The 400-Year Story of Thailand's Hot Dog in a Pancake

if you made a list of the world's great food cultures among all the deserving places there's no question that somewhere in your top 10 you'd probably have Thailand and Japan from Thai curries and Bangkok Classics to Regional Specialties and the treasures of Ean Tai food is almost unsurpassed and then there's Japan with its renowned Sushi counters and beloved dishes ancient traditions and master chefs anyway put those two Cuisines together and imagine the magic maybe there's a soup mixing Dashi w

ith tomyam seasoning tie Krispy pork in tempora batter or a pancake wrapped around a hot dog because yeah that's what actually happened let me introduce you to kanom Tokyo the fusion dish that nobody asked for it's the favorite snack of Elementary schoolers across Thailand and something that doesn't look Thai or Japanese but somehow it's both today on OTR we're trying to figure out what happened how this came to be who made it first and who makes it best and come to think of it why is Bangkok so

Japanese [Music] anyway all right usually on OTR I spend the first few minutes of a video talking about how great the dish is that we're covering I mean that's why we cover it but I'm going to be honest when the subject of our video is a hot dog wrapped in a pancake well this one might be a struggle it's not my favorite thing in fact in one of the greatest food cities on the planet I cannot in good conscience tell you that you have to fly here to try this it's fine it's it's it's fine you'll se

e Kum Tokyo everywhere in Bangkok but unless you're from here and consider it a fun treat you probably walk right past it because when you're surrounded by so much other great stuff well why would you waste your valuable space on this it's exactly what it looks like it's going to be a pancake made from a batter of wheat flour with egg milk sugar and baking powder spooned onto a flat top and filled with stuff the classic has a hot dog sometimes with egg and some ketchup or Maggie sauce and then t

here are the sweeter versions made with things like Caya or pandan custard if I was giving you a food tour of this city and we stopped for kanom Tokyo assume you've made me angry or that something has gone terribly wrong so the natural question then is why are we telling this story well it's mostly about the name kanom Tokyo now I've been to Japan I love Japan I love the food in Japan and I did wonder what this did to deserve them that connotation or what they did to get stuck with this label so

I started going down that rabbit hole and as it turns out well this this is actually one of the most fascinating stories of any dish we've ever covered it's not just about the name at all this is something that goes way way back and deserves to be recorded So this morning I'm going to put my bias aside and take a trip to Bangkok satorn District Where will start our journey by visiting the place known for serving the city's very best kanom [Music] Tokyo I guess if my cold hard heart is going to

open to conom Tokyo it would be here along San Louis soy 3 I might not trust the dish but I do trust Tha locals and this place for 10 years has seen lines form almost from sunrise to claim a few of their famous rolled up [Music] Treasures uh so we have a custard one which is a classic sweet one we have one that's like a deep fried piece of chicken and another one that is some kind of like a bolog like a pork Ragu and that one is what I'm going to start with first the pancakes are crispy all righ

t that's actually really [Music] good I'm willing to accept that I was too quick to disparage kanom Tokyo actually the version here was really good but still if this is a dish called pancake rolls we probably wouldn't be doing this video so before we get to our next location let me talk about the name now it's pretty well understood that this is a Thai Dish not Japanese and the idea of giving a dish a foreign name simply because of branding might sound strange on the surface but it's actually so

mething with a ton of precedent we covered that topic once before on OTR in our video about American fried rice which is also a famous thae dish and is as you can probably guess not American at all it was created in Bangkok in the 1950s and that's not the only example of a tie dish named after some far-flung country like a lot of markets that sell kanom Tokyo also have a sweet snack called L Chong Singapore which is not Thai or Singaporean it's Indonesian and got its tie name from an old restaur

ant in bangkok's Chinatown called Singapore poana this kind of thing happens a lot more than you might Imagine by now pretty much everyone knows that french fries aren't actually French they're Belgian but even that might be misleading as they probably came from Spain French toast isn't French either in fact its recipe goes all the way back to the fifth century in ancient Rome before catching on during the Middle Ages in England the French might have gotten unfair credit for fried potatoes and e

