413: All in on Las Vegas Food with Penny Chutima on Lotus of Siam Succession

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I always like to think that we're that diamond in the rough. When Lotus actually started, it was this little tiny shop inside the commercial center, which in the 90s people thought was like the worst neighborhood of all time. And then so to grow up this big, I hope that Vegas sees us that way too, you know. This is Taste, all in on Las Vegas food, presented by Las Vegas. I'm your host, Matt Rodbard. Penny Chutama is the next generation of Lotus of Siam, an iconic James Beard Award-winning restaurant serving up regional northern Thai food in Vegas since 1999.

1:08The daughter of Chef Saipin, Penny is dedicated to preserving and expanding Lotus of Siam's legacy, beloved by chefs like Anthony Bourdain and just about everyone else in Vegas. Also on the show, Matt talks with Amanda Signorelli about running the Golden Steer, an iconic Vegas steakhouse founded in 1958, frequented by Elvis and Sinatra, that's been in her family for years.

1:38Penny Chutama, this is Taste. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Oh, thank you for having me. I guess to start, I'm so curious, what was it like growing up at Lotus of Siam? It was hectic, I guess you can say. When my parents took over in 1999, it was a fast pace for them. You know, first generation immigrant here. My mom didn't really speak any English. My dad was probably her backbone. The only thing she really knew how to was to cook, you know, and at the same time, they were had basically a young family. When we moved here, I was like 11. My sister was barely three. It was difficult for sure.

2:15I didn't really have much of a childhood because, you know, my parents basically was at work all day, but made the most out of it. I'm sure you're eating a lot of good food. Were you kind of hanging out in the restaurant, doing your homework, helping out? What was the kind of experience for you? All the time. I mean, after school was done, which is funny because in California, when we used to live there, I would actually walk from school to home. But over here, it was like so much more distant. So I ended up having to walk from school to the restaurant. And that was like gnarly. in Vegas heat.

2:52That was actually pretty, I was like, oh crap. But you know, my day to days over there was doing my homework, helping my mom. I even did like dishes, whatnot, or like peel basil, you know, same stuff. And how has the restaurant changed over the years? It's become like a jewel in the Las Vegas dining scene. And also you have multiple locations. Yes. I mean, from where it started to right now has dramatically probably expanded. I think, you know, in such a short time frame, like for me, I feel like 25 years is still kind of short. But within that time frame, we definitely expanded. We've grown. Like, you know, I basically learned from a lot of like my parents mistakes too in the expansion.

3:39So it was very eye-opening to see what they have done in the first 15 years to now. Are there any like specific learnings or takeaways that you find yourself thinking about a lot? Most of the time, yeah. I mean, it's basically based on employees. Like, honestly, I could just think back on COVID because that was probably my biggest stress factor. It wasn't like, okay, hey, the closure. It was like, I have 110, 115 staff on my belt. Like if I can't do something for them, like what's going to happen to them? Because, you know, they depended on this job. They depended on me. And on top of it, they had families that they had to take care of.

4:19So that was probably my most stressful factor. Definitely. I think even sitting in this dining room, thinking about the amount of people that must be working in the kitchen and in the front of house to be feeding everyone and making it possible. It is truly like such a large amount of people. I guess to take a step back, when did you decide to get involved in your family's restaurant business? You know, I was back and forth in the beginning. I want to say like between 2011, actually 2009, I got fully heavily involved because my dad had appendicitis and nearly cost him his life. So that's when I came in.

4:54And then after that, took a little bit of a hiatus from the actual work after he kind of fully recovered. I want to say 2011 I was going to go pursue my law degree and go to school so I ended up moving back to California then the big rain happened at Sahara in 2017 and that's when I became fully involved since then what do you mean by the big rain so in 2017 we had such a terrible landlord clearly and um what had happened was they removed all of our parts in the roof and basically this rain happened and we ended up shuttering our doors on a friday night during the worst rush hour ever i've had customers were like they can clearly see this rain is coming in and next thing you know they're like why are you closing i'm like i cannot operate like i can't leave the restaurant open because, you know, there's rain coming in.

5:58You don't know what type of water that's coming in from the roof or the ceilings or anything like that. I'm like, I have to shut down. Yeah, I mean, rain in the desert on its own seems like an unusual event, much less through holes coming in in the roof. Yeah. So what kind of work are you doing with your family's restaurant business today? So now I just do a lot of operations. I do from human resources to ops to the legalities to hiring to firing. I mean, it's literally everything all in one. And, you know, at the same time, we're also building our team to make sure that we can handle each expansion.

