Lisa Ling on why Asian food in Los Angeles matters.
A black cod goes from the Pacific to Shibumi.
Keeping cool when the kitchen gets hot.
One restaurant’s many pandemic pivots.
Two different takes on Indian food.
Every day’s a hustle at Woon.
From Asian farms to Los Angeles restaurants.
Why in L.A. they’re not boring.
Three restaurants breaking boundaries.
Mastering values at Yang’s Kitchen.
Two chefs go behind the blade.
Omakase and ramen join the neighborhood.
The coronation of soju and makgeolli.
Three women open the bar they want to walk into.
Indonesian community through cuisine.
On working with Mom and Dad at Anajak Thai.
Los Angeles before sushi.
Inside the staff ritual of eating together.
Three Vietnamese restaurants expand the city’s palate.
One chef has some thoughts.
Waking up Los Angeles to Burmese cuisine.
The couple behind Shiku goes with the flow.
An ode to those who keep them going.
Michelle Bernstein embraces the competition.
One restaurant’s epic journey from debt to success.
The couple behind Boia De and Walrus Rodeo play by their own rules.
Vermouth gets a bar of its own.
On the business of BBQ in Miami.
Recipes for navigating an uncertain economy.
The secret to never getting old in a town obsessed with what’s new.
How two pioneers of omakase introduced Miami to a new way of dining out.
Chasing a childhood memory one arepa at a time.
Why Miami’s mainstays of Middle Eastern food aren’t phased by the influx of glossy newcomers.
David Foulquier on his shapeshifting ambitions.
The Black chefs behind a vegan movement in Miami.
Two Cuban sandwich masters talk shop.
A new generation’s take on the classic Jewish deli.
Miami’s mavericks of sustainable growing and dining.
An intimate glimpse inside restaurants after the last customer leaves.
Creating a culture where employees stick around.
A new kind of bottle service takes root in Miami.
The art of staying put in a changing city.
The city’s ventanitas created a culture all their own.
Philadelphia Magazine’s food critic on the irrepressible attitude that is the key ingredient of the city’s restaurants.
How one restaurant gave birth to many.
The cheesesteak may be the global mascot of Philly. But a contingent of pioneering chefs and restaurateurs have made the city a hub of vegetarian innovation.
The city’s Eritrean-Ethiopian restaurants serve up more—way more—than delicious food.
How Juan Carlos Aparicio baked his way to running a restaurant (that isn’t a bakery).
How Alex Tewfik went from being a food editor in Philly to owning one of the best restaurants in town.
Two restaurants that share a belief in how cooking can be force for change.
How Chutatip Suntaranon channeled her upbringing in Thailand—and life spent flying around the world—into one of Philly’s most singular restaurants.
Stopping by the warehouses in Kensington where artisan upstarts are breathing new life into the city’s food scene.
The Ongoing Evolution of Philly’s Classic Sandwiches.
Chloé Grigri, Amanda Shulman, and Ellen Yin on upending the rules of the game.
Mike Solomonov takes stock of his journey.
When a customer becomes a friend.
Ange Branca was forced to close her beloved restaurant in 2020. That was just the beginning.
How do you build a restaurant in a space that was never meant for a restaurant? In Philly, a city of Revolutionary Warera buildings and colonial row houses and ancient warehouses, it can be a bit like playing Tetris with Benjamin Franklin.
Three Philly couples get frank and intimate in sharing their recipes for romance.
Inside the world of homespun pop-ups and unexpected collaborations that have made Philly’s dining scene like nowhere else.
The classics are easy enough to master by anyone with fine liquor and a recipe.
The city has long been a vibrant hub of Vietnamese food. Today, a new generation is striking a balance all their own—between creativity and tradition, innovation and memory.
An ode to the unsung heroes of restaurant kitchens from a comedy writer who couldn’t take the heat.
A cell phone has been invented that allows you to send one text message to your younger self. What do you write?
How Chutatip Suntaranon channeled her upbringing in Thailand—and life spent flying around the world—into one of Philly’s most singular restaurants.
Chutatip Suntaranon was 50 when she opened her Thai restaurant Kalaya in 2019, in a 32-seat space in Bella Vista. She had already led several rich lives: a youth spent between her hometown in southern Thailand and school in Bangkok; a culinary education in the first-class cabin of international airlines where she worked as a flight attendant; a side-hustle ferrying Hermès Birkin bags to Asia from her various destinations (she still collects Birkins); a first marriage spent running an Italian restaurant in Bangkok. It’s hard to imagine a chef-restaurateur who was more ready for primetime.
