Food Play at COMO Metropolitan Bangkok

nahm's owner and Executive Chef shares the influences and inspirations behind the Michelin-starred kitchen.

I was born and raised in Bangkok, and still consider myself a Bangkok girl at heart. My childhood home was very near the Central Business District, where nahm is located. The whole city is intimately familiar to me —  its rhythm, energy and flavours. My work takes me all over the world, but when I get back to Bangkok after a period of travel, it’s an assault to the senses. It’s a city that feeds your dreams with its technicolour of noise, sound and light, flaring at every hour of the day. 

I split my time between Bangkok, New Zealand and the United States — an arrangement that began when I was a student. I didn’t go to culinary school; I was headed for Silicon Valley. With that in mind, I went to college in the United States, studying Materials Science and Engineering. I started cooking when I was homesick, and searching for familiar flavours from my childhood — things made the traditional way, like when I was growing up. But I couldn’t find any Thai food that I wanted to eat.

There was one thing that really kept me going: my grandmother’s chilli jam. It’s a kind of fried relish made using lots of alliums like garlic and shallots, as well as tamarind, palm sugar, shrimp paste, and of course chilli. It was a component of nearly every dish we ate at home — used in salad dressings, Tom Yum soup, and as a stir-fry base. Although chilli jam was readily available in American supermarkets, that stuff tasted nothing like my grandmother’s. Every time I went home to Bangkok, I’d fill two huge jars with my grandmother’s chilli jam, roll them in layers of plastic bags and shove them in my suitcase along with my clothes. When I got back to my college accommodation in the US, I’d hide the jars right at the back of the fridge. I didn’t share the jam with anyone, hoarding it jealously. That first spoonful was always electric — the tang of tamarind, the deep umami of shrimp paste, the slow-burning heat of chilli. It tasted like home. But no matter how much I rationed the jam I always ran out before I got home to Bangkok again.

 So I went to see my eldest aunt — my grandmother’s premier disciple — and asked her to teach me how to make the chilli jam. We made it together, over and over, until I was confident in every measurement down to the last gram. The first time I made it alone, I followed the recipe very, very carefully. It was very nearly as good as my grandmother’s. I think she would’ve been proud. That recipe was foundational for me. It was the first time I realised I could make my own authentically Thai cuisine. Once I graduated from college, I joined the technology industry, but it didn’t align with what I truly wanted. I started my own food blog, ‘Chez Pim’, and began training with hands-on experience with top chefs. The rest snowballed, and here I am today.

Chasing authenticity has become my guiding principle in how I cook. That and finding enjoyment in the process — just as I did all those years ago as a student making my first batches of chilli jam. The key lies in local, fresh ingredients. When I'm in my kitchen in Bangkok, you're not going to see strawberries or truffles; I try to avoid using ingredients that are shipped halfway across the world. At nahm, we grow some of our own herbs and spices on the roof — ming aralia, pandan, jasmine, and other edible flowers that I can trace from seed to bloom. I’d love it if we had our own farm, but we’re in the middle of Bangkok's Central Business District; that’s not realistic. Instead, I’ve cultivated relationships with artisans and small farmers throughout Thailand. Supporting small-scale farmers and producers is essential. I seek out artisanal products and ingredients wherever possible — a shrimp paste producer halfway down the southern peninsula of Thailand, for instance, or a tiny fishing cooperative. Chefs aren’t the be-all and end-all of the culinary system. If I don’t have the best coconut, or palm sugar, or shrimp paste, there’s only so much I can do to make my food taste good. 

Whenever I have an idea for a new recipe — often gleaned from antique books or an obscure piece of Thai heritage — I head to the market and see what’s in season. In Bangkok, we’re in the tropics so we have an abundance of year-round ingredients. But there are some shorter season delicacies I love to work with too. At the moment, it’s the height of the Marian plum season. If you slice them through, the centre of each seed is a soft lavender colour, and the flesh is delicious — with the texture of an apricot but a very different fragrance and a sweet-tart taste. We’re using them in a shrimp paste relish. You wouldn’t automatically assume the flavours would pair well, but it works beautifully. We’ve also got the plums as part of a sorbet to refresh the palette in between savoury and sweet courses. 

Another dish I love at the moment is our river prawn stir-fry with samphire relish. We played around with the relish for a while, and I realised the nutty creaminess would pair excellently with seafood. So I threw it into a wok with a few river prawns that had just been delivered. It was one of those moments where all the flavours just clicked. There are lots of dishes on the menu that go through tens of iterations before we get them just right. Not so with this one. It was a one-wok wonder! We’re also developing a new vegetarian Penang curry with fruits and young vegetables. It’s a slower, more deliberate challenge than the stir-fry: it’s easy to make things taste good if you’re using lard, shrimp paste, fish sauce and so on, but vegetarian food is a different beast. I want to make sure we’re serving a dish that’s special in its own right, not just a substitute for meat.

People are always asking me what my favourite dish to make is. But for me, the best meals are always evolving. I love finding a new ingredient to work with, or experimenting with different flavour combinations. I like surprising myself. My favourite dish to make changes all the time depending what I’m fixated on at that moment. Of course there are some evergreen dishes on the menu at nahm too. The southern turmeric and crab curry for example. It’s fabulous, made with blue swimmer crab that arrives at nahm every morning. We steam the crabs, then mix them with our in-house turmeric curry paste, and coconut milk which we press daily in the kitchen. It’s one of those dishes where you can taste the freshness seeping through in every single element. I joke about taking it off the menu sometimes — it’s been there forever! — but the truth is, even I miss it: whenever I come back from travelling, it’s the first dish I order.

There are no rules in my kitchen about what makes a perfect meal. I steer away from orthodoxy wherever possible. The set menus are probably what I recommend the most because it gives guests a chance to try a range of curated tastes that I’ve blended together into a balance I consider to be ideal. But there’s always room for choice, with different options to pick between for each course. Our nahm servers will ask each guest about spice preferences, whether they eat meat and seafood, or which textures and flavours appeal most — crunchy, creamy, acid, bright and so on. I think a set menu should take guests on their own personal journey. It should be punchy, funky, dynamic and fun. 

I keep coming back to the idea that meals should be fun. I suppose that’s my biggest goal as a chef and a restaurateur. And it all started with my grandmother’s chilli jam — stirred up in a Bangkok kitchen, hoarded in a student fridge, and now, threaded through nahm’s menu ever since I started here in 2018. The flavour might not be obvious, because it’s a foundation element, but it’s there, layering complexity into a salad dressing, soup or stir-fry. That’s my heritage, my authenticity, and a testament to the taste of Thailand that’s followed me for decades, wherever I am in the world.

nahm remains open throughout COMO Metropolitan Bangkok's refurbishment. To make a reservation, please contact the concierge at COMO Metropolitan Bangkok.