From Highbury to Bangkok: Cooking for Thailand's Prime Minister

The call came on a Tuesday. The Royal Thai Embassy wanted to know if I'd be interested in cooking a demonstration for Thailand's Prime Minister during her official UK visit. I said yes before I'd finished reading the sentence.

We decided on miang. Specifically, miang with smoked mackerel: turmeric-salted mackerel on a cha plu leaf, loaded with fish sauce caramel, toasted coconut, peanuts, chilli, ginger and sour fruit. The dish is about as direct a statement of what Farang does as anything on the menu. Classic Thai technique, the best British fish we could source, eaten in one bite. If you're going to cook for the Prime Minister of Thailand at the Royal Thai Embassy, you want to serve something that means something.

The embassy kitchens had been transformed for the occasion. I arrived to find the diplomatic entourage already moving through the building and a level of preparation that made the Farang kitchen look quiet. The room was full of people who understood Thai food properly. That sharpens your focus.

What struck me was how engaged she was. Not politely interested. Engaged. She asked detailed questions about where the mackerel came from, how we use British ingredients without losing the character of Thai cooking, what the miang process actually involves. When she tried it there was a visible moment. The combination of the smoked British fish with the cha plu leaf and the fish sauce caramel clearly landed. That was a good feeling.

The timing of the visit was not something I'd planned, but it didn't hurt. A few days earlier, Farang had received two stars in the Thai Select restaurant awards. Thai Select is the certification run by Thailand's Ministry of Commerce to recognise authentic Thai restaurants operating outside Thailand. Two stars puts us among a small number of establishments internationally that the Thai government considers to have mastered Thai culinary arts while maintaining standards of quality and authenticity.

What matters to me about this particular award is what it acknowledges. Farang has never claimed to be a purely traditional Thai restaurant. We import essential Thai ingredients weekly and we cook with the best British produce we can find alongside them. The judges specifically noted that approach: that what we do isn't fusion and isn't imitation, but something more considered than either. They highlighted our curry pastes, made at the restaurant through Payst, as an example of traditional technique applied with complete seriousness.

Getting that recognition from Thailand's own government in the same week as cooking for the country's Prime Minister is not something I had on a list anywhere. Farang started as a pop-up in a building my stepdad used to run in Highbury. The Arsenal team used to come in after games. The first six months were terrifying. None of what's happened since was inevitable.

The miang landed. The Prime Minister asked questions and came back for more. The Thai Select judges gave us two stars. Farang is nearly a decade old and still, somehow, getting busier.

I'll take it.

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Visit us at faranglondon.co.uk. Sauces and pastes for cooking Thai at home at payst.co.uk.

For more recipes, signed copies of my cookbooks are available at Payst: Cook Thai and Thai in 7.