Thai-Islam Phochana

Hiding in plain sight at the edge of Yala’s sprawling, chaotic fresh market is 70-year-old Thai-Islam Phochana.

Catering to a seemingly endless stream of market workers and shoppers, the open-sided restaurant specializes in Thai-Muslim breakfast dishes. These include banana leaf packages concealing a variety of sticky rice-based sweets; mild, meaty curries served over rice; a thin dough pastry encasing minced beef and eggs known as mataba; and perhaps most notably, khaao yam, southern Thailand’s famous “rice salad.” 

The latter takes the form of rice, tinted and fragrant from the addition of herbs and aromatics, and topped with pinches of toasted coconut, dried fish, finely-sliced herbs and vegetables, bean sprouts, a tiny knot of noodles, crushed black pepper and dried chili. 

These elements are topped with a dressing that combines locally-made fish sauce, palm sugar and dried assam fruit. Mix it all together and you have a dish that’s fragrant, colorful, crunchy, herbaceous, spicy, salty and sweet all at the same time—a distinctly southern Thai way to start the day.