How London’s Most Famous Thai Restaurant Made Customers Addicted - Lukie Farrell, Speedboat

41:06And then you're not trying to come up with some beautiful dish that's your own je ne sais quoi. It's like, this is the best it can be. We're going to create this, but we're going to create all the systems underneath.

41:18Lukie Farrell:It's kind of so interesting. That's true, but also, at the same time, for me, they're all rock stars. know there's a way to to to run a kitchen holistically and and with this idea of a creative um being creative together and that that goes on to on the day-to-day stuff you know that dish is done yeah sure but then maintaining that and maintaining the standard throughout that it's the same thing it's not two different things yeah yeah yeah you know it it it if it works like that then it's a lot more harmonious in in a kitchen and also if you know if i'm if i'm obviously i love being in my restaurants i love being with my chefs and i love i love eating there and everything else but at the same point you know it does kind of thing we set something up and you organize it collaboratively with the chefs and then really um you know that head chef there or and the team with him needs to run it on a day-to-day basis um you know we all work together maybe my job's done but there's their job isn't this this this is all part of that same process um yeah and when you said with the the bigger picture asian sort of or thai philosophy i should say what are some of the the principles that you take from the the you know sort of imbuing and immersing yourself in the culture here that you think are applicable in in business i know you briefly talked about like the combined collaborative creativity but any other sort of more nuanced ones i just think this idea of like, you get this warm and fuzzy feeling when you help other people and you don't expect anything in return, right?

42:57Lukie Farrell:You really fill up your cup if you help other people. You sleep better at night if you've done something for someone. You go to a bookshop and you buy a book for someone's birthday and you say, oh, they'll really love this. That feeling is a lovely thing to have. And when you give it to them, that thing is that, what a lovely thing to have. If you do something to help someone in the kitchen, and you don't expect anything in return or say, I did that for you, you do this for me. This warm, fuzzy feeling builds up. To serve other people, to be in this industry, is the most noble, rewarding and wholesome thing you can do in life.

43:35Lukie Farrell:When things get really tough, you think, what I've been doing today is serving and helping other people. That's what I've been doing today. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Isn't that something worthwhile? even if it all goes to shit, you've still got that. And I think if people think more like that in a kitchen and helping each other in that way, then that feeling in itself, it gets bigger and more bright and beautiful. And that really shines through. I know it's a bit esoteric, a bit airy-fairy, but I've seen happier kitchens when people are helping each other. and not have this kind of bravado and bullying and arrogance.

44:22Lukie Farrell:I've just seen a happier place to be, and I've seen better food come out of those kitchens. Have you been in bully-ish environments? Yeah, a bit, but I was doing the bullying, so it's all right. No.

44:36Lukie Farrell:I think that we all had a bit of that coming up, and I didn't like it. I don't like things like that. Some of the most sensitive and delicate people have the best ideas, and if you knock that it's often by a real thicker or a real thug and that annoys me yeah yeah yeah how do you help people who are introverted come pull ideas or create spaces for ideas to blossom and flourish well i think it goes again to this point of this sort of idea of working together creatively you know when someone pipes up and says look i've got a really good good ideal technique for doing that particular thing and someone and everyone's there going you know come on let's listen to this like you know let's let's here it might not be correct but not to slam him down afterwards but you know that sort of environment should should be nurtured you know at the same point there might be someone who's a big head and he's talking too much and at the same point he needs to learn or he she needs to learn when to be quiet um you know it works together this this idea of a harmony in a kitchen is very important to me it's the harmony within thai cuisine the hot sour salty sweet bitter it all has to be balanced now the entire thing in a kitchen in a restaurant is a balancing act you know everything um and it can be very very very fragile um and sometimes that that means that me not being around it's basically it's a better thing yeah yeah yeah and also um if you let people get on you know work together and um you know they you get a lot more out of them i really feel feel that um and on to the next restaurant those ones that are really shined and shown you know that they can work in that particular way um we'll be on it for the next one you know the ones want to do their own thing fine go and do your own thing that's not to say that that's that's a bad thing i i do feel that there is there is space for that sort of restaurant this sort of singular you know chef identity and and that person's food and you know a lot of restaurants like that fantastic restaurants are like that but god are they stressful god are they tough you know god are they really really um high pressure I wonder how long that goes on for.

46:41You know, I wonder how, you know, I wonder what point you go,

46:47Lukie Farrell:well, is this worth it? You know, how high do you want to go, you know, before something snaps? I think we like that as well as diners and as foodies, you know, this idea of this sort of rock star and this sort of... It's romantic. Cobain-type vibe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gone too soon and it can happen, you know. it's it's it's yeah we've romanticized it but i think it's got there's almost a vacuous hole at the bottom of it in some respects what's the um the like what have been some of the really hard days in your life for for for these are just worrying about if it's all going to come together you know is it going to work do you you know you you've got lots of people there in a way relying on you that you they're helping you you're helping them you know you have a responsibility and all I've been saying to you now about people coming together and working together is lovely but at the start it wasn't like that you know I wanted to do this to prove a point um and um that that can that can be that can be dangerous you know that can be dangerous oh it can be very stressful you know do you have the strength of character are you what is what you're doing correct is it worthwhile is it is it going to work um and that uh you know there's some rocky days at the start opening a restaurant it is it's going to be like that right yeah yeah um it does get easier um for sure um and then you get really great people around you that that you know that can bring what what they're good at to the table and then it really starts to get yeah yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

48:27It gets that charging energy.

