By Ray Rogers
Who better to show home cooks how to bring the Thai heat than the James Beard Award winner for Best Chef California 2023? Justin Pichetrungsi, chef and owner of Anajak Thai, named LA’s Restaurant of the Year by the LA Times, will present “No Rules, No Limits, Thai Cooking My Way.” The former Disney animator grew up in the family business, and returned to take the helm after his father suffered a stroke in 2019, taking a leave of absence from his decade-long animation career and never returning. He found his groove in no time, putting his own stamp on the restaurant’s menu.
“I just started cooking, and in the misinterpretation of my father’s recipes is where I found my style. It’s when you fail to become your heroes that you find yourself—I think that is what generational cuisine is about,” says the Food & Wine Best New Chef 2022. “I don’t think that I could ever have planned any of this. But I really wanted to do it, and I saw a lot of value in keeping the restaurant alive and working with my parents. So, it was equal parts duty and passion for the restaurant.”
The first thing he did was introduce a new wine list. “I really like dry rieslings. Our list has some of the greatest riesling producers in humanity—they provide this electricity and zing and an excitement to prime the palate but also cool it down at the same time,” says Pichetrungsi, who can also be seen judging talent on TV’s Top Chef. Next, he changed the way the restaurant sources its ingredients. “I bought produce from the Santa Monica farmers market and now almost all of our produce comes from California. All of our pork is from Yosemite in California. All of our chicken is from California. All of our beef is from New Mexico and these really great purveyors. Our seafood is from the West Coast and Japan.”
Thai cooking, he notes, “is very pantry- and ingredient-heavy. It’s not like olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper type of cuisine, which is great. Thai food is just so complex and needs so many things. The one thing that I love about Thai food is that you can go in so many different directions as long as you understand the base proportions or just the foundational idea or philosophy behind these cooking techniques.”
How can people somewhat easily incorporate Thai flavors and seasonings into their at-home repertoire? For starters, he says, you’ll need a Krok, which is a Thai clay mortar and pestle. You can use this, for instance, to make a Thai chile dip called nam prik noom. “It’s very simple—you grill a bunch of chiles, shallots and garlic, and you pound it all together until it turns into a paste,” advises the chef. “It’s spicy and green and has this baba ganoush-type texture. It’s great for summer entertaining.”
And if you’re in Sherman Oaks, you’ll want to snag a reservation for Pichetrungsi’s flavorful cuisine. Anajak Thai is still very much a family business to this day. “I have my dad taste all the food, and he gives me copious notes. My mom still cuts all the mangoes for mango sticky rice. It’s a lot of standing there—she’s an old lady now, but it’s fitting for her in some ways. She really enjoys it, and she takes her sweet, sweet time. You can see her in the back, doing her thing.” Her traditional confection was even noted in the Michelin Guide as one of the city’s best desserts. “I was like, Oh, now this is going to really inflate her ego,” he says with a good-natured laugh. “It’s going to be a real problem for me.” Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, June 20-22; classic. foodandwine.com