6:35Definitely. So from your perspective, what does Lotus of Siam represent in the Las Vegas dining scene? I always like to think that we're that diamond in the rough, you know, especially how before when Lotus actually started, it was this little tiny shop inside the commercial center, which in the 90s people thought was like the worst neighborhood of all time. You know, I've had guests even tell me they're like, we thought we were in the wrong place because there's no way that a restaurant can be known like this and be in this neighborhood. And so I like to think like, you know, we are that little diamond.

7:14And then so to grow up this, this big that, you know, I hope that Vegas sees us that way too, you know? Yeah, definitely. I think for me, when I told people I was coming to Vegas, all of my chef and food friends were like, you're going to Lotus of Siam, right? That was the first one. And it's, you know, from a mixture of just being dedicated to the food for so long and having all these press and accolades and James Beard Awards coming in as well. I guess I'm curious if you see the diner's relationship with Northern Thai food evolving over the past 20 or so years as like there's been more Thai restaurants?

7:48100%. Like when we first started, oh my God. I mean, I may have been like 11 or 12 at the time, but when we started, I can see how my parents really fought that stereotype. You know, they're very, my mom is definitely not a confrontational person at all and neither is my dad but they were very firm believers of like hey there's way more things besides pad thai or fried rice or I've even heard people like oh my god you guys don't have chow min it's not authentic thai and I'm like oh my god I can't believe this guy's literally saying this to me you know and so I seen my parent my dad was the one who took the biggest risk for sure because you know my mom thought that he was charging people but he was really just giving out the freebies in the beginning so he'll give out like nam kow tods um kow saw a lot of the northern style dishes that people weren't even like aware they just thought thailand was only sweet foods spicy foods and pad thai whereas like when my parents did in the 90s you know it's a change of dynamic people then realize like oh my god there's way more than to just thai food than just those and so even seeing now like everywhere now knows what khao soi is but I've gone to like a few Thai restaurants that are like I know for sure this isn't khao soi because they would use the hype on the food but they won't follow through on what the real recipe is and so people will like mix yellow curry with each other and then add a little bit of sugar just to be like oh this is khao soi but it's not like khao soi does not have turmeric in it and it's one of those things Yeah, I think that's a really interesting idea of now we're at this point where maybe like the average American diner is more familiar with a dish like khao soi and it can be marketed in that way, but that people necessarily like aren't following through on what the dish truly represents.

9:41Yeah, I think that's probably my biggest pet peeve, too, to be honest. It's like, oh, I've had khao sawi before, but I've never had this. And I'm like, look, my mom's from the north. I've seen her make this. I've seen like the neighboring person make this. I'm like, I definitely know what khao sawi is, you know. And so I think it bugs me because the culture is there. But if you yourself are part of that culture and you're not being responsible to show people the real realities of what it is and you're just lying about it, like I hate liars at the end of the day, you know. And so I want to showcase my mom's culture.

10:17You know, I want to show it to what it really is, like the beauty of it, not just like fake it out so that people can just make an easy buck. So when people are coming into the restaurant today, what are the dishes that you find people are ordering the most? So here so far, I've for sure when we run our pea mix, the garlic prawns is like a number one seller. Khao soi is the number one. We also have our crispy duck. And, you know, back then, I actually like not going to lie. I do feel proud like how my parents did this restaurant, because now when you go to Thai restaurants, people have options.

10:51You know, back then, chili basil was only stuck to chicken. They didn't really give you an option to pick, oh, what kind of meat would you like? What kind of protein choice would you like? And even back then, you know, you went to a Thai restaurant. If you had a peanut allergy, you weren't going to go. You really thought you were going to die, you know? And so because a lot of Thai foods, people use peanut oil. But for us, it's not. And, you know, we try to cater to the dynamic of our guests rather than having our guests change their lifestyle for us, which, you know, you don't do that. Mm hmm.

11:22And speaking of guests, I feel like you must have a lot of iconic guests that are coming into the restaurant because Lotus of Siam is such a destination. Do you have any celebs coming into the restaurant, like getting down with some khao soi or something? Yeah, actually, every time they come, I always make sure there's a khao soi on their plate. Khao soi is like my last meal on earth, by the way. It truly is my favorite food. So I'm really excited. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like one of those things that I just want people to try the food that my mom's from. You know, It's like she is a very hardworking lady.