48:28Lukie Farrell:Yeah, it gets that charging energy. It starts pulsating. Yes. Wonderful. Yes. Talk to me about, do British people drink beer the right way? Right. Just talk to me. No, basically. Beer with ice, way better. I've been doing it since... So talk me through the Thai principles behind that. It's crispier, it's nicer, it's more gentle, it's diluted, it's just nicer, it's more convivial because you feel like you're getting more because you're with your mates and you're kind of pouring it in. how they serve the beer over here so you get you get your beer and then you'll get a no but as in like it's a big what we did earlier it could be a beer tower it can be a bottle of beer like a like a big uh leo or sing or chang if you're that way inclined chang over um so and then you have two glasses with ice yeah and um then you just you just just pour it like that and also if you order one beer at a time then they're kept kept cool in the fridge you know because they're quite big size you don't have two on the table because once you finish one the other one will be too warm right yeah you've got to keep and also you've got to drink fast as well with ice you don't want the ice to dilute too much and like you know to dilute the beer quickly so you've got to you've got to drink it when um when it's there and also they say in thailand when i first got with max and he went and got one i was like what the fuck is that it's a lukewarm assahi i remember remember in london i was asking if they want beer with ice what literally they're just a horror well yeah because if you were to do that in london that's an example of where the maia goes too far so most alternative yeah fuck off acceptable this ain't acceptable mate if you go to a load of imagine going to but we but we do cheat we've managed to get it in there because what we've done is make they call it in thailand jelly beer right and what jelly beer is you get those bottles and you put them in this like like this ice slushy thing that like twists around and it shakes the bottles it stops them freezing keeps them kind of moving and you take them out and you tap them on the end and the top and then with a bottle and on the side and they immediately like crystallize into this kind of like beer slushy or beer woon.

50:21Lukie Farrell:And then when you pour that, it comes out like a beer slushy. It's amazing. And that is then perfectly iced and wonderful. So that, we've put that in the restaurant, but by blending ice with beer and ginger and some citrus as well. So people are drinking beer with ice. It's a speedboat bar. They just don't know it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing is also in the beer towers, in the central column within this huge beer tower, there's ice running all the way up the middle. so yeah it isn't mixed with your beer but it is keeping it cool that's really clever it's like that that very delicate way of how do we make this weird but not too weird are there any other like darling examples of that in in the work you do i mean this can be plaza it can be it doesn't have to be speedboat um i think this idea of eating like very sweet things with salty things is can be quite quite a big thing for people to get their head around like we talked about that the mango with like a sweet chili sauce like like fermented fish and and shrimp paste and stuff like that most people be like well that's just that's too much man it was just fruit while you're mixing it with like fermented shrimp paste like whatever um the other thing would be um oh we've got us for example as a strawberry salad at borough market and what that is that thais would use something very very sweet and then pair it with something incredibly sour like an acid marinade or green mangoes or a dressing that was very cut with lime or vinegar and then put something very sweet with it.

51:47Lukie Farrell:So we've done that with a strawberry and then we put on something to add texture, which would be this little crispy jasmine fish. And if you gave someone a plate of those jasmine fish on their own, it just wouldn't eat them. It'd be like fishy, salty, like they'd just be like, I don't like that. Like it's too funky. It's like no good. But if you put them with these other things together, it becomes more than more than what it is if you drank a little bit of fish sauce you'd be like oh that's fish sauce but when you put it with other things it melds into the background actually brings things together into a flavor that has this umami back note to it right just that that's that's its job is to create umami or to bring umami into the dish um and that's that's an example of of of that that sort of dish on its own you wouldn't have um strawberries with you you know, sour fermented fish sauce or fish sauce or anything like that.

52:38Lukie Farrell:And you certainly wouldn't have crispy little tiny jasmine fish. You put it all together, it then becomes a salad, and then it becomes something that people go, yeah, that's really nice, they get it. Yeah. But yeah, it's a gamble, yeah. The bit almost of that's a summation of, again, back to that collaborative creativity, that works on the dish and putting these very different things together, but under the umbrella of sweet and salty, sorry, sweet and, did you say sweet and sour? Sweet and sour, sweet and salty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All different things competing together. And you need them all together in Thai food.

53:11Lukie Farrell:I mean, there's like fermented beef that we've got on at Plaza Borough, which is a dish that we had in the middle of nowhere on a highway, somewhere in Pangna. And the chef there actually took some of the chilies that were in it, it was a specific chili. He was like, oh yeah, they're growing here. He pulled them from the side of the restaurant, brought them in, which I then took back to my greenhouse. Well, they magically appeared in my greenhouse and which we were growing there. It was a fermented beef. We're actually still not sure if it was even pork, believe it or not. It was pork's beef is different here.

53:44Lukie Farrell:It's like a much paler colour. And that's fermented with rice and garlic and chilli left behind a fridge somewhere or left out in the heat to sort of pop up on this bag. And it has this kind of like, it turns from like beef to like that hyper-aged kind of flavour, of a cheesy, blue cheese, funky kind of like almost sour type type type type type flavor. And that stir fried with garlic. So it looks like a stir fry. It looks like something that's kind of like crispy, like nice. Then you get that kind of like blue cheese tang saltiness into it, the garlic. That's another dish that we didn't wasn't sure was going to work.