gg toast but these things work both ways like with chicken K named for the Ukrainian Capital but you guessed it actually French if you'll indulge me for a moment I want to keep going because this stuff can be pretty fascinating raise your hand if you assumed German chocolate cake was German no it's from Texas and was first made using chocolate from a man named Samuel German and Dutch baby isn't Dutch it's from Seattle named in honor of America's so-called Pennsylvania Dutch the Americans love gi

ving foreign names to Local Foods not least of which a trio of famous sauces like French dressing which First shows up in 1900 in the US Ladies Home Journal Italian dressing which was invented at Ken's steakhouse in Massachusetts in the 1940s and Russian dressing which got its name because it used to include caviar even though it was first made in NASA New Hampshire what about crab rangon named for Yangon in Myanmar and yes also American a creation of the legendary Trader vix and then there are

the famously American California rols which are actually Canadian Nothing Is What It Seems Danish pastries come from Austria lumpia Shanghai are fuen Filipino kiwi fruits are from China Mongolian Barbecue is Taiwanese Nazi Goring Paya is Malaysian and Manchurian chicken well that was invented in Mumbai in 1975 also from India is a dish called nargisi Kofa adapted into the very much not Scottish Scotch eggs and the Scots also have nothing to do with Scotch bonnet peppers which the Jamaicans named

after the allegedly similar looking tamos Shanter cap so the question is is kanom Tokyo an act of Genius branding yes but that's only a small part of the story and we'll get back to it after our next stop at another kanom Tokyo Legend just a few blocks away from San Louis soy [Music] 3 I'd have been happy just to get on with the history of the dish but I guess it's important to show that Kum Tokyo is not just a hot dog in a pancake there are places that have taken that simple construct and turn

ed it into something from Willy Wonka an entire meal in a very small package [Music] [Music] Sal [Music] sorry with a classic I taste it feels weird to do this in like an artisan way like I have notes of hot dog and we have notes of ground pork let's try it with whatever the SAU is which is [Music] ketchup so all right eating fancy kanom Tokyo at Tokyo rooster in the heart of Bangkok we can get a sense of how effective The Branding of this dish has actually been but as for when and why why it go

t its name well for that we need to go back in time 60 years and start this story at the beginning it's 1964 the Gemini 1 has just sent back the first clear photos of the surface of the Moon Nelson Mandela sentenced to life in prison and a young boxer named Cashes Clay becomes the heavyweight champion of the world here in Bangkok the city is developing fast what was long perceived as a global Backwater cut from the Southeast Asian jungle is modernizing with support from Thailand's new American A

llies and an endless Workforce arriving from Ean and as Bangkok grows well so too does the culture of foreign food with imported ingredients not just available but exciting and trendy on December 10th at the junction of rajad damri and Rama the the so called Racha prasong intersection a building would open that would represent a giant leap in bangkok's Development A Benchmark that would push the city forward and to that point one of the most exciting things to happen in the city's modern history

I'm talking about the arrival of the Japanese Superstore daaru and in 1964 daaru represented more than just a department store it was the future just 19 years earlier Jaan had been on its knees humbled and defeated at home and across the Pacific Theater and in less than a generation they'd rebuilt into a booming economy growing through manufacturing and Technology expanding at a pace the world had never seen it was a time and place today referred to as the economic Miracle with Japan's growing

Financial clout came the introduction of their brands into overseas markets products like Toyota which entered the US in 1958 Nintendo which partnered with Disney in 1959 and Sony which saw the sales of its portable radio grow to 5 million units by the late 1960s and for a Time bigger than all of them was daaru the brand got it start all the way back in 1717 in Kyoto growing into a small chain of dry goods Outlets incorporating in 1907 and during the post-war recovery scaling up and up and up yo

u could find anything in daaru import quality but at a fraction of the European prices the mall would be fun exciting and packed with activities and good food by the 1960s it was the largest retailer in all of Japan and had expanded to Malaysia and Hong Kong the Bangkok location was dadu's third overseas expansion and when the Mall opened thousands crowded the Racha prasong intersection to visit the first store in the city to have air conditioning and to ride the first escalator ever installed i

n the country of Thailand with the initial success of daaru a secondary economy developed outside the entrance with a Street Market Hawking snacks and trinkets to the hordes of well-to-do Shoppers coming and going and one of those snacks well you can probably guess what that was all right so we are at the Racha prasang intersection and if you can tell from context where I am uh the Apple Store is just right there uh Central World shopping center gayor Village you walk back that way you're at uh

