Chefs who are loosening the old school Thai
Of all the worlda��s great cuisines served in the UK, Thai food has taken a surprisingly long time to get a 21st-century makeover. There are kimchi burritos, sourdough pizzas and North Carolina barbecues on amazon canada goose jacket many street corners a�� at least in major cities. But until recently Thai restaurants a�� even in hippest Hackney a�� have been conservative in their outlook: green and red curries, papaya salads, hot and sour soup. Not forgetting the ubiquitous pad Thai, that MSG-laden heap of peanut dust, noodles and slivers of flavourless meat that is guaranteed to cause you to slump, exhausted, into your bowl. The more interesting regional dishes have remained known mainly to Thais.
a�?Pad Thai is not even a very traditional Thai dish,a�? laughs Ben Chapman, co-founder of Smoking Goat. a�?It was basically introduced by the Thai government [in the 40s] to get people to eat more rice noodles.a�?
For the past 18 months, in his tiny bar-restaurant on Denmark Street in Soho, London, Chapman has been doling out a different kind of Thai food. It comes cooked over hot coals and bristling with flavours: nahm yum scallops served on the half-shell; aged beef short rib with massaman and pickles; five spice pork belly. Later this year they will open another, bigger site on the other side of Soho.
Theya��re perhaps the most prominent exponents of a new kind of Thai cooking, much closer to the food that many British tourists will have tasted in the north and northeast of Thailand.
a�?The first time I ate good Thai food I fell in love,a�? Chapman says. a�?It was food in glorious technicolour a�� spicy, umami, sour, sugar a�� all at the same time. To me that was astonishing. I wanted to eat it again, but there was nowhere in Britain I could, so I had to learn how to cook it.a�?
While the flavours are heavily influenced by northern Thai cuisine, many of the ingredients are adjusted for the UK. Youa��ll be hard pressed to find a short rib in Chiang Mai, for instance. a�?None of it is verbatim Thai food,a�? he says. a�?For example, our aromatics are very different. Their mint is much smaller and sweeter; here ita��s garden mint more about canadagoosejacketoutlett, which is slightly bitter. Coriander here is slightly soapy, whereas there ita��s brighter. In some cases you can work around it. If you are making a nam tok, for instance, a classic northern Thai dish, but you know your mint is weaker, you can use less of it and add sweetness to the stock instead.a�?
In Commercial Street in east London, people are queuing for more than two hours for a table at Som Saa, another restaurant specialising in regional Thai dishes. Among the dishes the diners are waiting to sample are silky panang curries of braised beef cheeks and isaan hot soup that stops just short of blowing your head off. Ita��s a wider menu than the one at Smoking Goat, taking buy canada goose jacket cheap in southern as well as northern regional Thai cuisine.
You put balls of meat on top of fruit with coriander and chilli. Ita��s an amazing explosion of flavour and freshness
The permanent site has just opened off the back of a successful stay at Climpsona��s Arch in Hackney. Founders Andy Oliver and Tom George funded the site through Crowdcube, which offered hungry diners the chance to get involved.
a�?If youa��re writing a hypothetical business plan for a restaurant, ita��s much easier if you have a version of the restaurant that people can see,a�? says Oliver. a�?Then if they like it they can invest. It means we dona��t just have one big investor who comes down and says he doesna��t like the tables or tells us to use cheaper prawns.a�?
Although they are ostensibly Smoking Goata��s rivals, there is also a sense of esprit de corps. They have all known each other for years. Along with Peckhama��s Begging Bowl, run by New Zealander Jane Alty, they are the leading lights of the new wave of regional Thai cooking. It might be an obvious thing to point out, but none of the people involved in this new wave seem to be Thai, though Chapman says he has plenty of Thai customers.
All three restaurants are indebted to Pok Pok in New York and the Australian chef David Thompsona��s Nahm, which introduced regional Thai food at the higher end of the market in 2001 and is still going strong. Oliver and Alty worked there themselves.
a�?I always liked Asian recipes more than western ones,a�? Oliver says. a�?From a young age I was cooking Madhur Jaffreya��s recipes, then I travelled round Asia at 19, trying everything. I took a graduate job after uni but packed it in to go canada goose coat 1000 bulbs to various kitchens a�� Moro, Maze, Bocca di Lupo a�� before David offered me a job at Nahm. I had no knowledge but a lot of enthusiasm. I never looked back.
a�?The techniques are totally different. One of the first things you make is ma haw, which is minced pork and minced chicken that has been cooked with coriander, garlic, pepper, fish sauce, palm sugar and all sorts of other seasonings until ita��s almost like a caramel. You put balls of this on top of fruit with coriander and chilli. You could spend 1,000 years in a western kitchen and never even consider doing that. Three proteins mixed together is bizarre to a westerner, and the meat is overcooked by about 45 minutes by our standards. But the result is delicious. I like breaking the rules.a�?
a�? This article was amended on 23 May 2016 to remove a reference to chef Seb Holmes, who no longer works with Ben Chapman.