54:21Lukie Farrell:But that dish just became like like just something that everyone loved. and also really wicked with beers. Salty, like funky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once you get those flavours, like you kind of have a craving for them. Yeah, I think it's some of the best beer, it's the best restaurants have with beer. Well, there's a whole realm of Thai food that is called like kap klem or like food to have with drinks, basically. So they'd be very salty, very sour, very like funky. They almost like, it can be a little bit matcha. Or try that bit, you know, it's raw, it's raw this or it's a bit of this. dip it in that really punchy chili sauce whatever try that or something that's really sour and fermented like it's sort of like this thing oh and then you take like a sip like oh wow yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's the dance the symphony talk to me about your dad's butterflies like what does his obsession with butterflies like what did butterflies teach us about life well he's interested in making food plants for butterflies to feed on i'm interested in making food plants for humans to feed on in restaurants um why does your dad love butterflies so much or what's the He just was, since he was small, he saw a caterpillar pupate and then a butterfly hatch out.

55:32Lukie Farrell:And he was just hooked. And he loves the, you know, wildlife and nature and loves traveling. And he also loves food just like me. A lot of my travels when I was small was to places like Penang and Malaysia and, you know, the Cameron Highlands and all these wonderful magical places that had an abundance of butterflies. and wild places that were not going on a beach holiday or something like that. It was like an adventure, going in the jungle, going to the eye of the river or going to a waterfall or finding this butterfly or beautiful food plant or orchid or whatever it might be. And that's really stuck with me and what I'm interested in doing.

56:13Lukie Farrell:He made the greenhouses there at Rye Water for his butterflies and I snuck in there with my Thai food and suddenly it's sort of overtaken the place really. So now there are more greenhouses. He loves greenhouses, which is great. So we built more greenhouses for more Thai produce and more butterflies. We've actually got papayas in the greenhouse that are pollinated by the butterflies. So we introduced this butterfly species and they pollinated the green papayas. And suddenly the tree was just like a bunch of grapes, papayas coming all the way down it. Papayas are what,£9,£10 a kilo in London? Yeah.

56:46Lukie Farrell:You don't have to import them from Thailand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's amazing. I think Robin Gill told me this food is culture culture is food what are the things that most British people misunderstand about Thai food and how does that inform our misunderstanding of sort of Thai culture in a broader perspective we can use food as the lens to kind of explore other things perhaps come a bit closer sure I mean I think what there's various different ways to say this about culture is food and food is culture and all this sort of thing. Closer you can get to a culture without learning the language is eating the food on the table.

57:25Lukie Farrell:And that's really been my experience in Thailand. How I've...

57:33Lukie Farrell:I just fell in love with Thai food and by definition or similarly, you know, the culture and the people and, you know, the Buddhism and everything else that's in this incredible country. It really is something that people love to share in Thailand is their food. They're always talking about food. When they're eating breakfast, they're talking about lunch and they're eating lunch. They're discussing where to go for dinner and all the meals in between. people meet in Thailand just to have a chat they just go do you want to go and eat noodles the greeting in Thailand is like in Kauriang have you eaten yet you know that is have you eaten rice if you've eaten rice are you okay you know that that's the definition of of of what um Thailand is if you've eaten rice you're happy and you're contented um so yeah it's it's so it is Thailand food cuisine cultures all interwoven definitely and like we said you know if you learn the language a bit that helps too and it even opens up even more you can really get in under the skin see because you you we were walking around earlier and you were speaking thai i was like this is fucking mad and it's quite as you were saying quite a perplexing language they have multiple they have one word it's kind of tonal language isn't it it is a tonal language but i think that thai people are very forgiving my thai isn't perfect by any by any any straight stretch but um if if you know a few words um it it suddenly changes but when you said as soon as you yeah it suddenly changes and almost unlocks a whole new world or get under the skin into the underbelly of the country when you started learning languages what weird doors did that open for you i just think that they understand that you can eat thai food right can you eat thai food is like something that you often hear right and that means you know can you take the chili you know can you eat things that aren't check that yeah yeah that aren't fillet steak and um and uh you know um things that that are easy to eat for a western audience for westerners the food is very different to what you're used to back home that's for sure and that's why it's so exciting and and uh magical i i think it's a daily thing that i'm just amazed by what's what's available here and always find something new something exciting or something something that you were perhaps familiar with as a Thai dish and then you find out where it really comes from what you know um its history that's another important part of the what are some of the Thai dishes that we would have in the UK and like what's the history behind them well I think one of the dishes that we were talking about um for speedboat bar was um this dish of a roast duck uh curry or red curry yeah and that really is a sort of a mixture of of cultures coming together.

1:00:25Lukie Farrell:There's been different waves of migration from China into Thailand. And the Thai people are very proud and rightly so of their cuisine. And to accentuate these wonderful techniques and ingredients from foreign lands into the Thai repertoire of cuisine in this kind of idea of it being hot, sour, salty, sweet, bitter, astringent, all of these things coming together. So if you've got a wonderful Chinese roast duck, why not put it with like a rich red curry and then put something to accent that kind of saltiness and richness of the duck with some acid-sour fruit like grapes or starfruit together. And that's an idea of what Thai food is through a very Thai lens.

