Chef Nuit Regular talks sharing Northern Thai culture through food, taking care of others, and adapting to pandemic obstacles.
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Photo Credit: Michael Graydon & Nikole Herriott
Young Women in Business Toronto (YWiB) aims to provide our diverse community of young, self-identified women with genuine career advice, encouragement, and examples of local role models. That's why, for the next few months, we’ll be interviewing both career professionals and entrepreneurs our community can be inspired by and learn from.
Chef Nuit Regular, Executive Chef, Restauranteur, & Cookbook Author
Chef Nuit, you’re currently the Co-Owner of four popular Thai restaurants across Toronto, and a cookbook author! Tell us more about your story and what led you to become a chef.
I started cooking at a very young age. As the daughter, it was my role in the family to help out with the cooking and cook the meals for my family. I learned how to cook by cooking alongside my mother, but also going to the markets with her. I would watch the food vendors closely, to see what they were doing and how they were making their dishes.
I was actually a nurse back in Thailand, but I opened my first restaurant in the town of Pai in northern Thailand, called the Curry Shack, as a way to earn more income to help support my family. I would work during the day as a nurse, and at night at the restaurant.
When I moved to Canada in 2006, I had every intention of continuing my career as a nurse. But while I was studying English in order to pass my Registered Nurse exam here, my father-in-law approached me with an opportunity to open a Thai restaurant. I thought this was a good opportunity for me to earn some income while I continued my studies.
When I passed my Registered Exam, the restaurant (Sukhothai) was starting to do well and get more customers, and I had to make a decision on my career—nurse or chef? I thought back to the Curry Shack in Thailand—I knew how to cook, I knew how to manage a team, my husband Jeff and I worked great together as a team—and I wanted to recreate something here in Canada with Jeff. So I chose to become a chef full-time, and the rest is history!
Why did you choose Toronto as a place to start your career and then continue to scale up your businesses?
I decided to move to Toronto because I already knew some English. So, it was easier for me to move to Canada with my husband, improve my English here and find a job rather than for Jeff to stay in Thailand and learn Thai in order to be able to get a job there.
Toronto has a great dining scene and the people are always curious and excited to try new things. While many Toronto diners may not have been very familiar with northern Thai dishes when I first moved to Canada and opened Sukhothai, they were willing to try my dishes and fell in love with them. And now many of these dishes—like Khao Soi and Pad Gra Prow—are some of most popular dishes at my restaurants and can be found on many Thai menus across the city.
How do your personal values show up in your work and brand(s)?
I was taught from a young age to always strive to be and do my very best, so I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I approach my work and business with great passion, care, and attention to detail. I know I serve great food at my restaurants, but I’m always thinking, “How can I make this better?” How can I improve the texture and flavours? How can I make the dining experience for my guests even better?
I also value the importance of taking care of others. This stems from how I was raised and also my background as a nurse—I’ve always been taking care of others. Now, I take care of my guests by giving them a memorable dining experience and bringing them joy and happiness through my cooking. I’m able to employ my incredible team so that they’re able to support their families. My restaurant team is my extended family. It’s important to me to look after everyone and treat everyone with kindness and generosity.
What would you say now to a younger version of yourself?
I would say to her to strive to do your best and to always stay positive. There may be hard days. There may be dark days. But as long as you always strive to do your very best, that there is the possibility that things will be better and that each day you’re becoming a better version of yourself — then everything will always work out!
Who is your biggest source of inspiration?
My mom is my biggest source of inspiration. I learned to cook from my mom and a lot of my recipes I learned from her, and they’ve been passed down for generations. There’s a lot of tradition and history steeped in many of my traditional Thai recipes. But, I’ve also made my own mark in these recipes over the years, based on my own tastes and the ingredients available to me here in Canada. A lot of my recipes and ideas stem from the very foods that I grew up eating and loving in northern Thailand.
I want to be able to preserve my culture and traditions through these recipes and be a vehicle to transfer my knowledge to the next generation.
Beyond the recipes and cooking, my mom taught me a lot of the skills and values that have helped shape me as a person over the years. Through the example of how she lived her own life, she taught me how to become a strong person: her strong work ethic, working hard to improve life in the face of obstacles, and helping others even when she was facing her own hardships. These are all values that have shaped who I am today, how I treat others in my life, and how I conduct my business.
What is your advice for other local women, especially women of colour, who are considering a career in the restaurant industry and/or would like to become a chef?