11:54I've seen every aspect of her. And so for her to come from Thailand, come here, not know English, but yet do what she did and how she's doing it, I'm like, why am I going to let it go away? So what are the celeb regulars at Lotus of Sam? Sometimes Drew Barrymore whenever she's in town. Jim Belushi. Oh, yeah. always come in yeah and um should we get like Benny I think his name is Selena Selena Gomez oh Benny Blanco yeah so he was eating everywhere I feel yeah he's a food person he loves food and so he'll come here like before his show and then after that he'll get like a little table together and filled with food um we get a lot I used to remember seeing a lot of uh well even Mick Jagger came in the other week.

12:44What did you feed McJaggar? I have to know. So we gave him a whole snapper. Nice. He wanted fish and he wanted northern. So we gave him kawsoi. We did a protein choice because he was like, I want something with soft shell crab. I'm like, I got you. I was like, this dish is probably the perfect way to eat it with soft shell crab. And so he cleared that. We also got the namprek ong, which is, I like to explain to people, It's kind of like the meat sauce, but it's really not. It's like more thicker, more, you know, tomato. You have a lot of herbs in there. And then you eat it with what we have, like the crudités, mixed vegetables and everything.

13:23Cleared that. He even had papaya salad. So it was like, you know, he really likes to be adventurous in his eating for sure. For the restaurant or the people that work here, is it special when a celebrity comes in? Or is that just par for the course at this point? It varies. It really varies unless it's like someone's like, oh, my God, I see like BTS. They'll be like, oh, my God, please. Oh, my God. Did BTS come here? You know what's so funny? So when they weren't fully like really well known yet, my friend ended up booking their table at the original spot on Sahara. And so my sister was the only one that knew that that was BTS.

14:01I didn't even know who they were at the time. And I was like, you know, because I didn't really follow boy bands. And so my sister was like, oh, my God, that's BTS. I was like, who is that? And then she was like, you don't know? I was like, no. But then when they had their last concert, the managers all came in to eat. And so I was like, OK, that's cool. I feel like it must feel good as a restaurant that when BTS comes in years ago, that their managers come back now because they must have been talking about how good that meal was still. yeah we were just at the sphere last night and i was thinking that you know we're all manifesting like who should play the sphere and i was thinking bts should play the sphere but it might be like too much emotionally to handle for the fans because they're already so over the top and you add in the screen it's just like crazy i think it would be an amazing visuals for sure because like i did go to their concert i think it was like two years ago here in vegas yeah in vegas And I thought they were such amazing entertainers.

14:56Like they are really good at what they do. In terms of like thinking about just the array of programming you're doing here in the restaurant as well. I know that Lotus of Siam has a really notable kind of wine pairing program as well. How does your sommelier approach some like classic pairings of wine with Northern Thai dishes? You know, it originally started with my dad. Yeah. He was, it's just funny too, because he does not drink. The man does not drink, but he knows his wine. So a lot of the list in the beginning was all based on him. And then he's taught me, he's taught my sister, you know, and he's also taught some of the staff that used to be with us and who are still with us.

15:32And it's just one of those things that it's based on preference too. But we also factor in that, hey, if the food is really spicy, you might want a little bit more residual sugar in your wine and it helps offset. And it seems to be like German wines definitely pair a lot better with Thai food than a lot of other wines. Yeah. Have you been to Ugly Baby in Brooklyn, the Thai restaurant? It's a really great Thai restaurant. They're really assertive and creative with their flavors and their dishes. And they have a really extensive natural wine program. And I feel like when I grew up eating Thai food, it would be like Singha, like a great light beer or something.

16:14But then I was at Ugly Baby and I was drinking like a pet nat or something like that that had the bubbles and a little bit of the sugar. And it really helped me get through the whole meal in a really fun way. That's great. Yeah. Next time you're in New York, you'll have to go there. For sure. I mean, I definitely have a few lists already that people have sent me. So I'm like, all right, I got to check this one out, too. Yeah. When you travel, do you find yourself going to other Thai restaurants to check it out? It depends where I'm at. Like if I'm going to like, like I just really came from Japan.

16:45I had no thought to really try a Thai restaurant, but I still had to. One of my friends was like, just try it. I'm like, fine. Where did you go? King of Taste. It was in Ginza. How was it? It was actually pretty good. So no lie, it was actually pretty good. But there was like one dish that I was like, all right, I'm never going to order this again. But everything else I was like, all right, this is actually pretty spot. Well, you're being good at your job. if on a short trip to Japan, you're still going to eat Thai food. Yeah, I think I ate like nine times that day. Wow, I love that. I'm curious, what are your goals for the future of the family business?

