Celebrate Thai Mother’s Day with five ‘mae’ food favourites

Open a Thai kitchen cupboard almost anywhere in the world and there’s a fair chance you’ll spot Mae Pranom’s unmistakable red-capped jar. The brand began in 1959, when Sirichai and Pranom Daengsupha sold a single product under her name: nam prik pao, the sweet-savoury roasted chilli paste used in dishes including tom yum.

The range now spans curry pastes, sauces and ready-to-cook kits, but the original promise remains: no artificial colours, MSG or preservatives. Mae Pranom is now one of Thailand’s most widely exported food brands – impressive going for a jar of chilli paste named after somebody’s mum.

Where to find it: Thai supermarkets and local markets, plus Villa Market shelves overseas.

Long before sriracha became a squeeze-bottle staple on American tables, Thanom Chakkapak was making the original in the seaside town of Si Racha. The home cook developed it in the 1930s simply because she wanted a good sauce for dipping seafood.

Neighbours kept asking for more, word spread and the sauce eventually went commercial, becoming Thailand’s bestselling chilli sauce long before Los Angeles discovered the name. It is thinner, sweeter and gentler than its rooster-branded American cousin – the original mae version is quieter and better balanced.

Where to find it: Thai supermarkets nationwide, usually beside the fish sauce.

Ban Khun Mae translate literally as ‘mother's house’, and the restaurant has built its identity around that comforting idea since 1998. Now on the sixth floor of MBK Center, it offers a pocket of calm amid the surrounding shopping bustle, with dim lighting, timber furniture, live traditional music on some evenings and recipes the restaurant says have been passed down through generations.

It is not trying to be Bangkok’s most cutting-edge Thai restaurant.  The draw is comfort: pomelo salad, tom yum goong and familiar classics served in a part of town that otherwise moves fast.

Visit at: 444 MBK Center, 6/F, Phaya Thai Rd, Wang Mai, Pathum Wan. Open daily 11am-11pm.

Ask Bangkok where to find proper mango sticky rice and Mae Varee is likely to come up before you finish the question. Its story began one generation before the Thonglor shop, when the current owner’s grandmother sold sticky rice at Phaya Thai market. After her daughter married, the family moved and opened Mae Varee; today, the third generation runs it.

The queues come down to painstaking sourcing: coconut milk from Surat Thani, rice from Chiang Rai and mango varieties selected with the seasons, from silky nam dok mai to fragrant ok rong. It is takeaway only - no tables or ceremony, just mango sticky rice made the way it always has been.

Visit at: 1 Thonglor, Khlong Tan Nuea, Watthana. 02-392-4804. Open daily 6am-10pm.

If you have cooked Thai food outside Thailand, there is a good chance the curry paste in your fridge says Mae Ploy. Sold in supermarkets from London to Melbourne, it is a familiar answer to the question: ‘Which curry paste should I buy?’. The name means ‘Mother Ploy’, while the brand is produced by Theppadungporn Coconut, one of Thailand’s biggest food manufacturers. Its premise remains a home cook’s original recipe, kept largely intact as production grew.

Mae Play is now one of Thailand’s most widely exported food brands, with factories in Thailand, the US and Germany – proof that a good recipe, handled carefully, can travel much further than most branding exercises.

Where to find it: Major supermarkets and Asian grocers worldwide.