Q&A With Michelin-Starred Chef John Chantarasak of AngloThai

A1: From as early as I can remember, I was always exposed to home cooking and where food came from. My mum brought my siblings and I up on nourishing meals that were freshly prepared each day, ranging from British classics like casseroles and stews, to more exotic things like curries and Cantonese food. I think via osmosis, food became an important part of my upbringing from those early food memories. We didn’t eat out except for when we went to Thailand to visit family, in those instances, we went to food markets, street stalls and restaurants. Eating is just a way of life out in Thailand, and I really connected with that. I never imagined becoming a chef, but after an early career in music and studying economics at university, I retrained at Le Cordon Bleu in Bangkok in my late 20s. That led to working in Thai restaurants in Bangkok and then onto cooking Thai food in the UK. The journey was quite organic once I got the bug for professional kitchens.

A2: Both of those experiences were my first introductions to professional kitchens and hospitality, so of course, these were very formative periods in my life that shape my career to this day. Le Cordon Bleu was great because I learnt basic kitchen skills, but perhaps more importantly, I was shown the importance of organisation, hygiene and self-management. Of course, the cooking side of culinary school was great in terms of knife skills, basics like stock making, animal butchery, fish preparation and sauce making, but I do think the outside of cooking knowledge was something very key for me to understand. Nahm was amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen before. A massive brigade working to an extremely high standard for very busy services. I was introduced to live fire and wok cooking here, as well as managing sections, some of which involved hand pounding curry paste to order, as well as cooking out your sauces and managing your protein and garnish cooking. It was full on, but a great experience.

A3: That’s exactly right. The food at AngloThai today is very much a fusion of the two sides of my heritage. We cook dishes that are very heavily inspired by the cuisine of Thailand, some more literal than others, but we aim to use as much produce sourced from the British Isles as possible to create the same flavours of Thailand. Sometimes that introduces new ingredients and flavours to Thai cuisine that I’ve not experienced before, but I always aim to keep the seasonings true to how I was taught in Thailand, with a balance of spicy, sweet, sour and salty.

Q4: What was your creative process like, coming up with this exclusive menu for Shake Shack?

A4: I was keen to explore a curry paste fried patty, implementing the same technique as mustard frying that I’ve seen across the US. That was a starting block to build from, and after that, I leaned into a few items we had made for our menu at AngloThai to give guests a true flavour of what we do at the restaurant. The beef tongue was something we spent time developing for our menu. We brine the tongue for 28 days, then slow cook it with aromatics for 24 hours. The end product is a perfectly pink interior that has no offal-gamey flavour and is super tender. I thought this would be a fun thing to add to the burger to talk about the ethos of whole animal cooking that we work with at AngloThai.

A6:  Exactly that, a meeting of the two styles. Which I think will be the case as we’re using the Shake Shack potato bun, patty and fries, so at its core, the AngloThai Burger is going to have the same foundation as every Shake Shack burger. Hopefully, people will like the combination of all the super bold flavoured garnishes we have curated for this one.

A7:  This has to be the Laab Spiced Fries we created for our collaboration menu. I put the dish together for the team at AngloThai to try, and everyone agreed they were perfect from the first attempt! We dust the crinkle fries in our in-house laab spice blend of over fifteen dried chillies and spices, then drizzle them with an emulsion made from fermented yellow soybeans flavoured with ginger, fresh chilli and garlic, it’s sort of like a rich miso mayonnaise, then top with a sweet-sour condiment made from preserved wild garlic stems, fermented green chilli and coriander.

A9: Not especially. We didn’t eat lots of Thai food outside of travelling to Thailand, so that wasn’t something I grew up with regularly. I guess we were encouraged to eat plenty of vegetables as children, and I still, to this day, like to eat a variety of vegetables and fruits in my own diet and when cooking at AngloThai.