Everyone asks about the mango. Fair enough — a good Nam Dok Mai in season needs almost nothing done to it. But the sticky rice is steamed twice and rested in coconut cream before it ever meets the fruit, and miss that step and even the best mango tastes ordinary next to it.
We only run the dish properly during peak season, usually April through June. Outside that window the mango is available, but it is not worth putting next to rice we are proud of, so we hold off.
The mango does maybe forty percent of the work. People just notice the other sixty percent less.
This is the stretch of the year we get both halves right at once, which is really the whole point of the dish existing as a seasonal item instead of a year-round one.