1:01:06Lukie Farrell:It is a mixture of other cuisines, but it's very much Thai. Again, we were talking about it earlier, the almost bastardisation of Thai food in the UK and our perception of it being cheap. like what talks about the genesis of how because i've always asked this question like how the fuck did thai food get into british pubs like there was a pub where i used to live where i grew up proper old school boozer yeah landlords in there in the corner fucking stinks of smoke he's a big fat portland's fucker and he sounds like a perfect pub to me it was perfect like dimly lit carpets are perfect yeah uh guy but the other guy behind the bars moody as fuck but it's so moody it's endearing but they serve the most lip-smackingly delicious um Thai food and I was always thought like what so was that whether was that the migration of Thai foods like jump off point like what's the what's the crack with that I think when people go on holiday to Thailand you know and they they try Thai food they fall in love with it they love it it's an easy cuisine to love it's curry we like curry in the UK yeah yeah there's a lot of that um there's lots of like crispy things just purely is you know you learn that salty and sweet together is the ultimate combination you know mcdonald's chips with ketchup right those two things together makes the taste buds go zing just you just love those those combinations of of flavors the blt would be another example of what's a bit how's the blt salty and sweet we've got salty from the um um from the bacon you've got sweetness from the tomatoes you've got you know the crunchiness of the bread you got all that stuff coming through it's not just one thing it's not a pudding it's different um textures and um and flavors and things coming together and that's what is exciting and if you can have that in Thai food that's what it is it has to have those those different elements to it um that that just is something that you want to eat it's more exciting than something that would be rather bland and British even though there is things that aren't like that it's an easier thing to to appreciate through Thai food so the Thai food coming across to the UK would be people coming across to Thailand having a wonderful holiday here and perhaps falling in love perhaps you know that a couple maybe coming back to the UK someone might have owned a pub and their wife would be cooking in the kitchen and doing what she knows best Thai food and that fits very well with what we like to eat in the UK.

1:03:41Lukie Farrell:What could be more exciting than going to the pub and having some Thai food? I like the same way you go to the pub and then afterwards go to an Indian restaurant, right? Well, I think like the whole, so we've seen this with Chris Pizza. Yeah. I think take, everyone loves a fucking pub. Yeah. And often I think we're so bored of the modernised, you know, like from the big groups, the menus that are just, they all look the same. it's basically just going into another version of mcdonald's i feel like some of these indie pubs now like it's a real opportunity to bring in different types of food in again almost like with this renaissance because it's so hard to open a restaurant now it is and it's so and but there's so much great food pubs are struggling you know it basically how can you a lot of of interesting foods is a is the pub being the carrier for the exactly so we did so these Yeah.

1:04:31Lukie Farrell:I think that's something that you're going to see more and more of. There are, you know, different Thai pubs now in the UK. You know, there are pubs that have northern Thai food. There are pubs that have central Thai food. You know, there are these sort of neighbourhood pubs that have a standard Thai menu that you would find everywhere. Yeah, yeah. Chances are, on a pub menu, even if it's not, you know, all Thai food, there'll be a green curry. There'll be a spring roll platter, something like that, even though that's more Chinese than Thai. But anyway, there'll be these things with sweet chilli sauce, right?

1:04:59Lukie Farrell:You know, there'll be those things. It's part of what we like to eat in the UK, and I'm all for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there are standards of it. What you might get in a pub is certainly not what we're doing at Speedboat and Plaza. Yeah, of course. What I see in pubs and other places and lots of Thai restaurants in the UK is this sort of British Thai cuisine, much like you would have American Chinese or indeed Tex-Mex, something like that. Like American Italian. Exactly, yeah. That red sauce and those spaghetti bolognese and that stuff. Our idea of American food is of the lasagnas, the pizzas and all that sort of stuff.

1:05:40These were basically, someone told me, were inventions from the 1950s based on the Italians going over to the States. And we see like non-Israel recipes, this big, this old, you know, history.

1:05:53Lukie Farrell:Apparently, it's more of a, what's the word? Not like a consumerism invention, but it's not this, the whole history around it is kind of fictitious. Yeah, it's fictitious. And it's also, it's a restaurant version of a home cuisine. Yeah. Right, you know, it's this red sauce, it's these meatballs, it's spaghetti, it's that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that sort of food that, it's almost like a kind of a neon version or like a kind of, you know, an exaggerated version of the dishes that you would eat at home. something that would work in a restaurant. I see that with a lot of Thai food.

