By Joe Bonadio

Despite being a city celebrated across the world for its dining culture, San Francisco cuisine can be surprisingly hard to categorize. I’m constantly being asked by visitors to recommend something that the city is particularly known for, a style of food that is quintessentially San Francisco—and honestly, there’s no easy answer to that question. 

With nearly thirty miles of shoreline and a northeastern coast that once teemed with active wharves, San Francisco has always been identified with seafood, and we’ve certainly got it in spades. But when it comes to the Bay Area, that’s only the beginning of the food conversation. The birthplace of the Mission burrito, the city has a more than solid claim when it comes to Mexican food. And as the largest Chinese settlement outside of China, San Francisco’s Chinatown is a coveted treasure for diners—and that’s not to mention Little Chinatown in the Richmond District, home to just as many of the city’s best Asian hotspots. Throw in the North Beach neighborhood, historically the destination for some of America’s best Italian food, and it becomes quite clear why San Francisco holds its exalted position among international dining capitals.

Unsurprisingly, Thai cuisine also has a pivotal position in the SF food scene. Starting in 1986 with the establishment of Marnee Thai in the Inner Sunset District, San Francisco has hosted a succession of stellar Thai restaurants (including the first American Thai restaurant to earn a Michelin star, Kin Khao). Today we have well over 100 Thai eateries inside of the city limits, and that’s in a city of just over 800,000 people.

That being said, the City by the Bay has never welcomed a Thai restaurant quite like Saam. The new restaurant, which opened on July 24th on Brannan Street in SOMA, is the brainchild of Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn, Thailand’s premier chef and the owner of a dozen restaurant concepts in Bangkok, including Michelin-starred Le Du and Nusara. As a restaurateur, Tassanakajohn (or Chef Ton, as he prefers) is in his own class; incredibly, both Le Du and Nusara appear on the list of the world’s 50 best restaurants, and in 2023 Le Du was named the #1 restaurant in Asia. 

“Exploring the produce that you have here in California is exciting for me. You know, just the thought of what Thai cuisine can be with all these beautiful ingredients, so many of them different from Thailand and Southeast Asia.” – Chef Ton Tassanakajohn of Saam 

Chef Ton is also a full-blown celebrity in his home country, appearing regularly as a judge on Top Chef Thailand, and he has become a de facto ambassador for the cuisine. After cooking in Bangkok for 18 years, Saam will be the chef’s first restaurant in the US. It’s a big step for him—and it’s a privilege for San Francisco diners.

Saam translates to three, as three partners collaborate to run the restaurant: taking the role of executive chef, Tassanakajohn partnered with Tee Atthapon (Song Wat, Kan Klin) and Ty Choosuwan (Prospect, Boulevard), who take on the roles of GM and chef de cuisine, respectively. It also refers to the three core flavors of Thai cuisine: spicy, sour and salty. But don’t expect pad Thai and papaya salad here: to create the menu at Saam, Chef Ton mined what he calls the lost dishes of Thai cuisine. Many of these recipes are unusual to find even in Thailand, and the flavors are a marked departure from what American diners are used to.

Tassanakajohn is also a certified sommelier, so the beverage program is top tier: Saam will be one of the first restaurants in the country to serve Sato, a Lao sticky rice wine that has recently been gaining popularity here in the states. The beer and wine offerings are also on point, with BTG selections including a South African chenin blanc, a Fort Ross pinot noir and PheeBok, a Thai craft beer coming in at 5.8%. They are also hard at work on a cocktail program (for which I have high expectations).

On a recent afternoon I had the chance to sit down with Chef Ton; in conversation he is warm and humble, and almost seems too young for someone with his superlative resumé. We spoke about his newest restaurant, his experiences in San Francisco and his decision to open his first US restaurant here. Lightly edited for length and clarity, our conversation is below.

Joe Bonadio (JB): Ton Tassanakajohn—welcome to San Francisco. 

Chef Ton (CT): Thank you. 

JB: I have to say, your reputation precedes you. I’ve known about you for a long time, and it’s a thrill to meet you. How long have you been open here in San Francisco? 

CT: Just over three weeks. 

JB: Three weeks. So has it been a roller coaster? 

CT: Yes, it has been a roller coaster! But it has been fun to get to know the city: the people, the farmers, the producers. It’s great. 

JB: I pay attention to what you’re doing on social, and I really appreciate your enthusiasm for local products, especially our local seafood. I see you in the kitchen with a huge smile on your face, holding up a big salmon or halibut. 