the electronics markets and textile stuff in pratunam uh but it was here uh the intersection that's called Racha prasong that in 1964 is where the ti daaru department store uh was and so this was like you know long before it was the center of bangkok's shopping it was kind of a different Center of bangkok's shopping um and that's where the story of kanom Tokyo be [Music] this is Ground Zero the site of the old Tha daaru and the Well from which all future kanom Tokyo would spring forth there's no

plaque on the pavement but it was here and in the context of 1960s Bangkok the incredible spread of the snack does make sense I mean you got to remember back then anything foreign was so new that who cares if it was something that was actually like Japanese or American or Singaporean this was different stuff and the name just added to the Mystique and what could be more exciting than a snack using foreign ingredients and techniques and branded in a way that triggered thoughts of the Monumental

new shopping center which helped bring this city into the future the conom Tokyo cart outside the old Tha daaru would become almost as well known as the store itself and by now it's certainly better remembered The Glory Days of the store wouldn't last for long it was absorbed into a bigger Shopping Center in 1972 relocated in 1994 and gone for good 4 years later but kanom Tokyo would only keep growing from the very beginning it would catch on with Thailand's Young Generation and quickly spread a

cross the country the legacy of a unique moment in Thai history so that explains where and when kanom Tokyo was first sold in Bangkok and why the name the timing and the snack itself combined to help it catch on in cities far and wide but there are still a couple parts missing first of all the things that a vendor might have chosen to make why this why specifically make this combination and second if the whole point was foreign branding why not call this kanom USA like it's objectively way more

American than Japanese and as we or already mentioned by 1964 Thailand and the US were close Partners well as it turns out we've only scratched the surface of this wild story see while the street market was thriving outside the shopping center inside there were food vendors too selling Japanese snacks that Thailand had never seen before and one of them well that brings us to the next part of this story there's a story about the creation of dorayaki that goes back almost a thousand years to the 1

2th century ad according to Legend of warrior monk named Saito Musa shibo Ben was hiding from enemies in the house of a farmer when he left under cover of Darkness he forgot to carry his gong which the farmer didn't recognize so he used it as a cooking pan on which he'd make a cake for forever to be known as dorayaki now that's not the only origin story there's also one where the farmer made a cake in the shape of a gong to present to Ben and another where it's not the farmer but an elderly coup

le who served him the pancakes to heal him when he was badly injured now it's not likely that doraki is actually that old but it has been around long enough for those myths to sound at least possible in reality it's almost certain that the first doraki was made somewhere around the end of the 1500s using a technique brought by the Portuguese when the two Naval Powers became close Partners in trade daki according to that theory was adapted from the Portuguese Casta a cake with a spongy texture no

t that different from today's Kum Tokyo we know doraki was written about as far back as the 17th century during Japan's Ido period and the oldest Bakery still open today serving the dish in Tokyo has been open for 163 years in 1914 a doraki shop in ueno began selling the dish with auki bean and red bean paste stuffed between two pancakes and that would quickly become the new standard version taking such a place of honor in Japanese society that when a man is introduced to his fiance's family he'

s supposed to bring with him doraki to represent a strong and auspicious union now as a side note that 1914 version was actually the first recorded time that doraki was made with two pancakes as a sandwich before that it was a single pancake wrapped around a filling in other words intentional or not the taon on Tokyo is actually closer to the original doraki than is most doraki anyway for the next stop on my stuffed pancake crawl we need to try some authentic doraki if you live in Bangkok you pr

obably know this place it's called custard Nakamura and it's the Walmart of Japanese bakeries a shop hidden deep in an alley around the corner from mctier That's So popular that if there's ever a flower shortage in this city it's probably their fault they sell everything you'd find in a cheap Bakery in Tokyo sandwiches and cutlets and all kinds of desserts and in the corner just opposite the checkout counter there's the Shelf of [Music] doraki all right let's give this a try that's exactly what

it says it's going to be it's a pancake with a red bean in the middle red bean is such a cruel joke I've come to like it when I remember moving to China and you think you see something with a nice chocolate F filling and you take a bite out of it and it's red bean and this is just like the the bane of the existence of every first time uh arrival to Asia that's good it's a it's a pancake with red [Music] bean finishes later let's keep walking [Music] I yeah this is this brings back memories like

