Putting his heart into it

INTERVIEW

It's always nerve-racking for a food writer to shift to the other side of the counter _ by opening up a restaurant. And it's doubly so if that restaurateur is dishing up food that he or she didn't grow up with.

That's exactly what Jarrett Wrisley, who's originally from Pennsylvania, US, had to go through two years ago when he opened Soul Food Mahanakorn, his Thai food outlet on Soi Thong Lor.

"It doesn't make sense if we have to cook only the food we grew up with," remarks Wrisley, who says he did a lot of his growing up in the kitchen, learning things from his mother.

Inspired by Thai Food, Australian-born chef David Thompson's first book, Wrisley serves regional Thai cuisine _ dishes from the North and Northeast mostly _ at his little eatery near the junction with Sukhumvit Road.

He operates under the snappy motto: "Wholesome ingredients. Honest cooking. Serious drinks."

Wrisley took an Asian Studies course while at college in the US and has spent the past decade in Asia, the first half in Beijing where he learned Mandarin, ate and travelled widely and wrote about his experiences.

Although he's never been so crass as to declare that he was going to raise the bar for the Thai food scene in this country, what he has managed to accomplish so far has certainly gone some way towards doing just that.

Based in a trendy neighbourhood packed with restaurants, half of whose diners are only there to be seen, he is unusually serious about his craft, about getting every detail right, from making his own curry pastes from scratch to trying out new techniques to improve traditional dishes.

For instance, instead of buying beef at a local market for his namtok (Isan-style spicy salad), he has sourced high-quality beef from a Thai-French butcher's shop.

"And I haven't changed any of the ingredients," he points out.

He says he chose regional dishes as they are more casual than formal Thai cuisine and likely to appeal to a wider cross-section of customers. He also believes that spicy dishes tend to pair with wine better than those from the Central region, which often contain coconut cream. Namtok, for example, goes well with a pinot noir, Wrisley thinks, while a spicy salad from the Central Plains could benefit from being served with a sauvignon blanc.

Even a simple offering like pad see-eew with pork has been given a sophisticated twist. This everyday dish is very popular partly because of the charred flavour the noodles get from being stir-fried in a very hot wok, so to create a "double smoked" effect, Wrisley uses cured pork that has been smoked with wholegrain rice for a few hours to give it extra flavour.

The menu at Soul Food Mahanakorn is kept small, to make it easier for his small team to maintain the home-cooking credo, but it is changed regularly to take into account seasonal changes in the availability of ingredients. He uses only organic rice grown on a small farm in Yasothon province, getting a fresh delivery every week or two. All the spice pastes, including those that flavour the house green curry, massaman curry and khao soi, are prepared by hand in the kitchen on the second floor. Wrisley says he is bothered by the fact that most Thai diners tend to pay too much attention to flavours, while neglecting the quality and type of ingredients used. He feels that this allows restaurant operators to overlook such small, but crucial details as fish sauce, lime juice and coconut cream _ three constituents which are supposed to be of key importance in Thai cooking.

To reduce costs and preparation time, lime juice is often replaced with bottled citric acid, he noted (going on to mention the name of a well-known Bangkok chain of seafood restaurants he says is guilty of this substitution); freshly squeezed coconut cream with inferior canned varieties; and home-made spice pastes with those sold by the kilo in local markets.

"Serious restaurants respect their food. They have no excuse for using unauthentic ingredients," he says, going on to add that he understands if street vendors need to cut corners because they have to keep costs low for their working-class customers.

While most of the meat and other raw materials used in Thai restaurants are the same as those supplied to Japanese or Italian establishments here, Wrisley says that dishes sold by the latter are considered "expensive" by local standards since most Thais do not expect restaurant fare to be costly.

"We need to change the perception that Thai food should be cheap," he declares.

After two years of running the restaurant, Wrisley says he is still finding the work rewarding. He compares this to the ephemeral enjoyment he used to get as a writer whenever one of his stories was published.

His new role, which includes manning the bar mixing some of those "serious" drinks, as well as cooking from time to time, he describes as a "tangible" job, one which gives him the opportunity to work with his hands, but still allows him to cut loose and enjoy himself with customers whenever he wants to.

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About the author

Writer: Sirinya Wattanasukchai
Position: Reporter






Article source: http://www.thethailandlinks.com/2012/12/13/putting-his-heart-into-it/