The document discusses the evolving Thai cuisine scene in response to increased global attention. It profiles several top Thai chefs who are innovating in different ways, from focusing on authentic regional cuisines to fusing Thai flavors with other influences. While pad thai remains popular with tourists, serious foodies are seeking out lesser known dishes and chefs are exploring new ingredients and techniques. The document highlights how Thai cuisine is being shaped by an engaged community of food producers, critics and enthusiasts.

1. Thailand is on the
global foodie map to an
unprecedented degree—
but how is the native
cuisine responding to
the attention? Tim
Footman asks top chefs
what’s cooking
theWok
Beyond
a riot of
flavours Lon
goong, minced
prawns with
coconut cream,
at Bo.Lan

2. level of control. Without getting pretentious, we’re trying to
curate an experience. I guess, since Bo.Lan has appeared on
people’s radar outside Thailand there will be some box-tickers
but they deserve the best as well.”
Duangporn, known to all as Bo, has been particularly
energetic in her commitment to sustainability, being an early
champion of farmers’ markets and the slow food movement.
Has her hard work borne fruit? “There’s definitely an increased
emphasis on the quality of ingredients—and that doesn’t just
apply to Thai cuisine either,” she says. “It’s very much down
to informed customers.” And they remain true to their beliefs.
“Maybe we were a little over-confident in announcing we
wanted a carbon-neutral restaurant,” says Jones. “It’s probably
impossible. But I hope we’re going in the right direction.”
Another restaurant that’s relocated is Paste; Jason Bailey
and Bongkoch Bee Satongun have shuttered their original
space in Sukhumvit Soi 49. The move happened thanks to
the interest of the Sanitwongse clan, as represented by Firm
Hongsananda and his mother Sirima Srivikorn, who arranged
the move to the upscale Gaysorn mall and also opened the
family’s recipe books to the couple. It’s less a business set-up,
more like a patron-artist arrangement in Renaissance Florence.
“We’re inside the curve now,” says Bailey. “We’ve got a huge
luxury, in that we’re not technically a business any more; this is
more of an experimental, creative relationship.”
Apart from the new address, what’s changed? “I’ve realised
lots of things,” he reflects. “One is that at the old place we
were in was something of an expat bubble. The clientele here
in Gaysorn is only about five per cent tourists. To follow them
I’ve had to completely drop my Australian thinking and tunnel
even more deeply into Asia. Saying that, people can get too
hung up on what’s authentically Thai and what isn’t. What we
call Royal Cuisine has never really been authentic. Everything
ultimately gets bastardised and that’s a good thing, it’s how we
go forwards. It’s also confirmed my hunch that Thai food isn’t
about a balance of flavours, as the conventional wisdom goes.
But to a vocal community of chefs, restaurateurs, food
producers, critics and associated enthusiasts, the choice of
pad thai misses the point. The champions of innovation and
progress sigh that it’s just too bloody obvious, a Khao San
Road cliché; the traditionalists point out that it’s not even
authentically Thai. (It’s almost certainly based on a Chinese
recipe; and it was actively promoted by the wartime prime
minister Plaek Phibulsongkhram as a deliberate attempt to
create a national dish in the cause of unity.)
The thing is, if this had happened a decade ago, such a
food-focused community would barely have registered on
anyone’s radar. But today, it really matters. The rising critical
reputation of Thailand’s restaurants, with Bangkok eateries
heading the Asia’s 50 Best rankings for the past three years,
has lured serious foodies who come with the sole intention
of eating. They plan their trips with near-military precision,
often booking their tables weeks or even months ahead, then
describing their experiences on blogs and Instagram, Facebook
and Periscope—which encourages their many followers to
come as well. And they don’t usually eat pad thai.
The conventional wisdom is that everything began to
shift in 2010 when David Thompson, whose
London restaurant, Nahm, had become
the first Thai establishment to be awarded
a Michelin star, opened a new outlet in
Bangkok. But change was already stirring
the previous year, when two of Thompson’s
protégés, Duangporn Songvisava and Dylan
Jones, set up Bo.Lan, aiming to re-connect
Thai diners with their culinary roots and
encourage a new focus on sustainability and
localism.
