*PLEASE LISTEN TO THE AUDIO, SMASH THE PLAY BUTTON ABOVE!*
Chef Prin is a man of few words and when he speaks you have to listen carefully (in Thai as well) because his thoughts run in a non-linear fashion, to put it mildly. His reputation in Thai chef circles is legendary. He drinks harder than anyone, cooks better than everyone and always has the best hair. I have watched him show up at events, start prep late, start drinking early and somehow still come up with the best dish of the day, time after time, often pulling triumph from the jaws of disaster. One such occasion was at my own wedding when some ducks that were meant to be the piece de resistance turned out to be made of rubber and no amount of cooking skill was going to save them, not even Prin’s. Instead he whipped up some deep fried stuffed tofu that food world luminaries who were present still speak wistfully of 3 years later. Prin is the kind of chef who cooks elaborate meals for his wife Mint on his day off and spends his spare time researching the foodways of Thailand, planning his next menu and almost never taking a vacation. He lives, sleeps, breathes and drinks cooking.
After 7 or 8 years of being Chef David Thompson’s right hand man at Nahm in London and Bangkok, during which both received Michelin stars and showed up on almost every best of list, Prin and Mint started doing pop ups on the side which eventually became Samrub Samrub Thai.
At this point I have to give all due props to Mint: she is a force of nature and managed to both corral Prin’s wild spirit and give him the freedom to run free with his cooking as she managed the business, even giving up her career at the UN to do so. She has just given birth to her first son (Prin’s second; he has a teenage son from a previous relationship), Khun Saam.
Prin finally left David’s side after almost 10 years, opening Samrub as a brick and mortar restaurant in a 16 seat space behind his friend and fellow chef Chalee Kader’s 100 Mahaseth (look out for an interview with Chalee in the future!). Almost immediately it was the hardest reservation in Thailand and to this day, 2 years later, it has only gotten more difficult even in the midst of the pandemic. It’s so difficult, they have been passed over by Michelin twice because the inspectors can’t get in…at least that’s what I choose to believe because anything else doesn’t make any sense; at any given time, he is making the best food of and in Thailand. This is not hyperbole. Everyone I know agrees, including David Thompson himself (at least the last time we ate there together).
Prin’s journey to where he is now is circuitous and a bit mysterious, just like the man himself. Born to a large family in Lampang Province, he grew up in a house where the kitchen was the center of home life. His parents moved to Chiang Mai so he could attend a better school and his mom started making curry puffs as a side hustle and eventually opened a bakery. A wild adolescence led him from working in the family bakery to university in Bangkok, back to Chiang Mai after dropping out of uni to work for the family again, then back to Bangkok to learn how to cook at the Oriental Hotel so that he could have a skill that would get him a visa to work in the USA where his girlfriend had returned. His girl long distance dumped him and so, too ashamed to go home and tell his folks he had wasted their money, he doubled down on work. But instead of becoming a cook, he stayed at the hotel and worked in the butcher room for three years before eventually landing a job at Nahm in London and eventually becoming Head Chef at Nahm in Bangkok.
Listening to the interview, you will have to be attentive; Prin’s English comprehension is excellent but his speaking skills are not as superb…but far far better than my limited Thai. Even in Thai, though, he speaks more like a drunk poet than a chef. I have a hard time following sometimes (as you will see) but once you feel his rhythm you’ll get the gist.
To give you an idea of what the food is like at Samrub, the following is a run through of the meal I had December 23rd, 2021. Prin describes how he comes up with his menus in the interview but basically he chooses a geographical boundary to work in and also a historical timeframe. He then researches the hell out of it and gets the products from that particular area to build the menu. I can assure you that everything you see here was absolutely delicious and harmonious.
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