my first trip to Bangkok as a Backpacker and I was like Mr Backpacker Like Elephant pants all this stuff and like I read on I don't know Lonely Planet or Wiki travel or something that like there were a lot of these kind of cool Japanese streets in Bangkok and at that time uh I don't remember if I'd been to Japan yet but I really wanted to kind of have that experience so I just like walked down an alley and found something that said like Japanese social club or just had letters in Japanese and I

walked in and everyone just it was like a scene from a movie where everybody just puts out their cigarettes all at once server comes up to me she says uh what are you doing here I said Sushi and she says I don't think you belong here sir you need to leave and uh yeah these are some really old school neighborhoods I don't think that in tongore where we are right now uh you would have that experience U at least not in 2024 but uh yeah it's a really fascinating sort of subculture part of Bangkok fo

r sure so the broad Strokes of the birth of kanom Tokyo are that in 1964 a Japanese snack called doraki was introduced to Thailand at the daaru shopping center and then the dish was adapted by vendor set up just outside and that is the story but all you have to do is take a walk around the heart of Bangkok to see that there's more than just that shopping mall that connects the land of smiles to the Land of the Rising Sun and as a matter of fact the story of konam Toyo and its connection to dorak

i well it goes a lot deeper than meets the eye so while we've already talked about the Ido period in Japan let's pick this up about 400 years ago here in cam [Music] this time we start in iua around the year 1600 Japanese merchants and mercenary soldiers have established a presence in the Siamese Capital like the Portuguese building a small settlement in a corner of the city that corner would swell by the thousands in the year 1614 however when the Shogun taku gawa Yu outlawed Christianity in Ja

pan and countless Japanese Christians fled one of those Christians was a man named Yamada nagamasa who' actually come in 1612 and would rise in power to become the Thai governor of nakon C tamarat there was also a woman named Ursula Yamada known to history as the mother of the mother of Thai deserts her daughter was Maria gomar DEA Who is credited for introducing Portuguese techniques to sign kitchens considered the first here to make things like Kaya jam fuong and dozens of other sweet snacks a

nd I'm not saying that doraki might have started in sayyam before going to Japan there's no evidence at all that that's the case but I bring it up because it's fascinating to think that the Portuguese brought the technique of making cakes to both Japan and cam around the same time and both would make their own desserts from that inspiration with the ties led by a half Japanese woman creating things like this and the Japanese turning it into doraki which would eventually find its way back to Thai

land and then be reinvented again anyway by the end of the 17th century both Japan and cam would enter a long period of isolation cutting off ties with the outside world including with each other in 1855 Thailand would begin reopening and Japan would follow 13 years later and in 1887 King Rama i f and Emperor Magi would sign a declaration of Amity and commerce resuming the close ties between the two Nations now the years between 1887 and when the Tha daaru store opened weren't all love and happi

ness there were high notes like when the Japanese sent Master silk makers to teach Thai students that's now grown into a place known today as casset sart University but the first half of the 20th century is probably most notable for the time Japan actually invaded Thailand less than 24 hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 it's a really weird footnote in history as it led to a war that would last exactly 5 hours at the end of which Siam and prime minister peun songram agreed to form an

alliance with the Japanese officially joining the Axis powers of World War II and Thailand declared war on England and the United States now this part is realistically not related to the story of hot dog pancakes if I don't get it in now I have no idea when I can work it into a video as The Story Goes the directive was issued by pe's government for his ambassadors to deliver their War declaration to those enemy countries however his Emissary to the US sen prage defied the order and instead orga

nized an underground resistance against the Japanese called the free tie movement now at the same time the axis Alliance was viewed positively at home as peon planned to use the opportunity to reclaim ancient Siamese territory that was now part of Myanmar but the domestic opposition grew as well with free tie gaining support from members of the military government officials and even royalty including Queen ramai bani the guardian if you remember of Chef mcdang as a very random side note in 1944

the alliance would collapse and peun would be thrown from power and after the war was over because of the work of the free time movement the United States did not view Thailand as an enemy and in fact invested heavily in the country's reconstruction and development that included reestablishing business ties with Japan which was now under us Administration and by the time the dust had settled both countries were on the rise and their relationship would prove critical as they moved into the second

