The Long and Winding Road

Beckett’s maxim: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again.” could be applied to the oft-unseen growing pains of countless culinary ventures that seem to appear from nowhere, fully-formed and ready to hit the ground running. AngloThai, John and Desiree Chantarasak’s new bricks and mortar restaurant, which has just unveiled itself in a side-street in London’s Marylebone, has been in the works for some time, yet it’s nerveless start shows little inkling of the blood, sweat and tears backstory.

This deeply personal restaurant incubated over six years spent in short-lived residencies across the city, stints in far-flung kitchens (David Thompson’s Nahm in Bangkok) and collaborations with culinary kindred spirits, Robin & Sarah Gill, (from now-shuttered The Dairy) has coalesced, after numerous false-starts, into an entity that’s home-spun yet meticulously assembled. AngloThai is a distillation of this husband and wife team. Blending his paternal Thai heritage with an avid focus on British ingredients that chime with the seasons and complement dishes from Thailand’s culinary wardrobe. Whilst Desiree’s specialism for identifying small-batch wine producers of note and mobilising the front of house completes a heady mix.

Like the restaurant’s compound nomenclature, the room is an amalgam too. The wood panelling and pendant lights evoke a strangely harmonious jumble of elements, part West-Country beach cafe, part mid-century Scandinavian first-class lounge, all swaddled into the familial hug of an alpine stube - perhaps picked up by osmosis on the Chantarasaks wine adventures in Austria and Germany. However, the spotlight on a crop of modern Thai makers that have worked on specific aspects of the interior is more deliberate. From the abstract paintings and woven metal installations that clamber across the walls to the dark-hued Chamchuri wood table tops that imbue this 50-seater with such a convivial hum.

The menu is split between an ever-evolving five-course Chef’s Selection at £75pp ($95) and an à la carte list with smaller plates ranging from £16-20 ($20-25) and entrées hovering above £30 ($38). Both form a loose collection of greatest hits, honed over their years as roving restaurateurs with the addition of à la mode tweaks and seasonal flourishes. The selection leads you on a merry dance, at once delicate and nuanced as with the ceviche-like chalk stream trout with green chilli and tomatillo. Then lip-smacking, with an umami-rich fatty short rib brioche pastry dotted with makrut lime and smoked butter sriracha, which brought on Proustian flashbacks of Yauatcha’s turn-of the-century vension puff. The current vogue for lavishing attention on a single bivalve is alive and well with a Carlingford oyster anointed with tart fermented chilli and the zing of late-season sea buckthorn. As is the presence of the much-vaunted Exmoor caviar which flounces into view accompanying the Brixham crab and a puck-like cracker made from filigreed coconut ash. All very pretty.

Ed Smith ©

Then the rumble of the selection’s broodingly brilliant crescendo, a Massaman curry with Black Fig. A big bass drum of a dish. The gamey yielding hogget, supplied by their family’s farm, flickers with embers of Prik Jinda chilli accompanied by nutty pearled oats, akin to short-grain brown rice. Providing aromatic ballast, a refined version of Pad Makua Yao, a fried aubergine dish suffused with wok hei, draped in sweet basil and emulsified by the addition of the sunset-hued lava from a soy-cured egg yolk. Another knockout run of dishes. The menu closes out with a dense honey cake and ribbons of tangy chewy Crown Prince pumpkin topped with a pumpkin seed ice cream that provides a soft-landing. This is not crash-bang-wallop Thai food. You won’t be mopping your brow as you might at ‘Nu-Thai’ haunts, Speedboat or Som Saa. Chantarasak and head chef Xander Lloyd have a more tempered take, allowing the flavours to roll across the palate, without the temptation to succumb to chilli machismo.

The wine is Desiree’s domain and her list brims with brio too. Again, tried and tested growers and importers, often with a natural or biodynamic bent, have shaped the offer. Favouring wines from the cooler climes of Austria, Germany and Hungary that contain the requisite minerality to partner with the Thai-infused flavour profiles. Their collaboration with one Austrian grower, Niburu, is a case in point. The skin-contact ‘white’, named in honour of the owners’ daughter, tasted of distilled alpine summer, full of vim and verdancy - pure edelweiss juice. Not to be outdone, their light-bodied red, christened “Rufus” after the Chantarasaks other child was equally able to hold it’s own against the robustness of the curry. This is natural wine that has fully earned it’s place on the list and makes no concession to the funk-seeking chore-jacketed brigade. Cocktails are no side-show either. Another opportunity to pair autumn’s bounty with a list of classics. A carefully-crafted margarita with tart citrusy zip from those sea buckthorn berries was particularly noteworthy.

After the restaurant’s elephantine gestation, the Chantarasaks search for a location was equally protracted. Eventually plumping for a quiet enclave on the fringes of the West End and a toque’s toss from Basque favourite; Lurra and restaurant group (MJMK) stable-mate KOL. This is a crowning moment for the couple. The end of their peripatetic phase and the beginning of another - laying down roots. By biding their time, stress-testing so many components of a restaurant’s moving parts they have alighted on something genuinely refreshing; a relaxed, thoughtful, comparatively affordable family restaurant that also happens to be rustling up the sort of food that more uptight, pernickety establishments, with equally lofty aspirations, could only dream of. Dispensing with the time-worn flimflam of fine dining and instead embracing a heartfelt familial pride that beams out from every corner of the operation.

The promise of this hard-earned moment has not been lost on others too. On the first night, an Apple TV crew were taking up space in the kitchen - no doubt looking to capture the stellar assent of what could and should become a Michelin-starred outfit.

By sheer cosmic happenstance, David Thompson, Chantarasak’s culinary mentor at Nahm, opened a London iteration of his wok-rattling hawker-style favourite Long Chim on the same night. In the quarter of a century since Thompson opened the now closed Nahm in London, his influence has endured. A culinary conveyor belt of alumni have gone on to open a string of ventures that have continued to reshape the city’s appreciation of this alluring cuisine. Yet it has taken until now for a handful of chefs with Thai heritage to shift that spotlight again. Sirichai Kularbwong, head chef at Leytonstone’s sleeper hit Singburi and now Chantarasak, whose take has steadily evolved into something entirely standalone.

Set against the breathless, often headless, competition in London’s restaurant arena, AngloThai’s studious, envelope-pushing approach has made a compelling case for slow and steady wins the race and reaffirms Nahm’s stated ambition, that Thai food should, and now demonstrably does, sit comfortably on the most exalted tables.