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Indeed, most Thai dishes are not considered satisfying unless they combine all four tastes. A typical Thai meal includes four main seasonings: salty, sweet, sour, and spicy. Just don't expect to sit down: eat on the move or take away.

The 30 or so stalls are a lively introduction to Lanna and wider Thai cuisine, and because locals come to pick up food for home, the standards are consistently high. You could pick other food markets (Sompet, Thanin, Chiang Mai Gate, Chang Phuak Gate) and be as deliriously sated, but the night-time street food at Warorot remains special to me. This is the place I discovered sai ua (Chiang Mai sausage), nam prik ong (chilli tomato pork dip) and kaeng khanun (jackfruit curry). The two restaurants have a wider range of Isaan dishes, too.

For full pleasure, eat your chicken with khao niao (sticky rice) and a som tam (raw papaya salad). Both serve delicious dipping sauces on the side: Cherng Doi's sour-sweet tamarind one is sublime. The former, in a cosy garden setting, grills boneless strips to crispy-outer and tender-inner perfection; the latter roasts whole small birds on a customised spit at the front of its Old City restaurant.

It's impossible to choose between Cherng Doi and SP Chicken - both make stunning versions of the north-east Thai (Isaan) barbecue chicken dish kai yang. I'm sure my Cowgirl would agree. It's a way of life or rather, life itself.

It all seemed to blur together: family, work, play, religion and commerce, on every little alleyway and road, and always, at the heart of it, food. And you knew - you just knew - that you could join them if you smiled hard and wanted to. A little further up, at the shop where we bought our morning fish-rice porridge, the family were barbecuing together, the young daughter directing her elder brother by means of a piggyback ride. Across the road, a tailor was doing the same.

Take the road we lived on near the temple of Wat Chet Yot: come sunset, the staff of one beauty salon set up a gas burner and a mookata grill (a cross between a hot pot and a Korean barbecue) on the pavement and began to drink beer and cook meat for themselves. Take Warorot market, take Chiang Mai Gate, take Nimmanheamin on a Friday night, where the back-end of a pick-up truck parks beside a bar and serves grilled oysters and steak. In their place: herbs, roots and plants from the jungle, filling the spicy Lanna meals - which traditionally used wild game, snakes, frogs and grubs - with sour, bitter and pungent notes.

Relatively isolated, its culinary development came without ready access to the coconut milk, palm sugar, and fish sauce that was so prevalent in central and southern Information about Thailand (http://thailandtourism.biz/). I began to take things seriously then, researched all I could, even corralled Michelin-starred chef Andy Ricker , the US champion of Lanna (northern Thai) food into having coffee with me. I learned from him how the geography of the region created the city's unique cuisine.