Neil Hodgson
No matter where you look in this delightful region, there appears to be a Thai restaurant within a short distance. And while the food in the vast majority is delicious, one of our favourite places for a hit of spice is Chokdee Thai Cuisine on the corner of Rutherford and Hardy streets in Nelson.
Every good restaurant or cafe uses fresh ingredients, but when it comes to spices, Sakawduean Muangthong (Duean), the co-owner of Chokdee, takes it to another level by making every sauce from scratch. There isn’t a jar of pre-made green curry in sight.
The thing most people are wary of when it comes to Thai food is the chili heat, but Thai food is about flavour rather than raw heat. Having said that, we do like our Thai curries hot – just not Thai hot – so you need to be an experienced chili eater to go down that track.
The Chokdee website says the emphasis is on using the very freshest ingredients, the traditional Thai way.
I wanted to find out for myself just what this means, so I visited Duean and her husband, Anthony Oakly, last week for a lesson in creating delicious Thai sauces that can be spiced up to suit every taste.
‘‘The main thing is everything has to be fresh, because fresh ingredients have the best flavour,’’ says Duean. ‘‘Even some spices lose flavour if they are old.
‘‘And then we use those fresh ingredients to make each sauce and dish. We toast the spices to release the flavours and aromas, and blend them to create the unique Thai flavours for each type of dish.
‘‘Each sauce must be true to its Thai tradition, a tradition that means blending flavours so each ingredient is enhanced by other ingredients to make a really tasty dish.’’
At Chokdee, the spice blends and sauces are made fresh each day, so the business sources fresh ingredients several times a week.
‘‘Sourcing these ingredients fresh all year round is very time-consuming, but a necessity for our diners to be able to experience the true tastes of Thailand,’’ Duean says.
‘‘The result is always worth the extra effort. We even grow our own lemongrass and lime leaves at home.’’
‘‘Winter vegetable prices are really high, but we won’t compromise,’’ says Anthony, wearing his manager’s hat. ‘‘It means our costs are higher, but it’s about the integrity of the dish.’’
I wanted to know what got the couple into the restaurant business 15 years ago, because Anthony started life as a drainlayer before discovering skydiving when he was 19.
He told me that when tandem skydiving became popular, he and Stuart Bean set up Tandem Skydive, a business they ran and developed until it was sold and rebranded as Abel Tasman Skydive.
‘‘I guess I have done about 16,000 jumps, 12,000 tandem jumps, and have nine world records for various skydiving things.’’
While he was busy with the skydiving business, Duean was looking for a job. She had been an accountant in Thailand but couldn’t get work here.
So, after three years of trying and not being able to find decent Thai food in Motueka, they decided to open a restaurant.
‘‘We intended to just have a small business with three other staff, but Chokdee in Motueka was so popular it grew to be a much bigger business than we expected,’’ Anthony says.
‘‘When we opened in Nelson, it became so big it needed both of us working pretty much fulltime running the business.
‘‘We have a 16-year-old son, Jed, who also works in the restaurants sometimes. I ended up selling Skydive Able Tasman so that I could look after him when he was small, so I have been a house dad since 2004-05, and that fits well with dealing with the management of the Chokdee business.
‘‘I make sure everything is ordered, (and) deal with paperwork and various compliance things like liquor licensing and food safety compliance.’’
The couple opened the Nelson restaurant in 2007, and moved a couple of doors down the road to the bright, sunny corner space in 2015.
‘‘There were problems with access to the old building. We also wanted something we could fit bigger groups in, and was more open and airy,’’ says Anthony.
‘‘We didn’t want to be a small, dark restaurant. We wanted a really nice modern space that we could turn into something with an authentic feel.’’
Something else that’s really important to the couple is valuing their staff, he says.
‘‘We now have about 24 staff members, some fulltime, others part-time, so it’s a bigger beast than we thought we would have. We have some great staff, and we are committed to being responsible employers.
‘‘Rather than making staff work seven days a week, we have enough so they can all have two days a week off.’’
Their head chef at the Nelson Chokdee, Yui, has worked for them for many years and has residency, while other staff are on work visas.
‘‘It’s very difficult for any hospitality worker to get residency, and we want to keep our staff, so we help them with all the bureaucracy,’’ Anthony says. ‘‘The language and culture barriers can be quite significant.’’
Staffing is a huge issue for any restaurant, and while Duean and Anthony want to employ locals, and do when they can, they are also committed to keeping the authenticity, so it’s important they have some Thai staff.
‘‘It is very difficult to get chefs, in particular, with the skills to cook authentic Thai food, so we make sure we pay our staff well and do everything we can to help them,’’ Anthony says.
Chokdee Motueka has just had a big upgrade so it looks and feels more like the Nelson restaurant. Anthony and Duean have also made it easy for customers, who can book a table or order takeaways and pay online. The online order goes straight to the kitchen printer, and an email gives the customer a collection time.
When we need a hit of spicy Thai food or food packed with gentle, authentic Thai flavours, Chokdee is the place we go, and it is always creating new dishes such as the new Chokdee Ocean.
‘‘Fresh ingredients have the best flavour . . . Each sauce must be true to its Thai tradition, a tradition that means blending flavours so each ingredient is enhanced by other ingredients.’’
chokdee.co.nz