In Australia, we tend to think of food courts as being greatly inferior to 'real' restaurants. This is not an unfair point of view given that every shopping centre food court seems to feature the same selection of generic brands selling the same unexciting chain store products, there is a certain low quality homogeneity to Australian shopping centre food. This presumption does not follow in many Asian countries, with the food courts in Bangkok's shopping malls featuring a plethora of genuinely excellent places to eat. Having decided to ease our way into Bangkok with a stroll through the main shopping malls of Siam Square and Siam Centre, Alissa and I popped into Som Tum Nua for lunch after hearing good things about the quality of their namesake dish - Som Tum, better known in the English speaking world as Papaya Salad.
