Gyo-Sa is a small Chinese dumpling restaurant located in Bangkok that serves delicious and inexpensive fried dumplings and other dishes. It is located just off Rama IV Road down Soi Ngam Duplee. The specialty is fried dumplings with various pork and vegetable fillings. Other favorite dishes mentioned are stir-fried green beans and stuffed peppers with a brown gravy. Meals for two people rarely exceed 500 Thai baht, making it a very affordable dining option.

1. We’ve all read before about the types of restaurants that travelers, and locals too, like to find and patronize: the little hole-in-the-wall off-the-beaten-path places that specialize in a particular type of cuisine or maybe even just one type of dish itself. Usually they’re really inexpensive and the food is great and not many people know about the place. Well, enough people know about the place so it stays in business of course but you know what I mean – no big crowds or anything like that. There are undoubtedly many such places like that in a city the size of Bangkok and to find these little eateries you’ve either got to stumble on them by accident, have someone show you them or read about them somewhere like you’re about to do here. In the case of Gyo-Sa, our favorite Chinese dumpling place, a Chinese acquaintance brought me there 10 years ago and we’ve been going back there since. Like almost all of these types of places, if you didn’t know where it was you’d probably walk right by it unless you knew where to go. Gyo-Sa is located right off of Rama IV Road almost across from the Lumpini boxing stadium on a rather well-known soi called Ngam Duplee. If you walk from Rama IV Road down the soi it’s only about 15 or 20 meters on the left. It’s a small shophouse space with six tables and the sign out front, if memory serves, is in Chinese. It’s the only restaurant around so you can’t miss it. And, Soi Ngam Duplee is very close to the Lumpini MRT station so you don’t even have to drive. We always say we’re going to go there more after we’ve stuffed ourselves with their delicious food but we just don’t seem to get there enough. It’s our loss too, because they have great food there and it is, as you would expect, quite inexpensive. Without beer you’d be hard pressed to spend over 500b baht for two people unless you carry a lot of food home with you. The specialty here is the fried dumplings although there are other dishes that we always order too. In fact, that’s one of the reasons that I can’t give you a more well-rounded idea of the menu. I know that there are about 10 different varieties of fried dumplings. What’s inside of all of them I’m not really sure since my wife always orders (she’s Thai and the level of English here is almost non-existent so if you don’t speak Thai or Chinese you have to point at what you want). Don’t worry, though, because whatever we’ve ordered has turned out to be excellent. Most of them are stuffed with pork and some other ingredients such as vegetables. They’re delicious and plentiful and if you want, you can buy bags of frozen dumplings and take them home to cook. We’ve never tried that so we don’t know how they turn out. We also love two other dishes and we order them every time. And I mean every time so unfortunately I can’t give you a more well-rounded idea of what’s on the menu. But the stir-fried green bean dish is a must for my wife and the stuffed peppers are my addiction. These thin and not real big peppers are a pale green and they’re stuffed with pork and covered with a thin brown gravy that is fantastic. There’s a little spice to them and plenty of them on the plate. The green beans are also in a kind of light sauce that they were sautéed in and some garlic is one of the ingredients. We eat these dishes with a couple of varieties of dumplings and we’re done, I mean stuffed like the peppers. In the interests of journalistic thoroughness I should explore more of the menu and add to this article and maybe I will. I’ll just have to bring more people with me so that we can try more dishes. Or, if you check out Gyo-Sa, try something for me and let me know what you think. In fact, if you find your own little hole-in-the-wall place serving any type of cuisine, let me know. I’m always looking for more places to eat great as well as inexpensively. 5/4 Soi Ngamduplee, Rama IV Road 02-679-7019