The beautiful thing about Toronto is that there is so much opportunity here. Torontonians are very open to learning about different cultures and broadening their perspectives and knowledge of other cuisines. We have such a diverse community here, and I love being able to have access to so many great cuisines from around the world in one city. So, take those culinary traditions from your home and bring that experience to the Toronto dining scene. Open the eyes and taste buds of Toronto diners to something new and different and exciting. More importantly, stay true to who you are—don’t compromise on your own traditions and your cuisine.
I remember when I first opened Sukhothai, I got a call from a customer telling me I didn’t know how to cook Thai food because I didn’t use ketchup in my Pad Thai! I was shocked because we never use ketchup in Pad Thai in Thailand—this is very much a North American adaptation to make the dish sweeter and add colour. In Thailand, the traditional way to make Pad Thai is with a tamarind-palm sugar sauce. I remember the customer telling me he wouldn’t come back again unless I made my Pad Thai with ketchup. Although we weren’t making a lot of money at that time, I didn’t compromise the way I cooked my food. I believed in my cooking. I knew I had a great product. I didn’t want to compromise the traditional way of cooking Pad Thai—the way I grew up cooking and eating this dish. I’m glad I didn’t compromise. Slowly, the Torontonians came to appreciate and embrace my traditional way of cooking and my pad Thai is now my best-selling item at my restaurants.
Don’t be afraid to preserve and celebrate your culture and your traditions in your food—the audience will appreciate and embrace the experience that you’re willing to share with them.
What has your experience been like as a restaurateur during the COVID-19 pandemic?
It’s been very tough. It’s something that none of us were prepared for, and there is so much uncertainty surrounding the virus. As a restaurateur, there are so many things to worry about.
First and foremost, I’m worried about the health and safety of my team. When we shut down our restaurants back in March during the lockdown, we decided to keep our doors closed for longer than necessary. Although the government said that restaurants said we could reopen for takeout and delivery, I was still worried for the health and safety of my team and my guests. Government officials and health experts were telling everyone to stay at home, and we wanted to do our part to help curb the virus and protect our staff and community. At the same time, I had a team of staff who were studying and analyzing the Covid numbers on a daily basis to see when it would be safe to reopen again. We didn’t reopen PAI until the end of April.
It’s also forced me to be creative and think outside the box in terms of business models during this time. PAI was already doing takeout and delivery before the pandemic, so the team there was prepared to transition fully to takeout and delivery. But Kiin was a different story. The food I serve at Kiin is very intricate and labour-intensive with beautiful presentation. I didn’t think it would travel well for takeout. So instead, I opened my By Chef Nuit Pop-up concept in the Kiin space that served comfort food with a Thai twist. It was comfort food that diners were looking for during the pandemic, but with the excitement of incorporating Thai flavours—like Pad Gra Prow Burger and Massaman Beef Sandwich.
I also noticed that since the pandemic, people were cooking more at home. So I created some meal kits and also sold Thai produce and pantry staples that we use in our restaurants available for sale through our online marketplace.
What excites you about the future?
We’ve been receiving a lot of love and support from our customers, so I have a lot of hope for the future when we turn the corner of this virus. Our guests have been asking us how they can support us during these challenging times. They were excited to come back when we reopened for indoor dining in the summer, and we look forward to when we can reopen for dine-in again when it is safe to do so.
I’ve just opened our second PAI location at Yonge & Eglinton, which is such a vibrant, energetic neighbourhood, so I am really excited about that. I have also introduced some new items on the PAI menu. And I’m looking to create special private dining experiences through my By Chef Nuit catering and events company in the near future.
I also just released my new cookbook, Kiin. It’s been so wonderful to see people get excited about cooking Thai food at home, and seeing their photos of the dishes they’ve cooked from the book. I’m thrilled to see so much interest in Thai cuisine right now, and I hope to continue to share my passion for cooking Thai cuisine with others— whether its with more virtual cooking demos or creating new meal kits to make the process of cooking Thai food at home easier for busy families.
Connect with Chef Nuit: Instagram
Chef Nuit Regular is the Executive Chef and Co-Owner of PAI, Kiin, By Chef Nuit, Sabai Sabai, and Sukhothai. The first Thai Select Ambassador for Canada, Chef Nuit has been recognized by the government of Thailand for the authenticity of her Thai cooking and was awarded the prestigious Thai Select Premium designation for her restaurants. Chef Nuit was a guest judge on Masterchef Canada and currently serves as a judge on Food Network Canada’s Wall of Chefs. She is also the author of Kiin: Recipes and Stories from Northern Thailand.