Thais are passionate about food and love discovering out-of-the-way shops that prepare unexpectedly tasty dishes. Nowhere is this more true—or feasible—than in Bangkok. The city's residents always seem to be eating, so the tastes and smells of Thailand's cuisine surround you day and night. That said, Bangkok's restaurant scene is also a minefield, largely because the relationship between price and quality at times seems almost inverse. For every hole-in-the-wall gem serving the best larb, sticky rice, and som tam (the hot-and-sour green-papaya salad that is the ultimate Thai staple) you've ever had, there's an overpriced hotel restaurant serving touristy, toned-down fare. In general, the best Thai food in the city is generally at the most bare-bones, even run-down restaurants, not at famous, upscale places.
If you want a break from Thai food, plenty of other world cuisines are well represented. Best among them is Chinese, although there's decent Japanese and Korean food in Bangkok as well. The city's ubiquitous noodle shops, though by all means Thai, also have their roots in China, as do roast-meat purveyors, whose historical inspiration was Cantonese. Western fare tends to suffer from the distance.
As with anything in Bangkok, travel time is a major consideration when choosing a restaurant. If you're short on time or patience, choose a place that's an easy walk from a Skytrain or subway station. Note that often the easiest way to reach a riverside eatery is by taking the Skytrain to the Saphan Taksin station (next to the Shangri-La Hotel). From there you can take an express boat upriver to a number of the restaurants
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