half of the 20th century in 1962 a Japanese business formed the Thai Japanese joint venture company which would become a leader in Thailand's infrastructure development building roads and highways around the capital the Auto industry would follow then Electronics with Japanese factories on Thai soil bringing Financial growth to both economies it also brought people while the reputation of Thailand abroad has been as a Haven for Western tourists the truth is as recently as the 1990s more than ha

lf of all foreigners in Thailand were Japanese today if you don't count refugees and migrant workers the number is still as high as 1 in four with almost 40 % of all foreign investment in the country still coming from Japan there are more late night establishments in Thailand servicing Japanese businessmen than any other group and when it comes to restaurants at the last count there were 4,094 that served Japanese food in Thailand with more than half of that number in Bangkok and the vast majori

ty concentrated here along suum fit between tongor and prong [Music] honestly one of my absolute favorite things about living in the city is is the um enormous amount of ezekias that are not just Japanese but are specific to different cities or regions or Islands in Japan uh we filmed at one once in our American Fried Rice video at the okanawa place which might still be my favorite in the whole city there's two Hokkaido restaurants around here um there's a number that come from different cities

in honu if you wanted to try real Japanese food and that can be anything from high-end sushi all the way to you know a uh got a a and a beer you know at a late 90s a kaya uh best cities in the world for it outside of Japan would be Bangkok and taipe if I had to say at least from my experience and nothing else really comes [Music] close it is absolutely one of the best things about living in Bangkok is the ability to wherever you are especially long sukumvit to just say you know what I it's hot d

ay outside I want a beer maybe a couple pieces of uh KAG and U yeah it's it's quintessential Bangkok experience even though it is very much not TI is Japanese doesn't have much to do with our story [Music] but at some point I did need to have something in my system that is not a pancake during the day on sukumvit 26 a line forms that stretches down the street outside one of the country's most famous noodle shops to service the crowds vendors sell tie snacks including more often than not kanom To

kyo but after 5:00 p.m. when the shop closes the street vendors and tourists go home and the alley changes into something completely different a cluster of old school Japanese restaurants and while in the daytime Thailand's busy streets might see their own version of a pancake wrapped around some fillings in the evening businessmen from Japan come here for dinner whiskey and of course doraki the treat that started it [Music] all this is a place called jidori Cuisine Ken it's a Michelin rated eze

kiah a place with its own chicken farm that that every evening sells some of the best skewers in Bangkok coming here or to so many of the Great Japanese restaurants in this part of the city you almost forget you're in the tropics and it feels like you're somewhere in the shadow of Mount Fuji in the Land of the Rising Sun everything here is made with the classic japanese delicacy only the bare minimum of seasoning necessary to supplement the perfect bites of chicken and served in a dozen differen

t ways but of course that's not why we're here we're here because this is one of the only places in Bangkok that serves the old school pre-1914 doraki a single pancake wrapped around a filling in this case cream and satsumaimo or Japanese sweet potato it's surprising and complex so good that it starts to make sense not just why Tha Cooks would have adapted the recipe but why there are so many Legends and stories about the origin of the dish itself this is a story that's gone in a lot of directio

ns but to put the pieces together in the 1600s the Portuguese introduced the technique of making cakes to both aoua and Japan the Japanese developed a dish called doraki which would in 1964 be introduced to Thailand through the opening of a department store which because of timing and branding and being a product with mass of would become an iconic tie snack in other words this simple hot dog in a pancake isn't that simple at all it's a wild story and one that's still evolving today with Thailan

d taking its version in new and creative directions and the Japanese dessert finding its own National Resurgence not least because of its association with the famous anime character doron who is like so many obsessed with doraki through this one dish we can trace the path of Thailand's progress the evolution of modern Japan and hundreds of years of political and culinary history and so on our way home the only thing left to do is stop for one last konam Tokyo this time at least with some more ap

preciation of how much more it actually is than a hot dog in a pancake maybe I should take my words back from the beginning of this video it still might not be my favorite thing but it is definitely worth a stop on a trip to the kingdom subscribe to the channel for more from OTR thank you so much to everyone who supports us on patreon it helps to keep us going find the links below for our patreon and social media and we'll see you next [Music] week [Music] I'm