Huai Khwang Night Market and the Restaurants Around MRT Huai Khwang

Huai Khwang night market: where it is, when it opens, how to get there

The Huai Khwang intersection is where Ratchadaphisek Road meets Pracha Songkhro Road on the Din Daeng side and Pracha Rat Bamphen Road on the Huai Khwang side. The Ganesha shrine stands on the Pracha Songkhro corner, and the market spreads from there along the road, over the canal bridge and into the sois numbered in the thirties. This is a neighbourhood market built around shophouse kitchens that put tables on the pavement, with no single organiser and no fixed closing time.

Huai Khwang night market opening hours are loose, so timing is the thing to get right. Lemon8 posters put stall set-up at about 16:00. Je Tim Seafood opens at 17:00, Lung Nuad at 17:30 and Sud Zab around 19:00. The closing side is what makes the market: Je Tim cooks until 05:00 according to both TrueID and Visit Amanta, Lung Nuad until 04:00 per Ryoii, and Sirichai’s pork-leg rice until 06:00 per TrueID. Between 19:00 and 22:00 everything is open at once. After midnight the salad shops close one by one and the seafood and rice kitchens carry on.

Getting there is simple. From BTS Asok, change to the MRT at Sukhumvit and ride four stops north. At Huai Khwang, exit 4 comes up beside Khoad Yum on the shrine side, and Lemon8 posts send you out of exit 3 for Pracha Songkhro Soi 38 behind the shrine. Visit Amanta puts Je Tim, at the foot of the canal bridge, about 100 metres from the station; Sois 36 and 38 are further along the same road. For the rest of Ratchadaphisek up to Sutthisan, see our guide to Ratchada restaurants; the mall at the southern end has its own guide, Central Rama 9 restaurants, and the streets around it are in Rama 9 restaurants.

What to eat at Huai Khwang night market

Huai Khwang night market food starts with seafood. Je Tim lists more than 60 dishes from 50 baht, built on large prawns, crab claws, shellfish, squid and fish, with Isan plates on the same menu. Lung Nuad, the old-timer in Pracha Songkhro Soi 36, is the place for salted fried prawns, oyster salad, grilled squid with roe, blue crab stir-fried with curry powder and snakehead fish in sour curry, all on Ryoii’s list for the shop, along with rice soup through the night. For something heavier at 3 a.m., Sirichai at 40 Pracha Songkhro Road stews pork leg and kaki in five-spice phalo stock and serves it over rice with a house dipping sauce.

Salads are the second reason to come. Sud Zab in Soi 36 is the market’s queue shop and sits in our ranked list; Lemon8 posters also point to a 40-baht chicken yum stall near exit 4. If the table wants a pot, T. Jum Moo, in a lane off Pracha Rat Bamphen Soi 4, runs an unlimited jim jum buffet at 189 baht a head with herbal, tom yum or mala broth, from 16:00 to 04:00, per Visit Amanta.

The stalls and most of these shophouses are not ranked, because few of them publish menus or prices. They are the meal, though, and the ranked restaurants are for when you want a fixed table, a car park or air-conditioning. The rest of the city’s pavement cooking is in our guide to street food in Bangkok.

Yum shops by MRT exit 4 and the Huai Khwang Ganesha shrine

TrueID calls the Huai Khwang Ganesha shrine one of the most popular stops in Bangkok for people praying for luck, and the shops around it live off the evening crowd. Khoad Yum is the one at the top of the exit 4 stairs. Beyond its headline salads, Ryoii’s price list has squid or cockle yum at 160 baht, pork roll with salted egg yolk at 150, mantis-shrimp roe at 250, and crispy pork belly and fried chicken at 80 each. The dressing comes two ways: standard, or “nua”, the som tam-style version, each with or without pla ra. Hours differ by source. Google and BKKStay say 14:00 to 03:00, Ryoii says 14:00 to 00:30, and TrueID’s older listing says 17:00 to 02:30, closed Tuesdays. Treat midnight as safe and Tuesday as a gamble.

Epia is the other salad address, ten minutes south along the same pavement toward Thailand Cultural Centre, and it keeps different hours: Ryoii lists 12:00 to midnight, which makes it the better choice for a late lunch. Its list leans toward salmon, mussels, oysters and lotus root, where Khoad Yum is built around big shared platters. If someone in the group wants Isan rather than yum, cross Ratchadaphisek to Zaap One opposite Big C.

