Would you care for some fish with your garlic?

The food at the little resort we stayed at in Koh Lanta - The Narima - was first rate. When we first arrived, we were sure the place was run by children. Yet, clearly, someone with some skill was running the kitchen. We ate everything there - some form of seafood salad nearly every day, tom yum, kao tom, papaya salad, Thai omelette, various noodle dishes, wonderful curries, and lots and lots of seafood. They were particularly generous with the shrimp. The shrimp were not the super-jumbo size ones, but were decent size and very tender and tasty. Plus for breakfast, there would be 6-8 of them in the Kao Tom, and I think about a dozen in the papaya salad. We ate a lot of shrimp.

One of the most impressive meals we had was the whole fish. They served this a number of ways. The first time we got it, it was deep fried. The next time, we had to bring the camera! We ordered the whole fish with lemon sauce, and it looked like this:


No, that's not lemon you see on the fish - it's garlic! Lots and lots of garlic. More garlic than I have ever seen in one place. I estimated about 3 HEADS (not cloves, whole heads) of garlic were used in the making of this dish. This could explain why there are no vampires in Thailand. Needless to say, it was delicious. You may also notice we had some white wine which was unusual because everyone seemed to drink beer and ordering wine was always an adventure. They had a wine list, but rarely did they actually have the wines that were on the list. It didn't matter, the food, ambiance, view, and company were all outstanding and I wouldn't trade a thing!