Common in its namesake province, and rare everywhere else, most Thais have heard of pat mee khorat (ผัดหมี่โคราช), but few have ever eaten it. It’s a spicy stir-fried rice noodle dish often compared to pat thai. Popularized during a period of nationalism and rice shortages in the 1930s, pat thai’s origin story is well-documented, but just who created the dish and how is unknown.
While pat thai’s Chinese influence is unmistakable, so is its similarity to the much-older pat mee khorat; and frankly it’s hard to imagine that pat thai wasn’t directly adapted from it. Ask anybody from Khorat province about it and they will almost surely tell you that of course pat thai is a modified version of their beloved local dish.