1:06:26Lukie Farrell:Thai food in restaurants is not how Thai people eat at home, for sure. That's another important point to make. Even if people come to Thailand, what they're eating is not Thai food. It might be Thai food for foreigners. You see, Thai people are very, very hospitable and they want to please. And they're going to give foreigners what they're used to with regards to Thai food that they've had back home. um so they might come to thailand and it might be too spicy or it might be too this or too that might be some awful in there green curry in in thailand has got chicken's feet and blood and a little bit of pea aubergines in it that's not the same in the uk where it'd be sweet corn chicken breast and whatever other vegetable they've got on the pass and a tin of coconut milk and a you know whatever pasteurized homogenized curry paste that is from a cupboard somewhere um you know that that's what you get in the UK and often what you get over here in various tourist destinations I'm pretty sure that there's lots of people who've been to Thailand and never actually had any real title well mate where you took us today so for you know people listening we were went down these where was the place the sausage and ham market Bangkok that was just a jumping off point yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well I mean I like a sausage and a bit of ham yeah like uh yeah you pulled me nicely but you go going down these back streets and you know like these small little places they look like nothing with laminated menus really boutique i don't know just just they've got this sort of brash wonderful energy about them i like the way that restaurants if they're popular here they can spill out onto the street you know more tables are set up yes the cooking is done on the street just put a few more towels or these charcoal stoves on the ground and then put the pots on top of them and they're kind of spilling out the side of the restaurant the the the shop house next door that it was perhaps a garage, they'll shut that up and then put tables in there.

1:08:15Lukie Farrell:And it'll just sort of get bigger organically, depending on how popular the food is and who's going there. It's very much a neighborhood element to these restaurants. People want to eat where they're familiar and they know the people. And that's something that you're not going to get in other countries. Yeah. In the UK for Thai food, that kind of feeling of this is our food, this is Thailand, and this is what we like to eat. in this particular area. Yeah. You might, one day, you might go to your neighbours and they've got a curry rice restaurant. The next day, you know, go to some auntie that you've known for years and she's making, you know, duck noodles or something like that.

1:08:52Lukie Farrell:Those duck noodles are so good. Yeah. With a vinegar like jalapenos. So, again, you're your own chef. You're at the table and you've got these flavours and you're adding it on. Do you like it more sour? Do you like it more sweet? Do you like it more chilli hot? Yeah. Do you want more fish sauce in it? Do you want it more salty? Yeah. So, you effectively, this is the sort of, the idea of Thai food is that you're part of this cooking process. If you go to a dinner party in Thailand, it's not some poor person slaving away in the kitchen and then coming out for some drinks and canapes, and then you all sit down.

1:09:23Lukie Farrell:If you go to a dinner party in Thailand, everyone comes and helps with the cooking. Everyone talks and gossips, and the food arrives on the table when it's ready, when everyone's finished all cooking together. It takes the pressure off, because Thai food is a lot more complex and complicated to do. You need lots of people. you know peeling garlic and prepping chilies and pounding pastes and pressing coconut milk you need all of that to happen yeah for it to come together it takes a team you know whether that it's in a restaurant and you've got a team of chefs or or someone's home and the neighbors and the guests and everyone else mucks in what's the um so say say someone was to come here and they wanted to to five spots to try genuinely authentic thai food but what would those top five places be maybe like some of the places we went today well i would say i mean obviously i've got a love and a fascination for sort of um the food of bangkok's chinatown of yawarat of of um they call it taijin or thai chinese food um so i go for noodles so like we went today to prachak roast duck noodles It's like this shop house that has these incredibly bouncy egg noodles and lovely lacquered roast duck, sliced duck with crispy roast pork, a wonton with prawns or with pork.

1:10:40Lukie Farrell:And then, yeah, these flavors on the table that you can add to make it just how you like it. You can have it dry or with a soup, depending on how you're feeling. That's something that is food all day. It's not for breakfast, not for lunch, not for dinner. It's for whenever, which is something I think is really great. another top spot or spots around town which you should definitely try is go to your neighborhood whatever cow gang and they're easy to spot because they'll be what's the cow gang cow gang is like curry rice or ram cow gang curry rice restaurant yeah so what you'll they're easy to spot because what you'll see is this big glass box display case yeah yeah keep going and and uh with in in that you'll see all of these trays of curries um lined up and you just go and they give you your your rice and then they would put the curries on top or if you're eating with a few friends you'd have your rice each and the dishes would go in the middle of the table for you to help yourself so there might be things like crispy roast pork there might be um you know clams with oyster sauce and and thai basil um there might be a green curry um of chicken uh with like blood and chicken's feet and everything else all the good stuff in there um there might be a soup with bitter melon and pork stuffed into the inside of the melon there in a light broth.

1:11:55Lukie Farrell:All of these things, you get to try loads of different Thai food. And also the cuisine of what people like to eat in that area, they're very much neighborhood restaurants, those things. You'll often see the plastic bags, like the goldfish bags, tied up for people to take home. They just put them on the handlebars of their bike and just drive off. It is actually a rather derogatory little bit of, they're called or like a plastic bag housewife. This is someone that's not cooking for home. It's like the equivalent of like microwave meals or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But rather than, you know, it coming in this little sealed packet with a lid that you prick on top, this curry's made daily, but they're wrapped up in a bag and you take them home and you steam your own rice and then you have these on top.

1:12:39It's like a way better version of Charlie Biggins. Exactly.

1:12:42Lukie Farrell:Way better, way more local, way more interesting. And so I would go to a cow gang There's lots of these dishes in Bangkok's Chinatown that have Chinese roots, but very much Thai flavors. So you'll get things like braised pork hocks, braised duck, braised goose, all in these kind of woody spices like cinnamon, cassia, clove, coriander root, garlic, all of this in this kind of soy sauce-based broth. And then they'll be paired with a very sharp acid dipping sauce, you know chili garlic fish fish sauce um lime juice or or white vinegar or some sort of some sort of vinegar so that's the again that kind of mixture of of cuisines coming together any other like really good spots so for that particular names yeah specific names if you can or areas maybe well um i would say uh may on um cow gang original may on which is this um curry again a cow gang and the trays just spill out the front of the restaurant which is just lovely to see their speciality there is um this uh roast pork and they have it dry and salty or with in case in this kind of like sweet tamarind sauce you get one plate of each and then mix it with a few curries um they do a green curry there which is like a fish paste or a fish ball with uh with winter winter melon it's very light kind of milky um very light green um sauce with that or curry sauce, which is just light and, you know, would be a perfect example of a Chinatown-style green curry.

