THAILAND


CENTRAL


STREETS AHEAD


Bangkok is known for its street food, but it’s also home to innovative and delicious fine-dining restaurants. Some of the city’s most exciting chefs tell us how they’re shaking up Thai cuisine — and their favourite hole-in-the-wall dining spots. Words: Chawadee Nualkhair


PICHAYA ‘PAM’ SOONTORNYANAKIJ Potong Potong has wasted no time in scooping up accolades since opening in 2021, having earned not only a Michelin


star but the guide’s inaugural Opening of the Year Award (2023), as well as a spot on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Driving this success is Pichaya ‘Pam’ Soontornyanakij, whose ‘progressive Thai-Chinese’ cuisine, as she calls it, combines traditional and modern techniques. “I was born into a Thai-Chinese family but my culinary training was in New York and very Western-style,” she says. “When it came to Potong, I wanted to make something more personal.” The result is a reimagining of Thai-Chinese


dishes, such as fi ve-spiced duck, aged for 14 days and roasted for 10 minutes to create a crispy bird with “intense duck fl avour”, and frog meat encased in a bamboo lattice and paired with a clear broth. It’s all served up as part of a changing 20-course tasting menu. All of this takes place within a converted shophouse — formerly the headquarters of Soontornyanakij’s family’s traditional Chinese medicine business — located on an alley in Chinatown. Above the restaurant, on the building’s top fl oor, is Potong’s cocktail bar, where willing guests can try a ‘cocktail omakase’ (a selection of the mixologist’s favourite creations). restaurantpotong.com STREET-FOOD TIP: “I like Sai Nam Phueng Noodle Shop’s dry rice noodles with slow- cooked chicken wings. The noodles are cooked just right, with a gooey texture and slippery mouthfeel, and the chicken wings themselves are very tasty.” Alley 392/20, between Sukhumvit Sois 18 and 20


52 NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/TRAVEL


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