Thai until you succeed

Thai cuisine flourished after non-Thai chefs took it to the world. Now, two new top-class restaurants are run by Indians

- VIR SANGHVI

When does a cuisine become truly international? My guess is that the tipping point comes when a cuisine's dishes and techniques are so widely accepted that anyone, no matter what nationality, feels comfortable cooking them.

One example is French cuisine. Italian is another.

The third great international cuisine is - believe it or not - Thai. The Australian chef David Thompson visited Thailand as a young man, fell in love with the country and its food and searched for traditional home-cooking recipes that were being forgotten. He made them the basis of the menu at the Darley Street Thai, his influential restaurant in Sydney.

His restaurant Nahm in London was the first Thai restaurant to win a Michelin star anywhere in the world. But his real legacy may be the number of non-Thais he trained.

Many of them - White guys, mainly went on to open Thai restaurants all over the world.

Over the last year, Thompson has been spending time in Goa, training Indian chefs to cook for Fireback, the Thai chain. But, with the notable exception of Ananda Solomon, who ran the Thai Pavilion at the President Hotel in Mumbai, most Indians have yet to excel at Thai cuisine.