17:19You know, it's really to expand the restaurant for, I don't want to say for my mom, but it's like for her. Because at the end of the day, she would have never done what I'm doing because she's so modest about it. You know, like she didn't want to take too much of the burden. But I'm like, mom, you have like 110 people that depend on you, you know. And for me, I have to think of they're not always going to be cooks and servers their entire lives, you know. But for them to stay loyal to you, like I have to figure out what I can do to take care of them after. You know what I'm saying? It's like my goal now isn't just to be like a boss.

18:00That was never my intent. My intent was to make sure I lead and then be able to help people grow. And then on top of it, if they continue to stay and grow with the company, it's like my job is to take care of them, too. And when you say expand, do you mean expand in Vegas or outside of Vegas as well? Outside. We're just planning to do in a major city for sure, like within the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Any chance you'll come east to New York? You know, we're actually already looking at it. Oh, my God. I love to hear that. But we used to be there. You were there? Yeah, in 2009. But the partnership ended up sour, so it wasn't too bad.

18:39So this time you want to expand. Do you think you're going to have partners or keep it all in? No, it's all in-house. All in the family? Yeah, I mean, I have a very good role model, too, especially watching how the Panda family has done. You know, it's all internal, so if they can do it, I can do it, too. Yeah, I love to hear that. I guess to close, I want to hear a little bit about your favorite places to eat in Vegas when you're not working, maybe on and off the strip. Oh, man. So I love for the past year, I've been eating at Edo at Fountain Blue. Also, the neighborhood sushi spot is Sushi Hero, which is in Henderson.

19:17Those two are my major ones to go to. We might go to Edo later. What do you think we should order there? oh so if you guys are going to the full you know the omakase style they're gonna pick it out for you no the one at fountain blue yeah if they're they're just gonna pick it for you yeah just let them do all that because there's no menu okay so I don't even have to choose but just tell them that you know at the end just be like okay Penny said that this was supposed to be good so then they'll be on on their toes just a little bit you know yeah keep them on their toes and then when you're eating here in the restaurant what are you ordering so i have a few i order the khao soi i will order my mom's uh nam nyo which is like a pork stew with the vermicelli noodles that one's like my my all my ultimate favorite that's my comfort food i'll die with that um you know i always do like the penny ceviche too because that dish has like a little special place in my heart just because the original dish is so good, but people can't look past the whole raw prawns.

20:19So I had to do it a different way. And ever since then, it's been like taken off. So what's the swap that you made? So originally was gung chanem ba, which is Thai marinated prawns. And it's basically a whole raw prawn. And you marinate it. And then after that, you serve it with like garlic, mint, and a little bit of chili paste with our, we call it seafood sauce, right? But because people can't get past like looking at a raw shrimp, they're like, oh, I don't. But I'm like, the flavor is there. And so what we did is I did into a penny ceviche. I was like, we diced up the prawns, we marinated, same technique, everything, but we add more of garnishment, which is like a kefir lime.

21:01We add garlic and everything else already mixed in. And then we kind of like modernized it because sometimes people just want more than just a bite. We'll put like the fried wonton chip on the side and it's literally boom. So it's still the raw prawn. It's just cut up smaller with a lot of other stuff. Yeah. And I think it ended up appealing more to the masses just because, like I said, that the dish is very well known in Thailand and people eat it often. But I think in being in America, it's very different. You know, they see something, they're like, oh, my God, it's raw. they assume it's gonna get sick yeah but for us it's like we marinate a certain way and then we like the way the time mentality things is like acid kills the bacteria yeah and that's like not just a mentality but a scientific fact as well exactly and so when once we do that and it's all into a different output or outlook everybody will just they ended up liking it more and i'm like you're literally eating the same thing that you guys said it's like no.

22:05But it's a smart swap and that's why it's called the penny ceviche. Yeah. And that's just because like, you know, I feel like as our restaurant, we have to take the initiative to educate our guests too. It's not just like, okay, hey, whatever. Yeah, definitely. And I guess to close, I'm curious if you could manifest one thing for the future of Thai food here in America, what would you want? Just think true. You know, like Our food is good already. We don't need to add too much sugar. We don't need to cater to the ideology of fake Thai food. You know what I'm saying? If one restaurant in Thailand can sell just one dish and it's Pad Thai and they can do it great, other Thai restaurants don't have to mimic and copy whatever that person is doing.