1:14:24Lukie Farrell:For the roast duck, sorry, for the roast goose or duck that I mentioned, there's another restaurant, I'm just trying to remember the name. There's one coming down to the harbor duck, which is good. But the one in Chinatown is, oh, God, I've got to remember the name. What else should you eat there? I'm a real fan of these thick, gloopy kind of braises. There's a particular ingredient in Chinatown called fish moor. It's the buoyancy sacks of various different fish, which are prepared and then fried until they turn into these almost like... Buoyancy sacks. Yeah, the things that keep the fish floating like that or level, like in a submarine.

1:15:05The fish have those?

1:15:06Lukie Farrell:Yeah, they have those, yeah. Fuck you, no. What is it? It's like two sort of sacks that fill up with air to keep them on the same level. so those how do they get air though? sorry this is really the gills yeah but if they're underwater yeah but you know the gills have like the air things in them right so they yeah yeah yeah that's so interesting yeah yeah yeah so those ballast basically yeah so those that are fried and they end up in these different shapes they can be incredibly expensive from large fish and also they can be these little kind of crispy morsels and in a soup with this sort of thick thickened soy-based namdeng or red sauce, they call that, with quail's eggs and often like chunks of pork blood and maybe a bit of crab meat and then cut with this sharp Chinese vinegar, jik chow, makes this kind of, I don't know, kind of rich, gloopy, very Chinese but Thai at the same time dish, which I think is just the most wonderful thing.

1:16:11Lukie Farrell:There's something about these fish more that because they're crispy and they're golden and they expand when you put them in these stocks and sauces, they suck up all of this wonderful flavour. It's like, because they're gold, it symbolises like wealth and abundance because they swell up as well. Yeah. That symbolises growing wealth, growing abundance. Oh, really? It's a very auspicious dish. Interesting. That's something I particularly like. Also, I really like these fruits and sour fruits like green mango, some little pickled Chinese gooseberries, and even things like strawberries and things like that mixed with sweet fish sauce or namplawan.

1:16:54Lukie Farrell:So this is palm sugar fish sauce, sometimes it can be shrimp paste, can be fermented fish sauce, can be dried prawns, can be shallots, can be all of these things mixed together to make this very kind of sticky jam sweet sauce that's paired with these sour fruits um makes like a dish that you can't really classify as a course it's it's a snack it's some fits somewhere in between it's like a meal that isn't a meal essentially it's part of your days eating in in thailand which is something that is um is is very thai you know it's always always be snacking always be snacking i mean i can always be stuff in my boat mate it's always more my my pattern on that one um but no i loved yeah just it's just all it's just like a fucking orgy for your taste buds all the different types of flavors and textures it really is like a roller coaster it should be a roller coaster yeah if you go look you go down the arrow you've got all this neon you've got these wonderful walks flaming down the side of the road you've got these incredibly punchy like dangerous flavors almost with the chili and the heat and the sourness and you know the kind of the really kind of lip twisting puckering flavors it's like you know it's like doing a couple of rounds in the ring you know muay thai style yeah yeah yeah it's really going to hit you with this kind of sucker punch of flavors that's it um and then it gets weird you know you get into all the awful stuff which uh can't all be fillet steak right yeah yeah yeah i think that's something that i particularly enjoy here people's delight in eating um the obscure cuts and the awful goes into that more um so you've got things like well we talked about you know duck's blood and things like that which is something that i particularly like that's the best blood in my opinion um and it's sort of wobbly and you know gently steamed and congealed just stir-fried with with some spring onions, garlic, black pepper, just incredible.

1:18:49I like to eat things like these braises,

1:18:54Lukie Farrell:which can contain every bit of the pig, basically, inside. That's good fun. There's some seafood there, like raw crabs and raw mantis shrimp, which are challenging. They're often soused or sunk into various salty brines or liquids or soy sauces or vinegars or braised for an incredibly long time. They're good fun. River fish as well, stuffed with... What's the difference between river fish and sea fish? So river fish would be from... Obviously from a river. Or from brackish waters, as opposed to sea fish. It depends which region you are in Thailand. But they, like, notoriously, most people believe that's a bit bookie over eating river fish.

1:19:43Lukie Farrell:Well, it's a lot. They're used in different ways. So river fish in the north and northeast are often made into plough roush, which is a fermented fish source. It's used as a seasoning, as a condiment, as a part of it. The identity out there is... Do the fish look different? Yeah, they look... They're often without scales. They're kind of in a different habitat, for sure. As opposed to you've got the sea fish, you all know what they are. Thailand's famous for the seafood and... Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that kind of thing. you go to a holiday in Phuket, that's what you're eating, right? But the river fish, like the ugly...

1:20:12Yeah, but that's where all the fun stuff is.

