Originally Posted by
GatoAndaluz
Pad thai in Thailand almost always uses tamarind paste for sweetness, whereas many renditions served in the US use sugar instead. Restaurants that use a more traditional recipe tend to have spice wheels on the tables, with three or four different condiments like in Thailand. Usually they are chile powder, fish sauce with diced bird's eye chile (nam plaa prik ki-noo), shrimp paste, and sugar.
I can't get used to fish sauce because we don't eat fish or seafood. Therefor it has disgusting taste to us. I ordered some meals from a Sichuan Chinese restaurant. Spicy and nice but still tasted some fish sauce.
When we spent 3 weeks in Thailand, the most difficult experience was not getting food we wanted to eat. Every restaurant indoor or outside foot stalls put fish sauce on their dish. We tried but never worked. The only dish we kept eating for lunch and dinner for 2 weeks was " spicy basil chicken with rice" and we had to ask them not to put fish sauce. We loved it. We were very lucky to find an indian restaurant in Chiang Mai & Hua Hin where we went for lunch and dinner for 8 days. The food there tasted much better than the indian restaurants in US.