Thailand began its culinary conquest of Chicago more than 20 years ago, starting innocuously with a few storefronts on the north and northwest sides. A place in Andersonville called simply the Thai Restaurant may have been the city’s first, though its output was all quite mild and Westernized.
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Lee, one of the original owners of the now-shuttered and sorely missed River Kwai on State near Hubbard, started a second Thai Touch last fall on Halsted Street’s hot restaurant row in Lakeview, which runs from North to Belmont. Like the first, it’s small but handsomely appointed with imports selected on annual trips back to his native Bangkok, where the first order of business is checking out the latest recipes. Yes, like many of the world’s cuisines, Thai cuisine is continuously evolving and being influenced by international cooking trends.
Like the majority of his fellow Asian restaurateurs, Lee’s initial training was not in the kitchen. He was a law-school graduate when he came here in 1976 and got his first restaurant job washing dishes. He worked his way up, becoming catering manager for a country club and holding similar positions with the Marriott hotels. He’s a self-taught chef, like Chanpen Ratana of the Thai Room, who came here as a nurse with only the culinary training given by her mother. The two are clearly among the city’s best Thai chefs.
There’s much the same sense of satisfaction at the Thai Borrahn, right next to the Museum of Contemporary Art on East Ontario, one flight up. This is an elegant, almost lavish spot featuring several of those tearoom-style tables where you sit at floor level (after removing your shoes) with your legs down in a well, reclining, if you wish, on wedge-shaped pillows.
Staying with the hot stuff, I dug into a thick and zesty Panang-style curry of pork, a mahogany-colored potion studded with meat and chunks of tiny Thai eggplant ($7.50). The coconut-milk base helps mellow and round out the fire of this classic.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Marc PoKempner.
