The fishmonger texts me at dawn. Not every morning, but often enough that I check my phone before I've had a coffee. Sometimes it's a load of British mackerel just landed. That's what working with suppliers who care actually looks like.
The first thing you learn about curry paste is that it takes longer than you think. The second thing is that your arm will hurt. The third is that it's worth it by a distance that makes every other shortcut in cooking feel trivial.
The difference between a fresh curry paste and an ambient one is the same as the difference between a fresh tuna steak and a tin. The curry is one of the most widely eaten things in the country. The paste that goes into it has been, for most of that time, represented really badly.
It's late January 2020, and the team and I are heading to Bangkok for a week. By March we had twenty-five staff in a very expensive empty building and no income plan. We went from hero to zero in a matter of hours. This is how Farang weathered it.
