Which raw flower may be served with Pad Thai as a vegetable?

Raw banana flowers may be served with Pad Thai as a vegetable. They are commonly presented alongside the noodles, where their crisp texture and mildly vegetal, slightly bitter flavor contrast with the dish’s sweet, sour, salty, and savory sauce.

A banana flower is the large purple-bracted blossom of a banana plant. The outer bracts are peeled away to reveal pale inner florets, which can be eaten raw when young or cooked in other dishes. In Southeast Asian cooking, the flower is treated as a vegetable rather than as a sweet fruit.

Banana flowers are easy to mistake for decorative blossoms because of their striking appearance, but they are edible food ingredients. Hibiscus, lotus, and jasmine also appear in cuisines and floral traditions, yet they are not the canonical raw vegetable named in Wikipedia’s Pad Thai ingredient list. Other fresh accompaniments may include bean sprouts, garlic chives, lime, and chili.