YOTAKA MARTIN

Deeply personal, flavor-packed, microregional Thai food meets a chef’s passion for family and community.

- MELANIE HANSCHE,CEDRIC ANGELES

LOM WONG

Phoenix

Ingredients for making curry at Lom Wong in Phoenix, including northern Thai herbs from the family farm in Chiang Rai, galangal, lime leaf, lemongrass, fresh and dried Thai chiles, and coconut meat

YOTAKA AND ALEX MARTIN don’t want their story to fit into a typical restaurant narrative. “Making food is not a career; food is just a way of life,” says Yotaka, a self-taught chef from a farming community in the province of Chiang Rai, Thailand.

Nor do they want their restaurant, Lom Wong in Phoenix, to resemble other Thai restaurants in America. Don’t expect a roll call of familiar hits like pad thai and massaman curry. Instead, the menu explodes with flavorful firecrackers, dishes from the three Thai regions where the couple have lived and worked: Chiang Rai in the north; Kanchanaburi, near the Myanmar border; and Phang Nga on the southwest coast.

Take, for example, a crunchy, creamy green mango salad with shrimp, coconut cream, and lime juice showered with crispy shallot and toasted coconut and peanuts, a recipe handed down from Yotaka’s grandmother. It’s a good partner for the fiery scallop crudo, tempering the heat of a nam pla from the Moklen—an Indigenous seafaring people based on the coast of the Andaman Sea—that’s laced with chiles and tart lime juice.