WISHING YOU A WET NEW YEAR
Once a year, Toronto’s Pai and Nana restaurants turn their dining rooms into a splash zone to celebrate Songkran, the Thai new year
Thai restaurants mark Songkran with post-meal water fights,
Put the forks away, it’s time to play!
Once our bellies are full of the sticky Thai rice and pork hock stew, the water guns come out and the 100-plus diners divide into two teams in the basement-level restaurant Pai and soak anything that moves with water.
This week marks the beginning of Songkran, the Thai new year, which is traditionally celebrated with a nationwide water fight.
In Thailand, trucks armed with water canons roam the streets and soak passersby, neighbourhood kids wallop each other with water balloons and tourists armed with buckets are encouraged to participate in the local customs.
Since Toronto’s weather is no match for Thailand’s warm temperatures (Bangkok is experiencing highs of 30 C this week) the water fights were brought into the dining rooms of Pai in the Entertainment District as well as Nana on Queen St. W. (Electricians were consulted in advance, I was assured.)
“You see people who don’t know each other sit at different tables but when they finish the festival, they go out and talk to each other and cross the barrier of being strangers,” says Nuit Regular, who is co-owner and chef of Pai.
“This table will play with that table, everyone gets together. I see that and I get very happy. It’s worth all the prep and the cleanup,” says Regular, who named the restaurant after her hometown in northern Thailand. Her husband and co-owner, Jeff, says having concrete floors and tarps makes cleanup less of a nightmare so the restaurant is back to regular service the next day.
Starting Wednesday, Thai people around the world visit temples to offer food to monks, pay respect to elders by splashing their hands with water, wear new clothes and clean their houses and the cemetery plots of ancestors.
It’s a weeklong celebration as people return to hometowns, gather in town squares and open homes to well-wishers. The water represents washing off the bad energy from the previous year to make way for a clean slate. In Toronto, if it means soaking restaurant patrons to the bone so be it — it’s good luck.
Regular remembers getting up at three in the morning as a kid to help her family grind rice into a flour to make chips that would be served to visitors throughout the day. For Regular, making these dishes is a way to pass on her Thai roots to her Canadian-born daughter, Marlee, as well as stay close to her family back in Thailand and pay tribute to her late mother.
A favourite dish she makes especially for the Songkran celebrations is a fiery, pork-based jackfruit curry that’s been passed down in her family for generations.
“Jackfruit curry is something that I’d offer to other people when they come to my kitchen,” says Regular. “It will give them luck for the coming new year. Jackfruit curry has been the food that we’ve eaten for generations. Every time when I think about it, I just feel like my mom’s here with me.”