East Bay Baby

The Temple

We’re usually otherwise occupied on Sundays, but we found ourselves with a free morning today (and our son has decided this weekend that sleeping – either at day or at night – really isn’t in his best interest anyway), and decided to make good use of our time and visit the Thai Buddhist Temple here in Fremont, CA.  For the purposes of fundraising, the Wat Buddhanusorn Temple community sets up hawker-style food booths selling delicious Thai cuisine.  We are neither Thai nor Buddhist; one need not be Buddhist or Thai to help their fundraising and partake in yum-yums.

As you can see, the temple itself is beautiful, with its delicate gold-leaf spires and Thai-style roof.  They also have a golden statue of Buddha.  We didn’t go into the actual temple however; not only was our son being a bit unruly (funny how not sleeping can do that to a kid…) but also because we’re not familiar with Buddhist protocol.  I’m sure I would have been welcome to visit the temple, and any one of the community members would have been happy to familiarize me with the details.  It really was a welcoming community, and it would be a great cultural experience for kids.

I had done a little research beforehand, and was a little wary – I had heard that the grounds can be a bit crowded and the food lines can be very long (up to a 2 hour wait for pad thai!?!).  So to combat the possible crowds, we arrived early at 11am.  There were few people there.   We apparently chose a good day to go, however, since there wasn’t really a crowd, and the lines (if any) were very short.  Apparently people don’t tend to go to outdoor food booths in cold and rainy weather.  Go figure.   If you decide to go on a sunny day, I do recommend getting there at around 11am to avoid the crowds.

In order to pay for food, they use a token system.  It’s like Chuck E. Cheese.  Er, except you use tokens to pay for food and not games.  And the food is amazing and not microwaved pizza.  So when you get there, the first thing you want to do is get exchange your cash dollars for some tokens.  Each token is one dollar.  Entrees are 5 tokens, Thai Iced Tea is 2 tokens, and canned sodas/bottled water are 1 token.  I suggest you start with $20 worth of tokens; if it’s too much, you can either donate what you don’t use or exchange tokens back for cash.

Food Stalls

Now the food stalls are organized as one long bank of stalls – all the cooking is done outdoors over open flame.  The sound of metal spatulas rhythmically clanging against hot woks and the hiss of marinated barbecue pork hitting the grill was music to my ears.  And the smells – oh my, the smells –  of lime, herbs, fish sauce, charcoal was heavenly (yes, even the smell of fish sauce). Among the various food items were various noodle soups, the famous pad thai, papaya salad, fried chicken with a side of sticky rice, barbecue pork with a side of sticky rice, Thai basil chicken over rice, mangoes and sticky rice, Thai iced tea, some colorful beverages, etc.  There was an impressive selection of food in a relatively small area.  If you’re not familiar with the food items, they would be happy to explain to you what the items area.

Thai Fried Chicken and Sticky Rice

I knew I had wanted to try their pad thai, so right after I got my tokens, I made a beeline to the pad thai stall.  They make their pad thai in the wok one order at a time (no mass-produced pad thai here), so there’s almost always quite a line for the pad thai.  You put your name on the list, and they call you when your order is ready.  There were probably about 8-10 people on the list ahead of me, and it took about 15 minutes for me to get my steaming plate of pad thai.  It came in a take-out container, and the portion was quite large (and only $5!!!).  Man was it good.  The rice noodles were perfectly al dente, and the bean sprouts were fresh and crunchy.  The pad thai was a little too saucy for my husband (he likes drier pad thai), but he also thought it was very very good.  We also tried the fried chicken (a plate comes with two leg quarters chopped up into smaller pieces, sweet chili sauce, and sticky rice).  This was one of my husband’s favorite dishes – the fried chicken was very flavorful and moist.  After smelling the barbecue pork, we couldn’t resist and got an order of that as well.  Man it was worth it.  They have high-school age kids manning the grill with an older guy weighing out each portion, cutting up the pork, and doing quality control.  The pork was sweet and smoky – so good!  And we just had to try the Thai iced tea.  Husband loved it, but it was a little too sweet for my tastes.

Next to the food stalls, they have some tables and benches set up in a covered area – very convenient when it’s sprinkling outside.  They also have more tables and chairs set up a little further away, but those seats aren’t covered.

This event happens every Sunday and is staffed entirely by volunteers, which is quite impressive.   There were lots of kids running around (especially since they have a Sunday school for kids with Thai language, Buddhism, music, and dance classes.  The atmosphere is very kid-friendly, and there’s plenty of open space for kids to run around.

Parking – they do have a private parking lot with many spots.  If, by chance, you show up and there are no spots, the community there requests that you not park in the surrounding neighborhood streets, lest you provoke the ire and annoyance of their neighbors.  Buddhists are peace-loving people, after all.

I hear that the Thai Buddhist temples in Berkeley and San Bruno have similar fundraising efforts, and the food offerings at those locations are similarly delicious.  Sounds like I should start a series of posts about the Thai Buddhist temples in the area…