The restaurant has since relocated to bigger
premises on Sukhumvit Soi 53 and the couple
have also opened a new, less formal joint,
Err, on the river. But some things remain the
same, not least their reputation as crusaders
for their causes. “I guess we are educators in
a way,” concedes Jones. “We want to show
how Thais eat, the balance of flavours. Not
everything has to be spicy, for a start. And
with the set menus, we maintain a certain
It’s about layering, like notes on a stave.”
Thitid Ton Tassanakajohn has stayed in his
original location but seems to be building up
something of an empire. But early visitors to
Le Du, on Silom Soi 7, didn’t think they were
even eating at a Thai restaurant. “We were
a state of confusion for the first six months
and we really weren’t sure what we wanted to
do,” he recalls. “We were using plenty of Thai
ingredients but there were also influences
from elsewhere, from French cooking and
my time in the States. After a while, though,
I became more confident and I realised
that customers were prepared to take more
risks. What I serve there now isn’t authentic
Thai food by any means, but if you ate it
completely blind, you’d be able to tell where it
came from.”
Ton also has a stake in the less formal Taper
and in the past 12 months he’s found the time
and energy to add two other restaurants to his
portfolio, with menus closer to what people
perceive as Thai cuisine. “Baan is all about
traditional, home-cooked food,” he explains.
“It’s about soul. The recipes will be familiar
to lots of Thai people but we pay far more
attention to provenance, to the quality of the
ingredients. Sometimes diners are wary of
spending an extra 50 or 100 baht on a soup or
LAYER UPON LAYER (From left) Crab curry at
Paste; Dylan Jones and Bo Songvisava take a
didactic approach; Bee Satongtun and Jason
Bailey are happily experimenting in their new
Gaysorn location
114
a
promotional video doing the
rounds, as part of the Amazing
Thailand campaign, that uses
pad thai as a metaphor for
all that is glorious about the
kingdom’s cuisine and culture.
It’s certainly on the right track
when it comes to appealing
to the tourist market; people
who’ve never set foot here know
this moreish combination of
noodles, eggs, tofu, shrimps and
tamarind and millions of visitors
will have enjoyed it, whether at
a posh restaurant or from a late-
night stall, probably following a
Singha session.
There’s

3. thailand tatler . april 2016 117
a curry they think they can get but they only
have to taste it to find out what a difference
free range eggs or meat can make. I need to
acknowledge the role of producers here; 10
years ago we wouldn’t have had a regular
supply of Thai dry-aged beef, for example.
Sustainable seafood wasn’t on anyone’s radar.
And this is very much consumer-driven.” And
he’s tapping into another Thai tradition with
his newest place. “At Baa Ga Din, meanwhile,
we’re taking street food into new directions
and making it available to people who may
not be too keen to eat on a street corner.”
If 30-year-old Ton is one of the bright young
things of Thai cookery, Nooror Somany Steppe
is very much a grande dame, although she
maintains the buzzing enthusiasm of someone
half her age. She opened Blue Elephant on
Sathorn Road in 2002 but her culinary career
really took off in the 1980s, when she lived in
Belgium. “I was brought up with Thai food
and I’ve always loved it but I started to get a
different perspective when I was in Brussels,”
she remembers. “Very few people had visited
Thailand or had any idea what the cuisine was like. They knew
it was vaguely near China so they asked for spare ribs and
sweet and sour pork. I borrowed the Lanna idea of a khantoke,
a beautifully presented set meal, as a gentle way to move the
diners towards curries and stir-fries.” Diners tend to be more
sophisticated these days but Nooror is still ahead of them.
“Nowadays, even if people are coming to Bangkok for the first
time, they’ll have at least some idea of what Thai food is like
because there are Thai restaurants in most cities around the
world. So we build on that, showing them regional variations,
the difference between dishes from Chiang Mai and Phuket.”
And the teacher is still learning. “I was recently up north
with a group of Thai and award-winning foreign chefs, looking
at ingredients from the Royal Project as well as local cooking
techniques. We met people from the hill tribes up there doing
extraordinary things, soups with just a few ingredients but
these fresh, clean herby flavours that totally surprised me and
I thought I knew Thai food. I can’t imagine what the foreign
chefs must have thought.”
