色色啦

On the other, this past October, Suphot “Tomme” Ponglangka and Thananop “Tony” Boonyong 鈥� partners in both life and business 鈥� opened Thong Lor, a second location of their eight-year-old Bangkok-style street food restaurant, Si Lom Thai Bistro, on Church Street. The new venue offers dishes inspired by Thailand’s Phichit province, along with global influences on Thai cuisine.

“We looked (for a second location) in this area because it’s what we know. We live here, our customers are here, we’re part of the LGBTQ+聽community, and we can go from one restaurant to the other,” says Ponglangka, who runs Thong Lor with Boonyong as well as Boonyong’s sister, Wendy. “What we do here is totally different from Si Lom, so that’s why we can stay in the same neighbourhood. It’s a big country. I’m from Lanmpang, which is close to Chang Mai, and Tony and Wendy are from Phichit (as well as the restaurant’s chef, Tanun 鈥淭oto鈥� Promparkob). Both are in the north but we speak different dialects.”

On the surface, both Si Lom Thai Bistro and Thong Lor are prime for partying with a menu of colourful cocktails and at the latter, metre-high towers that hold three-litres of beer meant for groups. It speaks to Ponglangka’s past as a bartender at the nearby Crews & Tangos drag bar, as well as Thailand’s reputation as a popular travel destination for queer tourists.

Where the two restaurants differ is their menu offerings. Thong Lor has a few dishes that are specialties of Phichit, such as a kai ma nao, crispy gai lan with chicken and a Pad Thai variation with slices of barbecued pork and a slightly sweeter base. “For our hometown, we use palm sugar and lime juice mixed together to make the taste more simple,” Tony says. “We also use dried ship and dried chilies mixed with the salt so it鈥檚 a bit spicier.”

While it’s not a provincial specialty, the hoy jor exemplifies the fluidity of culinary boundaries. It’s an appetizer of jumbo lump crab meat enveloped in ground pork, which is then wrapped in tofu skin and steamed and fried to a crispy golden brown. When I tell Ponglangka that it reminds me of dim sum, it turns out I wasn’t too far off. The dish is believed to be a result of Chinese immigrants to Thailand in the mid 19th century and has since become a popular street food and a staple in Chinese-Thai communities. Typically served with a plum sauce, here it’s served with sweet plum mayonnaise聽鈥斅燼 nod, Ponglangka says, to Canadians’ affinity for mayo-based sauces.

The restaurant’s name comes from Thong Lor road in Bangkok, or聽Sukhumvit Soi 55 as it’s officially called. Coincidentally, Thong Lor restaurant’s address is 555 Church Street. Thong Lor is an upscale district in Bangkok, known for its trendy restaurants, bars, cafes and shops that come alive at night. Just east of it is Si Lom Road, the inspiration behind their first restaurant, which is especially known for its connection to the LGBTQ+ community. (On Jan. 23,聽Thailand became the first Southeast Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage.)聽To celebrate Si Lom Thai Bistro鈥檚 eight-year anniversary, the restaurant will offer Pad Thai for $8.88 to the first 88 dine-in customers on May 17.

Wendy, who reminisces about her partying days in Thong Lor as a student, notes that the area鈥檚 food scene is a mix of hearty street food meant to be paired with booze as well as global mashups of Thai food (the area has a sizable Japanese population). The restaurant’s colourful cocktails are named after the bars she used to frequent, such as the Baan Puen, a tart, triple sec- and vermouth-based cocktail served with cotton candy. There’s also a house beer聽鈥� a bitter IPA with slight notes of lychee from Kingston’s Spearhead Brewing Company. Food-wise here’s spicy pork ribs, sweet and sticky Thai barbecue beef skewers cooked on hot rocks, or ishiyaki, as the technique is called in Japanese. The use of fish sauce gives them the Thai flair, but the restaurant also does a vegan version with skewers of firm tofu.

More interesting is the Americanized kra pao burger and a khao soi spaghetti, the latter of which Ponglangka remembers seeing in Thong Lor and wanted to bring it back as a way to show the globalization of Thai food. The sauce has the same rich coconut broth, but is made thicker and creamier to coat the strands of spaghetti and a side of grilled sirloin. Japan has Wafu pastas, a relatively new category of Japanese cooking that’s inspired by Italian cuisine, so the idea of a Thai-Italian dish isn’t that far off. For the restaurateurs, Thong Lor is another step in expanding 色色啦nian’s view of Thai cooking.

“About 10 years ago, Canadians didn’t know about Thai food much so I opened Si Lom to explain more authentic Thai food. But now the world is small. People travel and know what Thai food is,” says Ponglangka. “When 色色啦 has a variety of Thai food, it’s always good.”