Raan Jay Fai

On Maha Chai Road, in Bangkok's Rattanakosin old town, a woman in ski goggles and a black apron cooks over two charcoal braziers in a shophouse kitchen for most of the evening. Supinya Junsuta — Jay Fai to everyone — has been doing this for decades, and in 2018 she became one of the first street-food cooks in the world to hold a Michelin star. The goggles are not a stunt. They keep smoke and spitting oil out of her eyes while she works a wok directly over live coals.

The signature is the crab omelette, khai jeaw poo. It arrives as an inflated golden envelope of egg hiding a generous tumble of lump crab meat, crisp at the edges and still soft through the middle, and it is the dish the star was awarded for. Everything else is cooked the same way: drunken noodles with seafood and a chilli-and-basil punch, tom yum built on a real prawn stock, a dry rice congee, pad kee mao that arrives properly charred. Portions are large and the chilli is honest. The crab dishes are priced accordingly — this is street food with a fine-dining number attached to its most famous plate.

Getting in takes planning. Walk-ins join a waiting list that can run to hours, and bookings are taken in limited numbers, so the sensible move is to arrive early and treat the wait as part of a night in the old town. The kitchen cooks for one table at a time and Jay Fai herself supervises every wok, which is why the pace is deliberate and why the queue does not move quickly. Bring cash, bring patience, and do not arrive hungry and in a hurry.

Andrew Zimmern brought Bizarre Foods here and found exactly the story the series was built on: an uncompromising cook, a charcoal fire, and food that would hold its own in any dining room in the world. Few places on this map make that point as plainly, or as deliciously.