1:20:15Lukie Farrell:Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you get into fermented fish sauce and plara, it changes. You can actually eat a river fish or most people like that. Yeah, you can eat a river fish, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they often come with lots of, like, kind of herbs to sort of dull down or mitigate those kind of pondy flavours that might... That's what I'm trying to understand. So is a river fish more... Does it taste a bit like a swamp? It can do. It can taste a bit like licking a bucket. Fucking hell. I can imagine these butters little creatures. Yeah, but it can also be very delicious. They have a different texture.

1:20:50Lukie Farrell:There are some catfish in the north that would give grouper or bass a run for its money. Really? That's wild. There's river crabs up there, and you catch the river crabs by getting a chopstick and putting a piece of meat on it, skewering it into these pools coming down, these waterfalls and little kind of pools that they'd be coming down and they all start clambering around this piece of meat and then you just take the whole lot up and you take them home and steam them and if they're really small you can pound them to crack all the claws and then pass them through a sieve and you get this kind of set crab custard afterwards which is something quite nice don't have to worry about any of the claws or cracking into them you just bash them up before crab custard yeah that sounds amazing amazing and also you can with that crab you'd like head fat or tomale um you can um make you can put it in as a seasoning to make things like like you know noodles and things like that what's the fucking most like off-piece thing you've eaten out here i've eaten some pretty funky stuff up in up in northeast thailand i've eaten um the synovial fluid from a um like a synovial me synovial it's like the bits in between your knuckles right it's all that stuff yeah go on yeah and um it's in like it's in like the ball joint in the leg or the shank and that's used as the dipping sauce bowl and with that fluid you mix in fish sauce, dried chilli, garlic and use that as a dipping bowl if you like for all the other raw bits of meat and liver and all of that good.

1:22:14Lukie Farrell:So you've got to wash it down with plenty of pretty rough rice wine just to make sure you don't get anything nasty. Oh really, that's amazing. And you've got bile and you've got various different stomachs of the cow and all that stuff But it's not all about that type of food. That food is quite macho. It always gets into this conversation about what's the weirdest thing you've eaten, what's the funkiest stuff you've had. But yeah, it's part of Thailand. Lots of people in Bangkok wouldn't go near that stuff up in the northeast. They're just completely not in their diet whatsoever. Lots of people in southern Thailand wouldn't eat things that the north would really relish.

1:22:52Lukie Farrell:Geng Som is a fine example of that. You know, there's different versions in the south as there is to central and everywhere else. Some people in the south prefer the central version, which is more orange and less sort of chilly hot and astringent than the southern one. But, yeah, there's fierce regionality in Thai cuisine. I've got a few people joining us. what's the what's what do most british people get wrong about thai culture the way they think and view the world versus say brits i think thai people know how amazing their food is and i think they want to share it with people yeah i really i really feel that and you can see thai food is global you know it's it's um it's it's it's everywhere but there are levels of it you know why are you cooking thai food for what reason is it to support your family back home you know is it because you're in the western world and you want to to make a living or do you want to cook Thai food um to to expand um you know what what people's understanding of what Thai food is I think you have to meet somewhere in the middle with that you know you're only really going to have Thai food in restaurants you know outside of Thailand right so you're lucky enough to know Thai family um so that there is that side of it you know we don't eat the same in restaurants we do at home yeah like we said for everyone um you know there are nice things to have neighborhood Thai wrestlers I'd love to see those I'd like to see more we talked about pubs earlier I'd like to see more um of those pubs being more regional more home start cooking you know why not you know why does it have to be this um this standard um Thai menu you know that everyone yeah I think the biggest misconception that's why Speedboat was such a wonderful revelation for me when that when you open that is it's almost this sickly sweet tepid watered down version of typhus what we've got in the uk and then it's but when i've been here and then eating at speedboat is actually really well some of the dishes are really fucking spicy as you say it's like getting in the ring with tyson you know almost asshole in you know incineratingly spicy but also burns both ways spellbindingly delicious um what's the what's uh talk me about sort of so there is a way through than many that isn't just about chili heat but it is part of it yeah um i think people have a greater love and an addiction to chili now than they ever have done um chili in your life is great thing and i pity people that uh avoid it what does chili give you it's all the endorphins the dopamine the serotonin pumping around your system yeah yeah you start tripping sex for your taste buds yeah yeah you get that moment you know oh my god but you want more you know i got fucked over and I nailed that jalapeno earlier.

1:25:33Lukie Farrell:Well, there we go. Yeah, but it was banging. You leave your body. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just amazing. And it makes eating so much more enjoyable. That kind of pleasure pain thing is important, I think. I don't know, once you've had that, you can't really go back, you know. But yeah, there are other dishes, you know, there are other flavours to be had. there's a concept in well a flavor in in southern thai food which is pet ron which is which is like it's chili heat yes but also this like warmth or kind of the heat that you get from turmeric black pepper um dry tillies to an extent rather than this kind of spicy high notes of like raw chili um you so these two together imagine that so you've got that intense burn but then you've got this lengthening out of the warming kind of flavors as well.

