Roadside Grill · Charcoal Chicken

Kai Yang (Isaan Grilled Chicken)

Photo: Takeaway / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Vendors butterfly and pound the whole bird flat before it ever touches the grill, so it cooks evenly over slow charcoal instead of the fast high heat used for skewered street meats.

A whole chicken is butterflied, pounded flat and marinated in fish sauce, garlic, coriander root and white pepper, then grilled slowly over charcoal until the skin turns deep golden without charring. It's chopped into pieces and sold alongside som tam and sticky rice as the classic Isaan combo.

Why it's made this way: The dish is shared across the Thai-Lao border, and the town of Seno (Xeno) in Laos's Savannakhet province has built an official one-district-one-product trademark and a grillers' association around its own version, a sign of how seriously the style is guarded there.