22:49Do something else that's also great. You know, there's so many good dishes in Thai food that, you know, that needs to be more well-known in the U.S. But don't copycat everybody else to do it, you know? Just stay true to yourself. Yeah. Penny, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me and coming on the podcast. Of course. Thank you for having me.

23:18Amanda Signorelli, welcome to This is Taste. It's so great to be here in your restaurant, The Golden Steer. We're in a private dining room here. Is this off-strip, you'd call it? I would call it off-strip. From a community standpoint, we certainly consider it. But obviously, we're literally sandwiched right in between Resorts World and Stratosphere across from the brand new Fountain Blue. So we're very, very close. Yeah, we've been spending a lot of time at Fountain Blue this week. And we have a whole week of coverage covering strip, off-strip. We're covering the food of Las Vegas, the pageantry.

23:48I really wanted to talk to you. You have a really cool backstory. Your family has run this business for many years, but you've joined in 2019. Tell me a little bit about the history of Golden Steer. This is really one of Las Vegas' remaining iconic restaurants. So for our listeners, let's get a sense of where we are sitting right now. Yeah, absolutely. So we are the oldest restaurant on the Las Vegas Strip. We're one of the oldest steakhouses in town, and that was because we started in 1958, which was an amazing time to open a restaurant. We actually began technically as what's called a Western Frontier restaurant, which is a technical term for back then.

24:24So we would actually allow all these cowboys coming to Nevada, whatever they caught, they would bring in. We'd be responsible for cleaning, butchering, serving, and cooking for them. So if you look at the early iterations of our menu, I kid you not, you'll see things like rattlesnake. You'll see all this game on there. You'll see some turtle on there. Very much like Cowboy Wild West alternatives in that time. And then after that, we had a bunch of core periods of history in between the mob, the Rat Pack, the celebrities that came shortly thereafter. Yeah, let's get into that, because I think the history of Vegas aligns with the history of your restaurant.

24:55And you've got, you know, numerous celebrities who dined here. Why did Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, why did they all, Martin Scorsese, I'm sure, scouted out Casino to possibly shoot here when he was doing that. Let me ask you, why did they come here? Yeah, great question. So it all actually began with one person, which was Sammy Davis Jr. So back during the day, unfortunately, Las Vegas was an incredibly prejudiced city. And so we allowed Sammy Davis Jr. as a city to perform on our stages, but we didn't host him anywhere else. He wasn't allowed to dine. He wasn't allowed to be in these public places.

25:28And he had to stay way off strip at the Moulin Rouge. So as he was performing and going back and returning home, there was one restaurant that didn't believe in those old school beliefs, which was the Golden Steer. So we invited Sammy Davis Jr. in and said, Sammy, you will always have a booth, a spot in the public main dining room of this restaurant that we will hold for you because we want you to know that we believe you're a core element of the community and we respect you. So he came, he started dining here. That's what actually started us doing the namesake patron booths, which you can still see named there.

25:57Shortly thereafter, Frank Sinatra and support started coming, as did the rest of the Rat Pack, as did the rest of their friends who ended up including people like Marilyn Monroe. and we still actually have stories of patrons who come in and say, I remember when my grandfather was here, and I kid you not, Frank Sinatra jumped up on a table with whiskey in a hand, cigar in another, and was serenading everyone in the room. And that's what really started it. Now, of course, when you have the glitz and the glam, shortly thereafter, what's always going to follow is the seedy side. So in that case, in the mob days, that was truly looking at the big mob owners of all of the casinos.

26:30Now, what's interesting about the Golden Steer is during that time, we were considered neutral territory was the phrase because we were one of the few places on the strip or near the strip that wasn't directly owned by a mob family. You were also the place allowing a black guy to dine in your dining room, which to me is absolutely revolutionary. I'm sure you got a lot of pushback, the history of this restaurant for having that, but it allowed you to maintain a neutrality, I'm sure. Yeah, it allowed us to maintain a neutrality. It also allowed us to stick to our values. We're a very progressive restaurant.

27:02not, we always believe that everyone's welcome. That's a big part of our brand. It's also what obviously meant that mob felt so supported being able to come in here and know their privacy would be respected. And so Tony Spolatro had his own booth that was in the corner and he never had to worry about the feds coming in. He had a backdoor entrance, the whole nine yards, and it was a big community then. How do we recognize every single part of the community? This is old school Vegas, right? There was feelings that were very different than how we think about it today. Yeah. Unbelievable history. Now, let me ask you, when you talk about the seedier side of this restaurant, not your proprietors, but the fellows hanging out here.