The chefs we speak to inevitably have different perspectives
on where Thai food is heading, from Bo.Lan’s quest for
authenticity to Ton’s happy appropriation of Western
techniques, so we end by asking each to identify one dish in
their repertoire that suggests new directions for the cuisine. In
every case it involves an agonising moment of soul-searching,
as if we’ve asked a mother to name her favourite child.
“One dish I make at Le Du is a river prawn with wing beans,
poached egg and tamarind sauce,” says Ton eventually. “It’s
clearly Thai but the flavours are at once deeper and more
subtle and the presentation is modern, quite Western.” Bailey
is a little quicker off the mark. “Something we make that plays
with Thai flavours is sirloin steak with a special nam jim with
aubergines,” he says. “It’s got an unusual, slightly fruity taste
that takes people by surprise.”
Nooror reaches back to a dish she came up with years
ago, but which still surprises traditionalists. “The Dutch and
Belgians love croquettes,” she says. “So to win them over in
Brussels, I came up with green curry croquettes. It’s fusion, I
guess, but people love them.”
Only Dylan Jones, the devotee of the set menu, refuses to
identify a single dish. “It’s about the whole meal,” he insists.
“Although if you want to break things down to components, I
guess the focus is still rice. Some things don’t change.”
THE YOUNG TURK AND THE GRANDE DAME
(From top right) Ton Tassanakajohn’s chicken
with mushroom puree and herbal coconut jus
pushes the boundaries of what we think of as Thai
cooking; while Nooror Somany Steppe’s tom kha
gai is a delectably reliable classic
“withoutgetting
pretentious,we’re
tryingtocuratean
experience”DylanJones
For the record, Ton Tassanakajohn, as well as Bailey and Bee
from Paste, all go for green curry (“provided it’s done right,”
insists Bee sternly); Nooror can’t be persuaded to choose
between tom kha gai and panang curry; and the Bo.Lan team
votes with one voice for nam prik kapi.
As part of the recent Asia’s 50 Best awards, staged for the first
time in Thailand, a trio of top international chefs travelled to the
north of the country, accompanied by some Thai counterparts
to look around the Royal Project and investigate some cooking
styles that don’t often appear on Bangkok menus, let alone
those outside Thailand. We asked them to describe their
experiences and to pick out a single, classic dish that they’d
choose to sum up the essential nature of Thai food.
Ashley Palmer-Watts:
Dinner, London
It’s my first time in Thailand
and I just can’t get my head
around it yet. I’ve sat with a
Karen tribesman as he made a
broth with taro, bok choi and
tamarind; so simple but the
taste was extraordinary. And
I realised that he’s cooking
with the same ethos that
professional chefs show, with a
minute attention to detail. And
then I had an amazing pork
broth with shrimps at Nahm.
So I guess it would have to be
some kind of soup.
Peter Gilmore: Quay
and Bennelong, Sydney
Australians are regularly
exposed to Thai flavours but
I haven’t actually been here
for 20 years. The essentials
are the same as I remember,
that razor balance of flavours,
but what’s really amazing is
the new focus on provenance
and the quality of produce.
The stuff coming from the
Royal Project is exceptionally
good but I’ve also tasted palm
sugar that blew me away—it
could work as a candy on its
own. Maybe it’s obvious, but
I suppose it’s the curries that
show the ingredients off at
their best.
Joan Roca: El Celler de Can Roca, Girona
I’ve been to Thailand before but this was my first time in the
north; I hadn’t realised how different it would be from Bangkok
or the south. I’m Spanish, so we have rice in common; we made
a sort of Thai paella and that’s certainly something that would
work in Europe. I also enjoyed a smoked fish curry, and I think
that’s the sort of thing that sums up Thai food, the integration of
flavours and the focus on exactly the right ingredients.
In Search of the Essence
Hungry now? To discover the finest restaurants in the country,
Thai and otherwise, pick up a copy of the new Thailand Tatler
Best Restaurants 2016; you’ll also get your own Blue Mango
Dining Card, which entitles you to discounts and promotions at
eateries throughout Thailand.