Huai Khwang Chinatown: hotpot, mala and dim sum on Pracha Rat Bamphen

Exit 1 puts you on the Chinese side. Pracha Rat Bamphen Road and its numbered sois are full of restaurants run for Chinese students, workers and business visitors, and Visit Amanta puts the growth down to the Chinese Embassy and the Ratchada offices that bring in Chinese business travellers. That is why the area gets called Bangkok’s new Chinatown. The cooking is nothing like Yaowarat, the old Chinatown: think Sichuan hot pot, mala skewers, hand-pulled noodles and Hong Kong dim sum rather than Teochew seafood.

Visit Amanta names three Sichuan addresses: 8 Bean Hotpot, which a Lemon8 post places in Pracha Rat Bamphen Soi 6 about 400 metres from the MRT; Fu Wah, with more than 300 dishes and mostly Chinese-speaking staff; and Yipin Xiang La Gao across from it, where the menu is in Chinese only. Lemon8 posters add a 24-hour Lanzhou noodle shop about 300 metres from exit 1, with bowls at 120 to 150 baht, and malatang counters that charge by weight or by the stick. TrueID covers the cheap conveyor end: Suki Chinda with 5-baht skewers and 49-baht soup from 14:00 to 22:00, JP Shabu at No. 333 from 11:00 to 05:00, Aroi Dim Sum in Soi 3 open 24 hours at 19 baht a basket, and Happy Suki at No. 65, also 24 hours, with a 120-minute buffet and dim sum at 18 baht. Lemon8 posters add that Aroi Dim Sum wants a minimum of three baskets or sells a 199-baht two-hour buffet.

None of these publishes a full menu beyond those snippets, so they stay out of the ranked list. For Huai Khwang hotpot at a ranked table, go to Mongkok Sukiyaki in M9 Square, which also has a car park. For hot pot elsewhere in the city, see hot pot in Bangkok.

Late-night food until morning, one stop away at The Street Ratchada

Huai Khwang late-night food happens in two places. Around the intersection, JP Shabu and Je Tim run to 05:00, Sirichai to 06:00, and Aroi Dim Sum and Happy Suki never close. Lemon8 posters add Namba756, an izakaya behind the shrine that serves until 05:00. BKKStay lists Shoryu Ramen in the Shell station opposite Big C, open 10:00 to 03:00 with seven or eight counter seats and payment by QR code or bank transfer only. Kuang Seafood’s kitchen stays open to 01:30 for groups.

The second place is The Street Ratchada at MRT Thailand Cultural Centre, a mall that stays open 24 hours, which is why three of the ten are on its B floor. It solves the problems the pavement cannot: toilets, air-conditioning, a car park and seats at 4 a.m. The walk between The Street and the Huai Khwang intersection is about a kilometre along Ratchadaphisek. The MRT stops running around midnight, so after that it is a taxi along Ratchadaphisek.

Parking, taxis and sit-down dinners

Most of the best-known Huai Khwang food comes without parking. TrueID suggests Sois 9, 11 and 12 of Pracha Rat Bamphen for Suki Chinda, and the market shops on Pracha Songkhro rely on street space. For a sit-down dinner with a car, our list gives you Kuang Seafood with its own lot, Mongkok Sukiyaki in M9 Square, and the three places in The Street. Outside the list, BKKStay points to two hotel restaurants in the Swissotel Bangkok Ratchada near MRT Huai Khwang: Loong Foong for Cantonese and a dim sum buffet, with private rooms for 5 to 20 and lunch and dinner sittings (11:00 to 14:30, 17:30 to 22:00), and Takumi for a Japanese order-as-you-like buffet. Nathong Terrace on Pracha Uthit Road at the Meng Jai intersection has a large car park, live music and karaoke rooms, open 11:00 to 23:30, and more than 6,400 Google reviews; it is unranked because it publishes no menu prices.

For timing, 19:00 to 22:00 is when every market kitchen is open at once. Ryoii describes Epia as a queue restaurant, Visit Amanta advises arriving at Sud Zab’s opening because the queue gets long, and TrueID’s 2023 list gives Tuesday as the day off for both Khoad Yum and Sud Zab. Ratchadaphisek is a wide road and taxis are easy to flag after the trains stop. If Huai Khwang is your one night out, the rest of the city is in our best restaurants in Bangkok list.