On a rewarding London spice trail I went crackers for starry Anglo Thai

Dusk in deepest Marylebone. Surprised to see swanky Seymour Place still retains an old school hardware shop. It’s shut for the day, so no chance of an impromptu ‘four candles’ purchase. Across the street is my destination – a restaurant years in pop-up gestation, that has won a Michelin star just three months after opening. Anglo Thai’s mission statement? Thai cuisine cooked with British ingredients.

So I have to thank Devon for the Brixham crab and Exmoor caviar that combine in a signature dish that has been a constant on chef John Chantarasak’s journey here. It is as ravishing as the arty upmarket beach-shack fit-out. White crab meat in a coconut cream, topped generously with the fish eggs. To be spread over a coconut  ash cracker shaped like some religious symbol. I worshipped it.

John himself is the embodiment of the hybrid. Born in Liverpool to a Thai father and English mother, he was raised in the Wye Valley. Great British Menu 2020 claimed him for Wales, six years after he returned from Bangkok to work at Som Saa in Spitalfields (founded by two Englishmen). Out of all this sprung the peripatetic Anglo-Thai pop-up with sommelier wife Desiree.

Along the way they fashioned their culinary ethos, built around modern fermentation techniques (John makes his own fish sauce from kitchen scraps) while limiting the amount of imported raw materials. Fresh galangal, lime leaves and lemongrass are still flown in, but chillies can be grown seasonally in the UK and souring agents such as lime and tamarind can be replaced by British-grown sea buckthorn, rhubarb and under ripe gooseberries. Similarly ivy pollen honey from Glastonbury can be substituted for palm sugar. I’m less sure, on the evidence of my Anglo Thai dinner, of serving our heritage grains instead of rice. I love Hon Mali, the pandan scented jasmine rice from North Eastern Thailand. Barley not so much.

Mentored by David Thompson, creator of groundbreaking Nahm

John’s Bangkok grounding combined its Cordon Bleu school and a stint at Nahm restaurant with David Thompson, the Australian Thai cuisine guru. The bright pink dust jacket of his encyclopaedic Thai Food has sat on my kitchen shelf since it was published in 2002 (the hefty, heavily illustrated slab that is Thai Street Food is consigned to the attic),  the year after he opened the original Nahm restaurant inside Belgravia’s Halkin Hotel. Like Anglo-Thai, it swiftly won over Michelin, becoming the first ever Thai restaurant to be awarded a star.

We once ha d a luxury stayat the Halkin and, even if the dining room was a bit shiny Bangkok boudoir, Thompson’s fine dining interpretation of dishes from across the regions felt revelatory. A world away from the pub Thai green curries that were already traducing the tradition. I was already sourcing my own spice paste ingredients but was five years away from visiting the distant reaches of their culinary homeland.

Not all the critics were so impressed with Nahm. A splenetic Jonathan Meades wrote: “Nahm’s cooking is all legerdemain, trickery, disguise, technical flashiness for its own sake; take the extraordinary waffles or rösti-like things made with rehydrated fish – the skill is patent, but the result is boring. Nothing tastes of itself. Most of the dishes taste of chilli, which is used with coarse abandon.”

Jay Rayner was kindlier, but shared Meades’ suspicion about a Sydney-born chef being master of all things fish sauce and lemongrass. Had they never heard of Pacific Rim? Whatever, for him, the whole operation smacked of colonialism. And the food? “There were a couple of high points. But it did not redefine my understanding of Thai food. I was left with those familiar flavour memories: of sweet and sour, of nut and chilli and coriander, just as I am after any good Thai meal.”

In 2012 Thompson closed the Halkin outpost two years after opening a second branch of Nahm in Bangkok. This soon earned a star and then a place in the World’s Top 50 restaurants. That’s all in the past and late last year Thompson, now in his sixties, returned to London to launch a version of his Sydney casual diner Long Chim.

It occupies the ground floor of Soho Greek/Turkish spot Hovarda. A Thai pop-up, who would have thought it? Alas, my plans to check out Long Chim during a recent London visit were stymied by the dreaded ‘closed on Monday’. Instead I went on a pilgrimage to four Thai restaurants across the capital that have reordered the way we think about the cuisine. Two hold Michelin Bib Gourmands, Anglo Thai that shiny new star.

Try Thai? Here are the four hot spots I sampled on a flying visit

Long Chim means ‘Come and Try It’, but of course I couldn’t. Kolae at Borough Market had the advantage of being open on a Monday. It is a spin-off from Som Saa, which translates as ‘bitter orange’. Kolae itself means ‘fishing boat’ but also refers to food from southern Thailand that is marinated, basted, grilled, slathered and drenched in a paste of coconut curry. That is very much its focus.

