London restaurants are elevating their Thai food game

Chefs are crafting boundary-pushing dishes, giving diners a high-end alternative to pad thai and curries

- Bloomberg

It's been almost a quarter century since Nahm landed in London and helped change the city's culinary landscape. The now-shuttered, Michelin-starred Thai restaurant from Australian-born David Thompson opened in 2001 and brought an immense amount of attention to the cuisine, finally giving the capital's diners a high-end alternative to pad thai and red-yellow-green traffic-light curries.

In recent years, Sirichai Kularbwong's sleeper-hit Singburi and "nu-Thai" spots, launched by Nahm alumni like Andy Oliver (Som Saa) and Luke Farrell (Speedboat Bar), have raised the bar in London even higher.

Now John Chantarasak, another Thompson alum, and his wife, Desiree, have opened their first brick-and-mortar restaurant, AngloThai. The name not only references Chantarasak's parentage but also his compelling culinary approach, combining Thai flavours and a meticulous focus on seasonal British produce with Cordon Bleu-trained finesse.

The restaurant, in a quiet street on the edge of Marylebone in London's West End, has been six years in the making, the culmination of a series of residencies across the city. The menu reflects a loose collection of greatest-hit dishes that Chantarasak perfected in those locales and is perhaps key to why AngloThai has hit the ground running.