CT: Yes…

JB: I think people really react to that. So what’s it like having this whole new palette of ingredients to work with? 

CT: Well you know, even at my restaurants in Thailand, what I’m trying to do with my food—it’s just a message. But to get to this message, you need a lot of people to have their voice in my message as well. That’s all the farmers, all the fishermen. 

And I think this is how we should do it, you know, local and sustainable. It’s just a common thing that we should be doing: humans have been doing it for thousands of years. You get the food next to where you live. And I think having the restaurant in San Francisco, even though it’s a Thai restaurant, the sense of this place can make the restaurant very special.

I don’t want this restaurant to be the Thai restaurant where people come and say: This is exactly what I had in Thailand. Because I have another 10 restaurants where people can have that when they’re in Thailand. I want Saam in San Francisco to be the Thai restaurant that is authentic in how we do things—but unique because of the produce and ingredients from here. 

JB: Well, that makes sense. I mean, there’s a reason that San Francisco is so beloved by chefs and restaurateurs. We have such a wealth of products, so many great producers and people making beautiful wines and different culinary products. As a place to open a restaurant, it’s a dream.

CT: Absolutely. So exploring the produce that you have here in California is exciting for me. You know, just the thought of what Thai cuisine can be with all these beautiful ingredients, so many of them different from Thailand and Southeast Asia. I think just that alone has already inspired me. And it’s not like I’m putting something in the food that’s not supposed to be in there. It’s just how you can create things that still feel very Thai, and connect it with the place where you are.

JB: That makes perfect sense. If you think about food on a macro scale, everything that’s wrong with our food system is caused by trying to take food away from where it was grown. That’s where all the trouble starts.

CT: Yes, exactly. And I could have built the restaurant much more easily: you can get everything, import everything from God knows where. You know, get the chicken frozen from somewhere, the pork, import the curry paste from Thailand. And we could make a very good Thai restaurant. I have good recipes, because I have 10-plus restaurants in Thailand. I know my food.

JB: So just how many recipes do you have? 

CT: I mean, a thousand!

JB: Oh my god. (Laughter)

CT: So I could do Tom Yum, or say Pad Thai. I think I might have the better recipe, you know, maybe better than many restaurants here in the states. But I don’t want to do that, because that is not why I’m here. Maybe in the future, if I get sick of all this. But for now I want to do something new, and like you said, to care about the local farmers, the local people. And if you’re doing that, everyone is actually happiest, and you give something back to the community as well. That’s what I want to do. 

And people might come and say: Oh, why do you use this ingredient? Why is your price a bit higher than the restaurant next door? 

But what I want people to see is that we want to be a part of the community. We don’t want to just come and cook our food and not care. We pay everyone properly, and we use all the local farmers and producers. We work with Root Down Farms, the guy is also named Joe. And then the guy who gets the fish for us—his name is Joe as well. He fishes on a course along Marin county.

JB: Line caught?

CT: Line caught, ikejime*, everything. And this is something that’s special for me, you know. For example, you can get the halibut from Canada and to be honest, it’s like $12 a pound. I get halibut from Joe, I pay $15 a pound, much more expensive.

It’s because his fish is better. It’s local. It supports the local community.

JB: Local, better, fresher, more sustainable. 

CT: Yeah, exactly. And it’s sustainable in terms of carbon emissions and everything, but for me, the most important thing is that it sustains the people. That we’re supporting the people who actually live here.

JB: Yeah, the guy at Root Down, that guy counts on you. As time goes by, he’ll count on you more, and you’ll count on him. 

CT: Yes, exactly. And that is the kind of ecosystem that we want to create. 

JB: So for somebody like me, I’m a pretty avid home chef. I’m only just starting learning how to cook really any Asian food, but I’ve eaten a lot of good Asian cuisine. And some of the dishes I had here last week were a real surprise. There are couple in particular that I want to ask you about. The first one was the tuna, in that incredibly rich, opaque green sauce. Please tell me, how do you do that?

CT: That is actually called the Za Jin, which in the north of Thailand means a spicy salad mixed with some meat. Usually if you go to the north of Thailand and you have this dish, it’s some kind of meat, maybe pork or beef, with a lot of greens and herbs from their farms and local markets. Whatever they have, they just mix it up for you.

JB: So, you took it and converted the salad into a sauce?

CT: Yeah, so take the essence of that, you know, and make it into a sauce. Because you are so lucky in California: you can get a lot here in the local markets. You know, at the Civic Center on Sunday, you can get incredible herbs from the ethnic farmers, Thai, Lao, all kinds of things.