Kiln in Brewer Street, Soho gets its name from a furnace, appropriate to its take on the fire-based cooking of Northern Thailand. Two dozen walk-in covers, most on the counter by the grills, does raise a punter sweat. All part of the excitement, when you eventually bag a seat. It doesn’t match Kolae, though, for the regular whoosh of wok flames.

My third new wave Thai (open Monday evenings, there is a God) was Kiln’s stablemate, Smoking Goat, which shares the same in your face prepping and duplicates some barbecue items (the naans are all their own). It started off in Soho’s Denmark Street but now is a linchpin of the Shoreditch hipster scene, more barlike as befits a homage to Bangkok’s late night canteens (sic). I loved the fun of it.

As you may gather, Anglo Thai is a very different beast. Not just through its slogan ‘Rooted in Thailand, Uniquely British’ but because of its casual fine dining feel, with a £110 tasting menu and serious, mainly natural, wine list in a 50 cover space conceived by Thai-American designer May Redding. Obviously  at some expense to the investors, the MJMK restaurant group. Grace Dent, a fellow fan, swooned over ‘strategically placed Lampang Province ceramics’ and ‘flattering Ban Pa Ao lighting’. I was impressed by the strategically informed staff.

So what were the highlights of my new wave Thai spice crawl?

KOLAE

Start your meal in this bright 80 cover space (above) in a former railway arch with the grilled mussel skewers (£6). They have been steeped in a nutty marinade, grilled twice over a smouldering coconut, then enhanced by a squeeze of calamansi lime. As well as stone grinding their own curry pastes the team prepare fresh coconut milk every morning and this imparted a vivid freshness to my southern gati curry of tiger prawns with cumin leaf (£17). Initially gentle, both dishes left a chilli hit on the palate. Sourcing is important. Meat comes from Swaledale in Yorkshire, fish from the South Coast each morning. Veg is UK organic, their new season rice is from ethical suppliers Paddi.

KILN

I was warned my venison jungle curry was not for the faint-hearted. I handled this North Thai style challenge (£16.20) well; my neighbour at the counter was left gasping for water after the spice kick of his som tam of radish and beetroot. Always the salads. Kiln remains cheerfully uncompromising. They too source day boat fish, their Tamworth pigs (pork is a key menu element) are bred specially for them by Fred Price in Somerset, the cull yaw mutton comes from a certain Mike Chatfield. I was lucky to squeeze in at the counter on arrival. A squad of besmitten walk-ins waited their turn with supreme nose-twitching patience.

SMOKING GOAT

Cull yaw in ‘sai oua’ Northern Thai sausage form (£4.90) was one of my starters at Smoking Goat, where I mounted my latest counter stool. I also felt I had to try the sweet and smoky house special of fish sauce chilli wings (£3.90) – perfect bar food for the new West Coast IPA in my life. But what made the trek into Shoreditch memorable was a turmeric pepper BBQ gurnard (£17), the whole fleshy fish splayed out for easy access. With strips of naan and a winter radish som tam with citrus eclectically sourced from Valencia’s Todoli Foundation I constructed my own sustainable fish butties. Bliss.

ANGLO THAI

Fish was a main in Anglo Thai’s beautifully presented 10 course tasting menu. A tranche of pollock in a lake of orange curry. At all the previous Thai stop-offs I had avoided the souplike sour curries. Now was the moment of reckoning. After a Carlingford oyster dressed in fermented chilli with sea buckthorn it was the spiciest dish on the menu, mitigated by sweetheart cabbage two ways, including a cute impersonation of a stuffed banana leaf.

An intriguing substitute for satay sauce was made from sunflower seeds to accompany a grilled Jerusalem artichoke dish. Very true to project, yet Todoli citrus again, made an appearance with lemongrass and pine in a pre-dessert. Anglo-Spanish?

This was Thai food on a different level. Rather than compare it to the other three, fine in their own way, restaurants look for comparisons to the Michelin starred Indian cuisine of Chet Sharma at Bibi over in Mayfair. My recommendation: visit both for equally thrilling spice-driven food.

A country of many cuisines – read up on Thai food heritage

Chef patron Chantarasak has found time to write his own recipe book, Kin Thai, and  modestly recommends David Thompson’s magnum opus. I look no further than Austin Bush’s duo of intensely researched travelogues – The Food of Northern Thailand (2018) and the The Food of Southern Thailand (2024). This American expat is based in the country, a fluent Thai speaker and a compulsive traveller, who has has contributed to Lonely Planet and rival guides to South Eastern Asia.

His latest book is a visual revelation, too. His photography skills capture the vividness of diverse dishes such as Pork Braised with Soy Sauce, Pepper and Brown Sugar; a Rice Salad with Budu Dressing; a Spicy Dip of Smoked Shrimp; and Simmered Black Sticky Rice with Taro and Jackfruit. In Southern Thailand Chinese, Malay and Muslim cuisines come together in one cultural melting pot.