SHINING STAR

Amy Chanta passed away in March but her legacy lives on. We asked her friends and colleagues to share their memories of the chef and business woman, who founded the Chat Thai empire and physically cultivated Australia’s Thai food scene.

- LEE TRAN LAM

This year’s recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Hospitality award is sadly no longer here to receive the honour.

There are many stories you can tell about Amy Chanta, the beloved Sydney restaurateur who helped Australians fall in love with Thai cuisine. There’s her story as a migrant, newly arrived in Australia and sewing pockets for 50c each in Sydney, eventually saving enough money to relocate her children from Thailand in the 1980s. There’s her story as a McDonald’s employee who, decades later, was invited to cook for Copenhagen’s acclaimed Noma restaurant. There’s her story as the founder of Chat Thai, the restaurant empire she began in 1989 – at first, she catered to Western tastes, offering chocolate mousse and crème caramel, only to evolve into the standard-bearer for Thai food as it’s cooked in Thailand. There’s her story as a force behind Sydney’s Thai Town, which in 2013 was recognised as the world’s second Thai Town after Los Angeles. And there’s her story as someone who helped the Thai culinary scene physically grow, cultivating unique ingredients for her own restaurants and helping others add them to their stir-fries, curries and soups.

“When my mum died, I got so many sweet, kind messages from people all around the world,” recalls her daughter Palisa Anderson, who continues to run the Chat Thai empire and grows an ever-increasing assortment of unique, organic produce at her Byron Bay property, Boon Luck Farm.