JB: You can get almost anything.

CT: Almost anything. So when I saw that, when I came here and saw that, I was like: Oh, okay. We can cook like in Thailand, but maybe in different way. So now it’s tomato season, and that’s why we have the heirloom tomatoes, you know.

JB: Even if you don’t like tomatoes, you’ve gotta eat tomatoes right now.

CT: Yeah, yeah. And they’re from one of the best farms, Balakian. They’re always at the Ferry Building on Saturday.

JB: I’m there every Saturday.

CT: Yeah, they have one of the best tomatoes. They are all smiley, the ladies, I think they’re from somewhere in Eastern Europe where they used to grow these beautiful tomatoes. She’s very proud of them, and we love them.

Then also, of course, the tuna. Here you have tuna from California down to Baja Mexico, which you can always get. Bluefin, yellowtail.

JB: Beautiful tuna. And your server explained to me that the cut of the tuna you use in that dish is the least fatty.

CT: Yes, it’s the akami. So it’s a light meat. For example, If you used bluefin tuna, you can get a beautiful otoro, which is a more fatty one. But here you get so much beautiful yellowtail tuna, and they don’t have that fatty part of the meat. And I don’t think it’s necessary for this dish. So usually when we serve this dish, we serve it with the leaner meat.

And you know, it’s more options for the diner. If I serve that dish with otoro, I might have to charge like $60 for that alone, just because it’s bluefin. So this is how we do it. And I think it’s perfect for the dish as well.

JB: Yeah, the richness of the flavor took me by surprise. You know, I like spicy food, And the server signaled that it was going to be a little bit spicy, and it definitely was. But it’s coming from a different place—it was a different kind of spicy. The flavors to me were very novel.

CT: I’m very happy that you feel that way. Because lots of people say that Thai food should be spicy. And in a way, it’s true and it’s not true. Some dishes should be quite spicy, and some dishes not. And to make a dish spicy is actually very easy. You just smash the chili and you put it in. But how do you make the dish feel—your word was novel.

JB: Yeah.

CT: For me, it’s about complexity. Dimension. You know, it’s not about any one single note. For me, Thai food is about depth. People like Thai food because of its acidity, and they expect the spiciness and maybe sweetness. I think that’s good, and some of my dishes have that also. But here, we’re trying to present some dishes with a different approach.

JB: Something to challenge the diner?

CT: To challenge the diner, yes. And to showcase a different side of Thai food. I know it’s actually going to be easier for people to love the food if I cook it differently. Because to be honest, we have a lot of Thai restaurants here, and some of them are doing a very good job.

JB: Yes, and that’s another thing that should be mentioned. This is a hell of a Thai food market: we’ve got good chefs here making this kind of food.

CT: Absolutely. So I don’t want to be doing what they’ve already done. I want to make sure that what I’m doing here is something very new for Thai food. Not only in San Francisco, but very new for Thai food in the United States. And that’s what I want to be representing.

JB: Fantastic. And while we’re speaking of complexity, the other dish I want to ask you about is the last savory dish that you served me. The duck curry with the young coconut meat. 

CT: Yes. 

JB: That was another dish that sort of surprised me. It was spicy, but the flavors in the curry were really unfamiliar to me. I must have had a quizzical look on my face while I was eating it, just trying to decipher the flavors. It was remarkable.

CT: That’s a good thing to hear. That one is Root Down Duck, with shrimp paste, finger root and young coconut. I think that may be the kaffir leaf, it’s a very unique flavor. We pound the curries by hand every day.

JB: I’ll definitely be coming back for that. Now the last dish I’m going to ask you about is the dessert. I’ve never had anything quite like it.

CT: The mango sticky rice meringue, yes.

JB: It was delicious. I’ve had sticky rice desserts before, but you know what really got me? It was that meringue.

CT: Yes. We make that with palm sugar from Thailand. And then we whip that with the meringue egg white. And I think that the palm sugar makes the difference.

JB: It’s got sort of a savory element.

CT: It’s sweet, but savory.

JB: Yeah, that really worked for me.

CT: Yes, palm sugar always has this distinct smell. When you make meringue with normal white sugar, it’s just not the same.

JB: Ton, thanks again for taking the time to sit down with me.

CT: My pleasure, Joe.

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*A traditional Japanese method of humanely killing fish which preserves the highest possible quality of the meat.

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Saam
415 Brannan Street
San Francisco, CA
(415) 872-9555
saam-sf.com

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