‘EXACTLY LIKE THEY DO IN THAILAND’
Meet the chef who transformed Toronto’s Thai food scene by refusing to compromise on quality,
Diners have smartened up in recent years when it comes to Thai fare. They’re no longer accepting the sugary pad Thai Pan-Asian restaurants served alongside pho and dim sum. Torontonians now debate who makes the best khao soi, can find lemongrass outside of Chinatown and can order region-specific Thai dishes at a slew of new restaurants. When it comes to the reinvigoration of Thai dining in Toronto, much of the credit goes to one chef: Nuit Regular.
In the last 10 years, Regular has shown diners the different sides of Thai cooking through her husband Jeff’s mini-empire of downtown Thai restaurants.
She’s behind Sukhothai, whose three locations made khao soi (egg noodles in a coconut curry broth) ubiquitous; Sabai Sabai, with its Laotian influence; Pai, the boisterous basement party spot that does northern Thai; and was the opening chef at Khao San Road, where she cooked Thai street food.
Regular is now trying to fine-tune Torontonians’ palates ever further with the newly opened Kiin, paying tribute to royal Thai cuisine where old peasant dishes are given additional layers of textures and flavours, plus an infusion of colour fit for royalty.
“It’s good that everyone knows about Thai food now and everyone, not just us, is now making really good Thai food,” she says. “It makes me happy that people are now proud of cooking Thai food and people can eat the real thing.”
Changing Toronto’s Thai food scene was an undertaking that Regular, 42, initially had no interest in taking on.
Prior to Toronto, Regular was a model student with dreams of becoming a nurse. She learned how to make curry pastes from scratch from her mom, but cooked not because she loved doing it, but because it was part of her chores and a way to bring in extra income for her family. In the seventh grade, she got the name Nuit Pad Thai from her classmates as she would sell 500 baggies of noodles from classroom to classroom at five bhat a pop (about 20 cents).
Regular later worked as a hospital nurse in Pai, Thailand. There, she fell for a backpacker from Toronto and the two opened a little curry restaurant as a side business. In 2004, they got married and decided to move here. Even with no intention of cooking professionally, the avid cook packed her suitcase with shrimp paste and fish sauce, worried that she wouldn’t be able to find these ingredients abroad.
While updating her nursing skills at George Brown College, Regular’s fatherin-law asked for help turning a building he’d bought at Dundas and Parliament Sts. into a café and snack bar.
“He asked if I could make dim sum there,” Regular says. “I suggested Thai food cause that was the only thing I knew how to make.”
In 2008, Sukhothai opened to little to no fanfare. There were days when Sukhothai would bring in just $50 a day and talks about shuttering the place happened more than once in its first year.
But she refused to compromise on her food. A year after opening, Regular’s commitment to sourcing hard-to-find ingredients attracted the attention of a local food blog, which praised her unwavering efforts to using imported Thai ingredients rather than cheaper substitutes, even for an $8 lunch special.
Sukhothai became a destination restaurant. The recognition paved the way for the couple to open Khao San Road in the more-high profile Entertainment District. At the same time, Regular completed her nursing program. But with two high-profile restaurants, she was forced to choose between her lifelong dream of working in the medical field and her new profession. She chose the latter.
“In the first year of Khao San Road opening, I didn’t think I was going to be a chef,” she says. “My heart was in nursing because I made people feel better and happier. But when I saw how people felt better after eating the food, it fulfilled me like nursing did.”
Khao San Road had lines out the door, but months into operation there was a partnership breakdown between the Regulars and their part-owner, Monte Wan. Wan would keep Khao San Road and open another Thai restaurant, Nana, on Queen St. W.
The Regulars moved on, helping two friends open Sabai Sabai in 2012, and two years later, they opened Pai Northern Thai Kitchen, a short walk away from Khao San Road. Pai focused on northern Thai cooking and acted as Regular’s home away from home, serving dishes she ate growing up. Their latest spot, Kiin, is a far departure from the narrow and dark Sukhothai that opened 10 years ago. The restaurant, which opened late, is sun-drenched with bright white walls and gold accents. The food is a nod to royal Thai cooking, fit for the country’s monarchy during the late 19th century.
“It’s beautiful cooking with so much thought and intelligence put into it,” she says. “I went back to Thailand six years ago to learn how to make these dishes. I was shocked that so few people were cooking like this in Thailand . . . No one has time to cook like this anymore. We need to keep this alive or else it will disappear.”
This restaurant’s dumplings are dyed blue from a Thai flower then shaped to resemble a blossom and a golden rice bowl contains more than a dozen components. It’s a more mature iteration of Regular’s cooking, but like the other restaurants she and her husband opened in the last decade, the food isn’t a reflection of dining trends, it’s a glimpse of the centuries-old cuisine that’s now getting the respect it deserves from people who didn’t grow up eating it.
“Some people have never been to Thailand, so if you say it’s Thai food you have to make it exactly like they do in Thailand,” she says, echoing what she told the audience at a hospitality conference just outside of Bangkok a few weeks ago. “It’s my responsibility to show what it’s like to eat like a Thai.” karonliu@thestar.ca