A taste of Paste
Asia’s best female chef 2018 Bongkoch ‘Bee’ Satongun on focusing on the flavours of her heritage
It is not breaking news that Asia’s Best Female Chef 2018, Bongkoch “Bee” Satongun will be moving on from her baby, the one Michelin-starred Paste at Gaysorn Village in Bangkok. It is also, perhaps, not news that she is moving to open Paste Laos. What is news are the exciting future plans chef Bee has in store.
“Laos happened because we [Paste is run by chef Bee and her husband chef Jason Bailey] know the owner of two hotels there. He wanted to open a restaurant and approached us. This is what I’ve always wanted to do as my parents are Lao and I want to do Lao cuisine as it is linked to my heritage. I also think there is a lot of room to play with the cuisine as it hasn’t developed as much as Thai cuisine,” says chef Bee.
Chefs Bee and Bailey plan to concentrate on ethnic Lao cuisine, but with a mix of Thai.
“I find their cuisine is becoming like Thai food — like when you cook Thai food for the tourists. When you are in Laos, it is all the same dishes that they cook and serve in restaurants and it doesn’t taste like authentic Lao food.”
Chef Bee is determined to take Lao food back to its roots, save for one tiny obstacle.
“Laos doesn’t have many documents or documented recipes like Thailand does. So it is going to be a bit difficult. But we plan to do the same thing as we did with Paste Bangkok. I can learn from my mum’s family, as some dishes they cook are still originally Lao.
“My grandmother taught my aunty to cook. So I can learn from her and combine it with my research.”
The burning question is, however, what will happen to Paste Bangkok once chef Bee moves away from the helm. It is public knowledge that she has been on the hunt for a head chef to take her place in the kitchen.
“I have to take myself off designing food in the kitchen and managing operations at Paste Bangkok. The restaurant is very much systematised and I am looking for someone to replace my position in the kitchen as head chef. This person needs to have full understanding of a Thai kitchen. It’s not only looking after a kitchen completely, the person also needs to communicate this information to the customers and he or she needs to 100% understand our concept and cuisine. Though, such a person is hard to find.
“Paste is our brand, we are the owners. We still have to look after it like our baby. We have to make sure that diners have had a good experience when they walk out of the door.”
At Paste Bangkok, chef Bee is known for her modern yet traditional technique-driven cuisine. She has breathed new life into old recipes and such chefs are rare.
“It is because the person [who replaces chef Bee] who enters our kitchen needs to be able to understand the old recipes, the history of Thai food and the passion we have for Thai food.”
Chef Bee stresses that a chef’s job isn’t just about being in the kitchen and cooking, it starts with the prep work that needs to be done to make sure everything functions like a well-oiled machine. A chef’s job also involves sourcing the right ingredients for the right dish as well.
“It is not like you come in and just oversee the kitchen. The person has to fully understand how Thai food is created and how we at Paste have modernised it and how we change dishes into our version, like our watermelon salad. They also need to understand our personality and why we create each dish and how we still hold on to traditional ways of cooking.”
Though chef Bee was named Asia’s Best Female Chef 2018 by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, which has brought a lot of attention to her and Paste Bangkok, she tries to not focus on the award. She prefers to see it as good for business and the additional attention it has brought for Thai food, “which was not the case before”.
“Thai cuisine has never got as much attention as other cuisines. We are taking Thai food to another level and introducing it to a wider audience,” she says. With the changing face of Thai cuisine and Paste
Bangkok, chef Bee plans to still keep doing what she believes in.
“We still want to try to present old dishes with our creative twist. When a customer comes in, they will still taste the same type of food, they still see the same ingredients as the original, but the presentation may change. We are going to keep doing that even though we keep adding interesting things to the menu.”
The awards and the Michelin star have not stopped or not stalled chef Bee’s creative process. To the contrary, she is now striving to keep introducing new dishes to the menu and to change them as she moves forward. The menu at Paste Bangkok changes every four months, but only those dishes that have been on the menu for too long are affected.
“We have a lot of regular customers so we want them to experience new things as well.”
The one constant dish on the menu since the original Paste restaurant in Thong Lor has been the extremely popular watermelon salad, and perhaps only because of a combination of texture, flavour and a taste that many don’t expect.
“It is really funny that at the start people were not sure what to think about this dish, but now it’s the most talked about dish and people love it so much!” The dish was chef Bailey’s idea, says chef Bee.
“When we put dishes on the menu, a few dishes that we want to perfect, we keep developing and adjusting the recipes until they become perfect. The crab curry, for instance, we adjusted 20-30 times until we reached a version that was how we wanted it to be.”
Chefs Bee and Bailey work hand-inhand. Chef Bailey comes up with the ideas for dishes, chef Bee then does her research on them and chef Bailey adjusts the final dish.
“We work together on each dish,” says chef Bee. Divide and conquer seems to be their winning strategy.
Though the Michelin star hasn’t changed much for Paste Bangkok, chef Bee says that now they have to focus more on the service, too, because people come with expectations of Michelin-starred service.
“Before, people came in for the good food and even if the service was just okay, they enjoyed it. Now people want the entire package, the ambience, the service and the food. They want everything. That’s what we have achieved.
“Food is like fashion, you have to keep yourself up to date, otherwise you will be out of fashion. Food is life and it is moving fast.”
But getting here wasn’t easy for chef Bee. When Paste moved from a standalone restaurant into Gaysorn Village, a high-end shopping mall, they lost regular customers who preferred their previous casual dining ambience.
“When we moved here, Paste became more of a fine dining restaurant and some people did not like this environment. But we started attracting other diners who did prefer it. At the start it was hard, because it was still in a shopping mall and people were put off by that. We have worked quite hard to get up to this level.”
FOOD IS LIKE FASHION, YOU HAVE TO KEEP YOURSELF UP TO DATE, OTHERWISE YOU WILL BE OUT OF FASHION