the same aromatic base softened with coconut milk into something creamy and soothing.

If you like a bit of zing, tom yum is one of the most satisfying things on any Thai menu. If you want comfort over kick, tom kha is the one. Both work as a starter to share or as a light main with rice.

Is Thai food spicy?

Some of it, yes, but a great deal of it is not, and that surprises people. Because Thai cooking is about balance, heat is just one of four tastes in play, not the point of the dish. Massaman and yellow curry are mild and sweet. Pad Thai and Pad See Eew are not spicy at all. The soups and salads can be fierce, but they do not have to be.

The practical answer is that nearly everything can be cooked to the heat you ask for. We dial the chilli back by default so the whole table can enjoy it, and we are very happy to take it up to the full Thai kick for anyone who wants it cooked the way it is in Thailand. If you are spice-cautious, just say so when you order. Nobody will think less of you.

Is Thai food good for vegans?

It is one of the better cuisines for it. Thai cooking already leans on vegetables, tofu, coconut milk and fresh herbs, so the building blocks are plant based to begin with. Coconut milk, which carries most of the curries, is vegan, so green, red, yellow, massaman and panang all adapt cleanly. The two things to watch are fish sauce and oyster sauce, which appear in a lot of traditional recipes.

That is exactly what a proper vegan Thai menu handles for you. Ours leaves fish sauce out and uses a mushroom-based vegan oyster sauce, with a Pad Thai that drops the egg entirely rather than swapping it. So you get the real dishes, not a sad substitute version.

Is Thai food gluten free?

A surprising amount of it is, naturally. Thai food is built on rice and rice noodles rather than wheat, so the starch base is already fine. The catch is in the sauces: standard soy sauce and oyster sauce usually contain wheat, and they turn up across the menu. Swap those for gluten free versions and most curries and many stir-fries can be prepared using gluten-free ingredients. The kitchen still handles wheat in other dishes, so cross-contact can't be guaranteed.

We can do that gluten free soy swap on request, which opens up a good chunk of the menu, and we lay out exactly what works on our gluten free Thai page. One honest caveat: we are not a dedicated gluten free kitchen, so if you have coeliac disease please tell us when you order so we can take extra care. Coeliac UK has a clear, sensible guide to eating out safely that is worth a read if you are newly diagnosed.

What are the classic Thai starters?

Thai starters are made for sharing, and a mixed plate is the best way to start a meal. The usual suspects are spring rolls, fish cakes, chicken satay with peanut sauce, and dumplings. Satay is grilled skewers with a rich peanut sauce, fish cakes are springy and fragrant with red curry paste and lime leaf, and spring rolls are the crisp, familiar opener everyone knows.

At Charm Thai Cafe the spring rolls, dumplings and fish cakes are made fresh in-house, and the satay sauce is our own. They are the kind of thing a Doncaster table works through fast while the mains cook. The full spread is on our handmade Thai starters page.

What should I order at a Thai restaurant?

If it is your first Thai meal, a good starting order is a plate of starters to share, a mild curry such as massaman or yellow curry with jasmine rice, and a noodle dish such as Pad Thai. That gives you crisp, rich and savoury flavours without making the whole meal chilli-heavy.

If you want more heat, try green or red curry, Pad Kee Mao or one of the spicy salads. At Charm Thai Cafe, tell the team what flavours and chilli level you normally enjoy and we can point you towards dishes that suit you. Sharing two or three dishes between a couple is also a good way to discover more of the menu on a first visit.

What are the best Thai dishes to try?

There is no single best Thai dish, but a useful shortlist is Pad Thai for sweet-sour noodles, massaman for a mild and rich curry, green curry for something more aromatic and spicy, Pad Kra Pao for a punchier basil stir fry, and Pad See Eew for darker savoury noodles. If you want something less familiar, Rin's dark noodle soup is one of the dishes that gives the menu its own character.