Your restaurant, Soi 38, recently moved into a new space. What’s it like?

We had seven to eight months to design it, get the equipment and test the flow of the kitchen. Placing all the equipment is like playing with toys – it’s the dream for a chef to be able to lay out their kitchen.

You were a tour guide in Thailand for 12 years – tell us about that.

I became a tour guide not long after I finished my degree in environmental science in Thailand. As a trekking guide we explored the mountains, stayed in homestays and met different tribes. We also carried our own food and exchanged with farmers in the villages and cooked with them. I became interested in history, cultural learning and education after this. Now I like to put knowledge and tradition on the plate.

How do you translate this to the menu? I put food on the menu that

I miss from Thailand and that I want to eat. You have to be able to educate people about what you’re putting on the menu, too, otherwise you’ll get raised eyebrows. So I share my knowledge with the kitchen and front of house staff so they can explain [to our customers]. We include the classics and then slowly introduce new menu items. We group the food into different regions so people who want to try some different dishes, can. We also like to educate people on the different regions and why they cook certain things and why it’s popular – because the food and its story are influenced by the geography and environment.

What is your favourite dish right now? My personal favourite at the moment is goi – it’s a raw meat dish, like a tartare. Goi is my regional dish, from the North East. We make it with wild buffalo and we work with a supplier from the Northern Territory to bring the whole carcass down, which we dry-age here in the kitchen. It’s diced, seasoned with roasted rice powder, fresh lime juice, fish sauce and a pinch of palm sugar. It’s got the flavour profile of Thai food that I grew up with – spicy, salty and sour, served with fresh herbs. In the North East there’s a lot of raw meat and not much coconut. It’s hilly in this region, so usually you’d buy a whole cow and split it between 10 families.

Soi 38, 74 Pirie St, Adelaide, SA, soi38.com.au