Thai cuisine has become truly international

When does a cuisine become truly international?

My guess is that the tipping point comes when a cuisine’s dishes and techniques are so widely accepted that anyone, anywhere in the world, no matter what nationality, feels comfortable cooking them.

 

One example is French cuisine. Everybody cooks it and some of the world’s best chefs who cook French food are not even from France. Italian is another example. Think about pizzas and pasta – there are more restaurants run by non-Italians serving those dishes than there are Italian chefs.

 

   The third great international cuisine is – believe it or not – Thai. Some of this is due to circumstances. The Australian chef, David Thompson, visited Thailand as a young man, fell in love with the country and its food and searched for traditional home-cooking recipes that were being forgotten. He made them the basis of the menu at the Darley Street Thai, his influential restaurant in Sydney.

 

   Later Thompson opened Nahm in London, which was the first Thai restaurant to win a Michelin star anywhere in the world. When he brought Nahm to Bangkok, some years later, he faced criticism (and abuse even) from some Thais: their objection being, inevitably, that no white man had any right to tell Thais how to cook their own cuisine. But Nahm was so good and did so much for the image of Thai food that the objections soon faded away.

 

   Thompson‘s real legacy may be the number of non-Thais he trained. Many of them – white guys, mainly – went on to open Thai restaurants all over the world. Not only did they introduce Thai food to a new audience but they also made it okay for non-Thais to cook Thai cuisine because their restaurants started winning Michelin stars.

 

   Over the last year Thompson has been spending time in Goa training Indian chefs to cook for Fireback, the chain of Thai restaurants in India opened by Rohit Khattar. We should see more Firebacks opening soon.

 

   But, with the notable exception of Ananda Solomon who introduced Mumbai to Thai Food when he ran the Thai Pavilion at the President Hotel, most Indians have yet to excel at Thai cuisine.

 

   That is about to change. By some coincidence, two outstanding new Thai restaurants run by Indian chefs have launched in the same week in two different countries. One is Manao in Dubai and the other is Bangg in Gurgaon. Both restaurants have big names backing them.

 

   Manao is part-owned by Mohammed Orfali. If you know Dubai then you will know that Orfali, a former TV Chef and anchor, is a phenomenon. Originally from Syria, he abandoned a very successful television career to open a small Dubai restaurant with minimal investment. To everyone’s surprise it went on to become a super-hit. It won a Michelin star and has been number one on the list of the 50 Best Restaurants of the Middle East and North Africa two years in a row. (You may also have seen Orfali in the Dubai episode of Somebody Feed Phil.)

 

   Manao is his latest venture, a collaboration between him and Abhiraj Khatwani, a young NRI chef. Abhiraj has cooked in Thailand and travelled widely researching the complex cuisines of Thailand’s regions. He has a singular vision and is not content with merely reproducing famous Thai dishes. His menu consists mainly of small plates, each of them bursting with flavour. In some cases, such as his Gai Yang (grilled chicken) you can trace the dish back to its source but even when you do, you are surprised by what he has done to it.

 

"So we now have two top Thai restaurants in two different cities, both with kitchens that are entirely run by Indians."

   My favourite on the menu was a top quality Gillardeau oyster topped with orange flavoured nam jim (a classic Thai dipping sauce) and fried shallots. The balance is perfect: you could taste the oyster and yet the Thai flavours Abhiraj had paired it with filled your mouth.

 

   I went a few days before the restaurant was due to open and they were serving a limited tasting menu but in the weeks ahead they plan to offer an a la carte menu which will also include some familiar dishes.

 

   Abhiraj has run a Thai restaurant before, but I got the sense that this was a more personal venture: an opportunity to let his own personality shine through the food. I loved it and I also loved the fact that there were no Thais in the kitchen. As far as I could tell, all the chefs at the ranges was Indian. That’s a tribute to versatility of Indian chefs.

 

   Manao is not the only new Thai restaurant with an all-Indian kitchen team. Later that same week I went to Bangg, a passion project for both its founders: Riyaaz Amlani and Garima Arora.

 

   Amlani runs the large and very successful Impressario group (Smokehouse, Bandra Born and over 56 Socials). Bangg is his first foray into Oriental food and he says it emerged out of his trips to Bangkok and his growing friendship with Arora.

 

   Garima is something of a household name in India after being a judge on Masterchef India. But she’s also one of the few female chefs in the world to run a two Michelin star restaurant: Gaa in Bangkok. She first came to public attention at Noma (where the founder René Redzepi still raves about her) and then worked at Gaggan in Bangkok with the intention of becoming the chef at the restaurant that Gaggan planned to start in Mumbai. When that fell through, Garima opened Gaa and perfected her own style, first winning a single star and then two.

 

   So why is Garima opening a Thai restaurant given that most of her experience has been outside of Thai cuisine? The short answer seems to be that it was Riyaaz‘s idea and she liked the challenge. She has spent nearly a decade in Bangkok and knows the food well even though she laughs self deprecatingly and says, “I am glad I’m opening a Thai restaurant in India and not in Thailand.”

 

   The kitchen will be run by Manav Khanna who has worked with Garima since the early days and is a Thai food nerd fascinated by every detail of the cuisine and the philosophy behind it.

 

   Bangg is a little like Manao in that the food has a distinctive personal touch. But it’s also very different in that it is much bigger, has an innovative cocktail program (Manao served no liquor) and most of the food is served family style. There are some unusual (and funky) starters but the main courses follow more or less traditional lines.

 

   Like Manao, the cooking at Bangg is of a very high standard. You will find red and green curries but you will also find an unusual white curry that I had not tried before. An additional bonus is that Khanna is obsessed with fire-cooking so his roasted and grilled meat dishes are exceptional.

 

   It is a fun restaurant, but each time you eat the food you realise that the chef also runs a two Michelin star restaurant. All of the flavours are precise. The ingredients are of the highest quality. And the effort is to recreate the flavours of Thailand as accurately as possible.

 

   So we now have two top Thai restaurants in two different cities, both with kitchens that are entirely run by Indians.

 

   Who would’ve thought it?