On an Indian summer’s evening in September 2021, I set off for dinner at the south London home of chef John Chantarasak and his wife Desiree West. I’d not met them before, but I was aware of the thrum of excitement surrounding AngloThai – a restaurant concept for which they were seeking a site, and which wrapped Chantarasak’s dual heritage into a breathtakingly original food offering.
We were a small group of journalists around the couple’s kitchen table and the night was fittingly hot: perfectly clammy conditions for the likes of Chiang Mai curry with heritage grain noodles and Orkney scallop with sunflower seed satay. It felt like we were on holiday – and in a sense, I was. This was my first outing after having a second baby. I remember feeling giddy with the two-handed freedom to eat som tam salad with radish and holy basil and drink beautiful low-intervention wines poured by West – who was herself pregnant.
Ever since, I have anticipated AngloThai’s bricks-and-mortar restaurant more hotly than a bird’s eye chilli. And now it is here, a light-flooded room on Seymour Place – a sleepy, hinge-like street between the West End and Bayswater.
In just over three years, the Chantarasaks have birthed two kids as well as a restaurant. On the day I visit – a Thursday lunchtime in early March – West is looking after the children, Rufus and Aubretia, after whom she has named two wines made in collaboration with Austrian producer Nibiru. Both are aromatic blends from the Kamptal region which dance effortlessly with her husband’s dishes – such as a lemongrass soup with black cardamom oil which kicks things off spectacularly, coating every corner of my mouth with umami and anticipation.
I had the five-course vegetarian lunch menu, reasonably priced at £55 a pop, with two supplementary dishes – because who could resist a celeriac, Wiltshire truffle and poppy seed cracker? Or a citrus, lemongrass and pine sorbet, for that matter? ‘I don’t want to be a restaurant that’s known for anything,’ Chantarasak tells me on the subject of signature dishes, but in that cracker, I spotted a lotus-shaped motif from the 2021 dinner – this time filled with pureed celeriac, then dotted with elderflower gel. Designed to be loaded up, it’s accompanied by a little bowl of coconut cream and mushrooms crowned with black truffle. Dishes like this are not made without some fuss and considerable technique, but Chantarasak’s bells and whistles are never without wholesome comfort.
It isn’t unusual for tasting menus to be vague to the point of coy about what you’re actually going to eat. AngloThai is no exception, but rather than titchy portions of ingredients in unidentifiable forms, everything that arrives is abundant – like the ‘wok fired long aubergine, holy basil & soy cured yolk’. This unprecedentedly generous portion came with a bowl of nutty, naked oats in place of rice – and possibly the salad of my life: cabbage, Castelfranco, Jerusalem artichokes (some roasted in chunks, others thin and fried), coriander, mint, sliced kumquat and a dressing made with vegan fish sauce. AngloThai also takes meat-free dining seriously. In place of beef cheek, I had maitake mushroom with my makrut lime curry – a rusty, oily pool inspired by Malaysian rendang which arrives with a honey butter-laminated brioche. ‘The concept is curry and roti,’ I am told.
My lunch at AngloThai happened just as the season was about to change; kohlrabi and beetroot, Todoli citrus and forced rhubarb (poached and laced with vanilla, served white cardamom and coconut ice cream) were having their last hurrah before the influx of spring greenery. Among chefs, this first quarter of the year is known as the hungry gap, a time when produce and inspiration might run dry. Not the case for John Chantarasak, whose cooking is as vivid at the end of winter as it is during an Indian summer. AngloThai might have taken years to cook up, but it seems good things really do come to those who wait.