By 2022, when Kalaya relocated to a space in Fishtown almost four times the size of the original, with vaulted skylights and profusions of greenery, Suntaranon, who goes by “Nok,” was a bona fide star, hailed by national magazines, feted by critics, and soon to be named Best Chef: Atlantic by the James Beard Foundation. Even in a kind of golden age for Thai restaurants across the country, Kalaya stands out for its electric, uncompromising version of Southern Thai cuisine—from delicate dumplings to stormy curries, all of it almost (though not quite) as pretty to look at as it is delicious to eat. It’s a place seemingly in every way an expression of its irrepressible, equally uncompromising maker.
Having traveled all over the world, is there a place that Philadelphia reminds you most of?
No. I’ve been traveling to America since 1991, and spent 20 or 30 years traveling the globe nonstop, and I don’t think I could compare Philadelphia with any other country or city. Philly is unique because Philly is real. Whatever you see in Philly is real. It’s not plastered. It’s not fake. Our strongest point is community.
A little more than a year after opening the new Kalaya, how has it been different than you expected?
One thing about my life is that I don’t have expectations. Expectations create anxiety and disappointment. The only hope I had when I decided to open the bigger restaurant is that my staff would be well taken care of. Because at the first Kalaya I did everything. I was a one-woman show, and I took care of my staff. So, I have people who are super loyal to me, people who have been here since day one. I looked at them and I thought: I want my team to have health insurance. I want them to have paid vacation. I want them to work in the bigger organization and just be well-taken care of. That’s what we were able to do by expanding the business.
“I have people who are super loyal to me, people who have been here since Day One. I look at them and I think: I want my team to have health insurance. I want them to have paid vacation. I want them to work in the bigger organization and just be well-taken care of.”
Was it nerve-wracking?
I work like a bull. I’ve almost met nobody that works harder or is more persistent than me. So I believe in myself and the rest is not up to me. We open the door, the customer walks in, and they will like it or not. I cook my heart out. My team builds the most beautiful restaurant with the most wonderful hospitality that we can. But we don’t hold you at gunpoint and force you to like our food. That’s how I opened the restaurant and I’m still operating under the same mindset.
Has it allowed you to relax at all?
I do relax. And I am a shopaholic. I splurge. I treat myself very, very well.
What’s the last present you gave to yourself?
It’s almost every day. Christmas comes every day. Sometimes it’s a very good meal. Or coffee. Or a big thing of truffles. I love handbags. I love shoes. I’m a woman!
I was going to ask you about the Birkin bags. How many do you own?
I can’t tell you. If I tell you, I have to kill you. I have enough….but still not enough. You can never have enough Birkins.
What did being a flight attendant, especially in first-class, teach you about hospitality?
I think it made me more sensitive to how people feel. I want them to feel good about coming into my restaurant.
I imagine you’ve seen people act pretty badly while flying.
I have. But the thing is, more is factored in there than just the flight attendant. Sometimes you’ve been treated badly at the check-in counter. Sometimes you’ve been waiting in line. The disappointment and anger is something that’s built up prior to getting on the plane and the flight attendant is just the last resort, the person you can lash out at. This is why when I walk around my dining room, and I see people whose body language is off, I always look them in their eyes and say, ‘There’s something wrong. Talk to me. Talk to me.’ I want to figure out, Was it the food? Was it the staff? Or was it their family dynamic at the table? And normally we can make that customer happy.
“I believe in myself and the rest is not up to me. We open the door, the customer walks in, and they will like it or not.”
It feels like Americans have come a long way toward understanding and appreciating Thai food over the past five to 10 years.
I think it’s not just America. It’s the world in general. And it’s not just Thai food. I think the world is waking up. I think people are more considerate and eager to learn about other cultures. When I opened the first restaurant I would answer the phones myself for the first few months: Do you have pad thai? No. Do you have pad see ew? No. Do you have drunken noodles? No. They’d hang up on me.
Do you still encounter the old prejudice about “ethnic” food needing to be cheap?
For me, I would say that as long as I can convince people to come in, sit in my restaurant, try my food, walk out, and have time to write about how pricey it is, that’s a success. But this will always be a world problem as long as people still have that kind of cultural racism.
Are you being offered opportunities to expand to other cities?
Nobody has asked me. People from New York say, ‘You should open in New York,’ and I’m like, ‘No thank you. You can drive here.’
For many years, the narrative was Philadelphia feeling overshadowed by New York.
I don’t think Philadelphia wants to compete with New York. I went up to a table and the people were like, ‘Oh, we’re from New York. We came to eat at your restaurant!’ I’m like, ‘I know you live in New York. But I have a five-bedroom apartment. You don’t have the space I have. You don’t have the community I have. You are lucky you get to drive one and a half hours so I can bless you with my delicious food!’ But I did not say that. Only in my head. The thing is, you walk into a restaurant in New York and they welcome you with attitude. People in Philly are super-accommodating. The scene here is super down-to-earth but with the world class quality. We are not the underdog. We’re the Big Dog.
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