Japanese cuisine has long been hailed as one of the best in terms of healthful benefits with its fondness for raw fish, and when you talk about Thai food, "healthy" doesn’t exactly come to mind. Hot, tasty, and delicious are the first adjectives that jump at you, but according to Oody’s restaurant owners, businessman Dori Shani and his restaurateur wife Maritel Nievera-Shani, Thai cuisine is as healthful as it is complex with its numerous ingredients.
Dori says, "In some dishes you could have more than 30 ingredients and herbs to reach authentic Thai taste. In our soup stocks alone, we have 12 to 15 ingredients."
He knows what he’s talking about. As a businessman involved in the tourism industry in Thailand for many years, Dori has learned to eat Thai food the way locals do. Maritel says that you will see him sweating and crying over his soup but he will never ask the spices to be toned down. You can say he takes his spices like a man – a Thai man, that is.
Maritel, on the other hand, marvels at the complexity of Thai dishes. Having been in the restaurant business for so long, she can tell what’s in the food and how it’s cooked even when she’s eating it for the first time. But not with Thai food – well, not yet anyway. "I’m starting to learn now but you really can’t learn Thai food by ouido."
Oody’s restaurant is a noodle restaurant that’s 90 percent Thai food, or at least cooked in Thai methods, with the difference being they use more than a dozen kinds of noodles sourced from different Asian countries such as Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam, and they even have Italian pasta.
Dori first got interested in Thai food simply as a cuisine but later he understood why Thais were so proud of it. It wasn’t just because of its uniqueness but also because of its benefits. He says, "You meet the old people in the upcountry of Thailand and they’re so healthy. Ninety years old or 95, they’re still on bicycles. You know what their secret is? Every morning, they eat five fresh chillies, not even in their salad, but they eat them raw. Now I understand why."
Chillies may be some of the misunderstood ingredients in the world, but research has shed light on their healthful benefits. For instance, Sawasdee, the Thai Airline magazine, reports that chillies "have twice the vitamin C by weight of oranges, with a single ounce enough for daily allowance." They can also help lower blood pressure and aid in weight loss.
And what about Thai chillies? The magazine continues that the phrik kee noo, which goes by the less glam English translation of "mouse-dropping chilli" that’s used in many Thai dishes, is thousands of times hotter than the Jalapeno pepper. "It rates about 80,000 Scotville Heat Units (SHU), a scale devised in 1912 to measure the intensity of chillies." Jalapeno pepper is 4,000 SHUs.
The secret may be in the capsaicin, a molecule contained in all chillies, which has proven to be beneficial to the respiratory system, blood pressure, and the digestive system. It is even used as an analgesic agent. (An added bonus is that it’s anti-flatulence!)
At Oody’s the hotness of chillies is balanced by its selections of drinks to keep you cool. One of them is its new Thai iced tea, which, unlike the old one, is a little orange in color and tastes so unique. Maritel says the tea is imported from Thailand and has been an age-old Thai favorite. They still have the tamarind juice with honey and pandan coconut shake. But I bet you didn’t know that pandan or bai toey hom is good for the heart and liver and has been known to cure sore throat.
There are said to be about 30 main herbs and spices that the Thais use in their everyday cooking. One of the mainstays in Thai kitchens – and also in Oody’s kitchen as it is used in numerous dishes such as the fried spaghetti with chicken and chillies and Thai noodles with pork – is basil. Sweet basil, used in most curry dishes; hoary basil, which is lemon-scented; and holy or hot basil, also used with curries but is more pungent than the other two. Maritel says medicinal benefits of basil include alleviation of cough symptoms.
Lemon grass, which comes in the juice form at Oody’s or as flavoring in its tom yam, is good as a diuretic and is said to help combat the flu. Mint leaves are used as mild antiseptic and good for the digestive system. Galanga, which is like ginger and used in som tam or papaya salad, is said to be antirheumatic and helps relieve stomach ache and carries antimicrobial agents.
Dori says with a laugh that Thailand has about 50 versions of som tam, different in each place, but "Bangkok’s style is the most simple and probably one of the most delicious" and that’s what the restaurant serves.
And what about coconut milk, which is a staple in southeast Asian cooking and especially Thailand as it is used as a creamy soup base to go with curries and desserts? Well, you must remember that your grandfather used to say coconut is a healthful food. The coconut milk or gata is a main ingredient in Oody’s desserts such as sticky rice with mango (Maritel says the Thai sticky rice "is less heavy than the Filipino version" so you’ll always have room in your stomach for it) on which you pour a generous serving of gata; coconut milk with sago, melon and taro; and sweet potato with cocomilk on the side.
Maritel urges us to try a different kind of salad this time (we have always been ordering the spicy glass noodles salad with minced pork and seafood and the catfish with mango salad). We are surprised at how good the noodles salad with roasted rice and minced chicken is. The texture and size of the kanjomin rice noodle is like angel hair pasta’s, but is actually tastier. There is a hint of sourness to the flavoring, which I first thought was vinegar, but Maritel says the Thais rarely use vinegar. "What they use is either freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice, both of which are excellent sources of vitamin C." In fact, don’t be surprised if you want to eat more after having lime juice because it’s known to be an appetizer apart from having anti-flu properties.
Dori says, "You know, Thai cuisine is already competing with Chinese food in terms of the number of restaurants in America and Europe. One of the reasons is that their culture in Thailand is still pure Thai and so is their food."
This coming of age of Thai food in the world stage was the couple’s inspiration in designing Oody’s restaurant. They stayed away from traditional Thai or even Asian motifs, with the only concession being the giant capiz balls of light that hang from the ceiling, and chose casual design for the interiors. On the walls are large black-and white photos by Ross Capili, a friend of Maritel’s family, featuring Oody’s dishes and models. And if you’re a foodie, you know that the food will draw your eye more than the bodies would.
"To eat noodles, you have to feel easy, you cannot be stiff. We wanted the place to be bright, contemporary, casual and chic," says Dori.
That’s exactly how Maritel feels when she’s sitting there and eating her favorite foods, which include tom yam, Thai rice noodles with chicken curry and Sukho Thai soup. She’s so enamored of Thai food that she swears she can eat pad Thai every day for the rest of her life.
We love pad Thai, too, but thank God Oody’s has about a hundred dishes to choose from.