Last week, we set out to experience Lanna cuisine, named for the ancient Lanna Kingdom that once ruled Northern Thailand, shaped over centuries by neighboring influences from Myanmar, Laos, China, and India. It is a cuisine with its own history, its own techniques, and its own quiet identity, and one that remains largely unknown outside the North. To explore it is to discover a region that is far more than a tourist destination: a culinary world of its own, rooted deeply in local culture and memory.
There was no better base for this than Chiang Mai, the region’s gastronomic capital, and no better companion than a local expert who knows the city inside out.
We began our day with Marisa Merchitelli, a Thai-Italian-American filmmaker, writer, and travel specialist who has called Chiang Mai home since 2010. Over the years, she has built a deep connection to the region’s disappearing traditions, its landscapes, and its food. What struck us most was how personally she told each story, not just about the dishes in front of us, but about the people and culture behind them. Through her, Northern Thai cuisine stopped being a list of dishes and started to feel like a living, breathing tradition.
Our first stop was Siamaya Chocolate, a local artisan chocolate maker, where we were introduced to Thai cacao and the craft chocolate culture growing quietly around it. We tasted cacao and chocolate in every form imaginable, sampled ingredients we had never encountered before, smelled local spices, and eventually blended our own custom chocolate bars with Thai-inspired toppings. Some combinations surprised us more than others: chocolate infused with Thai curry, tom yum, khao soi curry, and even Thai bullet chili. Unusual on paper, but each bite made a strange kind of sense once we tried it.
From there, Marisa led us to Kad Luang, “the great market,” set along the Ping River in the heart of Chiang Mai. Widely regarded as the largest and most well-known market in Northern Thailand, it offered an overwhelming range of ready-to-eat meals, local snacks, fresh produce, and goods from jewelry to clothing. We wandered through a maze of streets lined with mid-20th-century Chinese shophouses, weaving past rickshaws, cars, and fellow pedestrians, while Marisa shared the history behind the market’s formation and its place in the city’s daily life.
Passing stalls of dried fruits, nuts, and fresh herbs, she pointed out Northern Thailand’s favorite savory specialties scattered throughout: sai oua, the region’s distinctive grilled sausage, nam phrik num, a green chili dip with a smoky bite, crispy pork skin known as kaep moo, and an array of ready-to-eat curries simmering in wide pans. Vendors chopped meat, stuffed sausages, and tended grills billowing with fragrant smoke all around us. The whole market felt like one giant open-air kitchen, and we were happy to simply follow our noses.
After a day spent wandering every corner of Chiang Mai, we sat down for a refined meal at a heritage restaurant housed in a beautifully restored historic building. It was the perfect way to close out the experience. As Marisa shared insights into the building’s architecture and history, we rediscovered flavors we had tasted earlier that day, now presented with a new twist, alongside other dishes we learned had nearly been forgotten. We talked about the best bites of the day and the ones we would happily return for, while the Northern flavors lingered long after the plates were cleared.
From chocolate infused with tom yum to a centuries-old market to a heritage dinner table, the day gave us a far fuller picture of Northern Thailand than any single meal could. Whether you consider yourself a longtime devotee of Thai food or you are trying it for the first time, Northern Thai cuisine is unique, diverse, and full of hidden gems still waiting to be discovered.
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