When your children are willing to eat anything they see in front of them, traveling becomes a lot more fun. In our family we have several adventurous eaters. One of them wrote a post about food that she loves that is adventurous. Read about For Kids Who Dare: My Top 5 Adventurous Foods to Try in Thailand (Written by a Kid Who Dares) here. This is great for when you are traveling around and eating food, especially Thai food.
But one of our children is extremely picky, so we have to be very intentional about what food we have to feed him when he gets hungry. This is difficult for when you are eating Thai food. While traveling, we often shop the local supermarket for food. But even in Thailand it is possible to eat Thai food on the street even while being picky.
There are three good options that are available throughout Thailand. These are the top 3 Thai Foods for Picky Eaters, plus a few bonus honorable mentions at the end!
Jump to:
Sticky Rice
Sticky rice is the simplest, most plentiful food available Thai food, and perfect for picky eaters travelling around Thailand. Plus, it is a perfect filler for cheap! One bag on the street costs between 5-15 baht depending on your location. If you buy it in sit-down restaurants, costs are higher. Some fancy restaurants can charge upwards of 60 baht, but this is usually fancy sticky rice, and the picky eater may not want to eat fancy sticky rice!
As it comes in bags, it’s easy to throw into your purse and pull out when the kids are hungry and it doesn’t make a mess when you are sitting out in public for dinner. Thais love carrying it with them on trips, so much so that Thailand has developed a special sticky rice basket carrier.
There are three places to look for sticky rice as you travel around:
- Street food stalls next to prepared food. Often it is being kept warm behind the stall, so you need to ask.
- Rice stalls at local markets. You will find the rice stall as it is a table with white styrofoam containers sitting on it.
- The chicken vendor, Five Star, also sells sticky rice. Five Star is found in parking lots around the nation.
Our go-to when traveling around Thailand is if we can’t find it, we will ask a restaurant or street stall and they will point us in the right direction, as it is always somewhere nearby.
Fresh Fruit
Cut-up fruit is another plentiful option found around Thailand for picky eaters. There are no added ingredients, your child is often familiar with the food, and there is choice in which fruit to buy. On top of that, it’s already cut to eat, so there is no preparation.
Fruit options can include many different tropical fruits, depending on seasonality, but there are several very common ones that can be found – watermelon, pineapple, guava, cantaloupe, and green (sour) mango.
The fresh fruit can be found on carts that are attached to motorcycles or at stalls on the street. The see-through cart has a compartment for each fruit with ice surrounding the fruit to keep it fresh.
When your child decides what fruit they want, they can point at the fruit and the vendor will take it out of the compartment and cut it into edible sizes and put it into a plastic bag. They will add a skewer into the bag for you to stab the fruit with to eat it. It is customary for the vendor to also provide you with a little sachet or seasoning. This is usually a sugar and hot pepper mix to dip your fruit into. While it is yummy, your picky eater may not see it that way but fortunately it is usually it its own bag.
Each bag of fresh fruit costs a different amount. You can pay anywhere from B15-B60 dependent on seasonality and purchase location in Thailand. This still ends up being a cheap way to get healthy vitamins into a child who is picky and not eating much else.
Fruit Shakes
Fruit shakes are found in stalls in every crowded area around Thailand. With many kinds of tropical fruit being readily available, fruit shakes are cheap and easy to come by. These are perfect for the picky eaters to eat while you are in Thailand.
A normal fruit shake stand will have several fruit options on a sign or as fruit on display and a blender with a cooler of ice. There are often freezers with frozen fruit inside as well, with strawberry being the most common. Shakes are generally made with fruit, ice, and water. Oftentimes extra sugar syrup will be added. You can also sometimes get yogurt in the fruit shake as well (this will be an additional price and should be labeled on the sign).
Common fruit shakes found are coconut, strawberry, banana, and pineapple. When I am buying for my picky eater and this is part of his only sustenance, I want it to be as healthy as possible. So, I will ask for no added sweet. The way to say this in Thai is ไม่หวาน (mai waan, meaning ‘not sweet’) or ไม่ไส่นำ้ตาล (mai sai nam tdan, meaning ‘don’t add sugar’).
Fruit shakes come in a variety of prices based off your location, seasonality, and whether you are in an air conditioned space or not. We have paid as little as B20 in rural Thailand and as high as B120 at a beach resort. But no matter where you are in, this is a great option for picky eaters when it comes to Thai food.
Bonus Two Foods for Picky Eaters
There are two other foods I want to mention that are easy to find around Thailand that my pickiest eater will not eat (as he eats very little meat), but my youngest child who is still picky sometimes loves to eat.
Moo Ping
First is moo ping. This is grilled pork on a stick. You can easily find these at markets around the country and usually cost about B10 a stick (depending on size and location). They have been marinated before grilled and when you buy them, the seller will often put them back onto the grill for a minute, so they are nice and hot when you receive them.
The moo ping is put into a bag and they are extremely easy to eat as they come on a stick. This is a GREAT go to meal, along with sticky rice, as you are walking through a night market with your family.
Fried Chicken
Second is fried chicken. Above I mentioned a nationwide chain called Five Star which sells sticky rice. They also sell rotisserie and fried chicken. You can also find fried chicken at stalls in markets that are ready to eat. This is a great on-the-go food for picky eaters. And if your child is willing to eat rotisserie chicken – you can buy half a rotisserie chicken at Five Star and feed the whole family!
Picky eaters are difficult to feed and we’ve had this struggle as a traveling family for many years. But throughout our travels in Thailand (over 60 provinces!), we have found these foods to be a way to keep him fed without too much extra effort.
Read about how you can feed your picky eater from 7/11 in this article 7-Eleven Lunch in Thailand.