1:26:27Lukie Farrell:It's like, instead of like putting a lighter on your tongue, it's like sticking your tongue on a radiator for a bit. And that's another thing that you kind of, the warmth of the cuisine is something that people need to get involved with as well, not just the heat of it. And also, how is chili used? Is it used to make the dispicier? is it used to perfume the dish? You know, there are soups where just the chili on top, if you were to drink the liquor around it, you would understand the flavor of the chili. Is it fruity? Is it peppery? You know, does it have, does it taste like Jolly Ranchers, watermelons, you know?

1:27:06Lukie Farrell:Does it taste like any of these things? You know, it's not just about the heat. There are different chilies in Thailand. It's not just one chili. Different things for different dishes. It could be used as a vegetable, you know, because it could be stir-fried up with some pork belly, these big thick prignum that can be stuffed with with fish paste and deep fried you know it can have a little tiny tiny ones that are poked into um like these these um thai sausages you know what sort of chili are you using for what dish um that's something that i'm really interested in because i grow chilies in my greenhouse in dorset and having those those ones that you can't get in the uk that really make thai food there's one in southern thailand called pric chi or um um this There's a particular one, Pighong Chai Buri, from a particular region in southern Thailand.

1:27:54Lukie Farrell:And they're kind of like this very light, sort of almost Granny Smith apple green, which, again, have their own kind of searing heat, but also a kind of raw flavor to them as well, which is used in certain dishes. Thai food is about these fresh ingredients. You can't get away from that. Yeah. And that's really where you start to struggle in the UK. getting hold of those fresh ingredients. Talk to me about Chinatown in London. Like, because it feels like, to me, I've been to some places that are abhorrently dog shit, but then I've also been to some places that are absolutely banging. But where are the top places to go for banging grub?

1:28:36Lukie Farrell:I like that Kung Fu noodle place on the corner just because it's really quick and it's in between Speedboat and Plaza. And I can literally go from one restaurant to the other and stop off and like slurp up a bottle of noodles and then dash to the other one. I actually saw a documentary called Bite of China and there was this Chinese bus driver and he was at the lights and he stopped the bus. In London? No, no, in China. Right, yeah. He stopped the bus and then he ran into this restaurant and the bowl of noodles was there waiting for him and then he slurped it down and got back in the bus and the light changed green and then he went off.

1:29:07Lukie Farrell:Oh, wow. I just thought that was so cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I often think about that when I go to have a quick slurp of noodles there. It's a bit of fun. And I like the place next door to it. I think it's next door, but one called The Eight. And it's like this traditional, like Chinatown used to be like, full of these like, you know, proper Hong Kong style diners. That's another one that went actually, Hong Kong Diner, which was fantastic. They had this Macau pork chop there. That was magic. The Eight does roast duck right. It's just, it's on point. It's legit. All the other duck places are a bit fake.

1:29:42Lukie Farrell:Yeah, well, they use different ducks from different countries. And you can tell because they don't have the heads and necks attached. So when you see them hanging up in the windows, look for the ones with the heads and necks. That would be like Four Seasons and the Eight. So I would go to those two restaurants if you want to have a decent roast duck. And the Eight, they just got it right. It was perfectly lacquered and that lovely kind of fat layer in between that was rendered and juicy. You know, it slurts out the side of your mouth. I'm going to have to get some more duck, mate. Yeah. And you can have it on noodles or you can have it on rice.

1:30:08Lukie Farrell:I have it dry on noodles, which is what I like to have, rather than a noodle soup. And they do bubble teas and stuff like that. it's just great and i always like trying to quiz them because they don't give away anything you know these guys oh where do you get the ducks from are they cherry valley they from ireland they from the get out next next next you know so um yeah i like all that fun and i just you know like i like going eating eating duck and drinking loads of chinese tea and then uh you know pausing where else is good wonky's is a standard i often pop in there uh pork chop chili and salt well they put the price up of a fried egg that's sort of my thing i like having fried eggs on things like Pagra Pau and stuff like that.

1:30:45Lukie Farrell:Where else is good? Bun House is great if you want to queue up. You can beat the queue sometimes. I spend a lot of time in Chinatown. Obviously, when we get stuck, there's always Siwoo and stuff like that for ingredients. We'd hope so. I used to know where everything was on the shelves. Just like, even though I'm here with you now, I can walk my way around Siwoo. Oh, wow. That's amazing. That's amazing. Mate, let's wrap this up. we're over an hour and a half mate it's been an absolute joy i've enjoyed every minute of it's been great and great to have you here oh mate it's been so much fun it means so much to me just just to show you like just like it's easy to explain speedboat in plaza when you're here in thailand right yeah i don't know like it feels but i think your genius is the ability to to make it weird but not so weird weird so much that it stands out or confusing as you said but not too confusing that's really hard and i feel like what we've sort of pulled out today is these things you know this sort of collaborative creative energy and but also doing things that that jerk the mind and stand out does that make sense yeah it does make sense but you need everyone to believe in it that's that's the that's the ticket yeah yeah yeah that that's what that's what has to happen yeah it can be just a little bit off center but it's got it you've got it everyone's got to kind of get behind it.

1:32:05Lukie Farrell:Absolute pleasure, brother. Let's get some beers, mate. Yeah. Nice one. That was sick. Is that good? Yeah. Thank you so, so much for listening to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it. If you liked that episode, only if you liked it, please do give it five stars, subscribe, tell all your friends, families, foes, next door, but one, cat, dog, whatever. Please tell everyone about this podcast. It means the world to me. And I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much