When Tom Rochanakit, owner of Cafe de Bangkok, wants a Thai meal away from the Gilbert restaurant he runs with his wife, Amie, he often heads to the local temple instead of another restaurant.
The Sunday gathering is part potluck and part community table, and some of the people cooking and eating beside him run restaurants of their own. Rochanakit said in general, Thai restaurateurs around the Valley share resources and help one another, acting more as a collective than as competitors. After all, Maricopa County holds roughly 5,800 Thai residents, and this kind of support, he added, has contributed to his success.
Rochanakit and Cafe de Bangkok isn’t the only Thai business thriving though this community. Nearby, Thai Rama Phoenix and Chanpen Thai Cuisine have a similar story that includes passed-down recipes and local support. And, lucky for us, this all translates into wonderful restaurants all diners in the Phoenix area can enjoy.
While these three restaurants only scratch the surface of the Valley’s Thai food scene, each has a story to serve, alongside a bowl of tom kha and drunken noodles.
Cafe de Bangkok
Food at the Forefront From a Young Age
For five years of Rochanakit’s childhood, his workday began at 2 a.m. He was the eldest of four boys, and his family earned money doing laundry and selling food. Each morning, he helped his mother prepare about 20 dishes for a market stall before rushing to school.
Often, said Rochanakit, this made him late for school. But though he had a good reason, he accepted the punishment because he didn’t want to explain that he had to work before classes in order to support his family. In the end, the experience gave him a cooking education that eventually led to Cafe de Bangkok.
But before the restaurant Rochanakit built a career outside the hospitality business, earning a bachelor’s and a master’s degrees in business. He spent years working in technology and automotive logistics. All that changed after a trip to Northern California’s Bay Area.
It wasn’t the first time he had been disappointed by Thai food in America, but it was there the idea of opening an authentic Thai restaurant in the United States took hold and wouldn’t let go.
Moving to Arizona
Rochanakit came to Arizona in 2014 to learn the American restaurant business and how to be a better cook, working at Amazon and driving for Uber and Lyft to make ends meet. In 2019, he and Amie took over Cafe de Bangkok from a Thai family he knew through his work photographing community and temple events.
As the couple grew the business, they learned from the local Thai community and Rochanakit’s mother, who came from Surat Thani in southern Thailand. The chef built the menu with her regional dishes, and to this day he still tastes dishes before they leave the kitchen.
Aside from the push for authenticity, Rochanakit is particular about ingredients, using quality tamarind, coconut milk, and palm sugar. As a child, he ate the latter like candy from his mother’s stores, and it remains a necessary flavor for emulating her dishes. Those choices come through in menu items such as the Gang Pu Bai Chaplu, a thick Southern curry generous with jumbo lump crab and fresh betel leaves.
Plates have expanded to all four regions of Thailand now, including the rich Khao Soi, a comforting dish that draws from Northern Thailand. But Rochanakit prepares the curry the way his Southern Thai mother did, with a fuller coconut-milk base, tender beef brisket, and crispy fried noodles on top. While the dishes carry his mother’s influence, he tweaks things and listens closely to customers as he continues to refine the overall experience at Cafe de Bangkok. 1111 N. Gilbert Rd., Suite 101, Gilbert, cafedebangkokus.com
Thai Rama Phoenix
Cooking With All Five Senses
Jittiyaporn “Oh” Makulsawatudom arrived in the United States in 1995 with a hotel management degree from Thailand. Restaurant work was a practical choice when she needed an evening schedule to fit around her husband’s daytime job. She learned the business from the back of the house to the front, started at Thai Rama in 2005, and bought the Phoenix restaurant in 2017.
Makulsawatudom tells younger people that a job title matters less than doing the actual job well. Diners can taste just how well the Thai Rama does it through each dish. For example, the Garlic Chicken, a dish so beloved that Makulsawatudom claims it will never change. To make the meal first comes the sauce, which requires roasted garlic, chilies, and a whopping 100 pounds of onions.
While the hard work has driven employees to quit, said Makulsawatudom, she refuses to cut steps. She believes the care used in making the dish is a gift and lesson for the guests who enjoy it, something she considers an honor to share as a large part of her Thai identity.
Maintaining Traditions and Standards
The level of details found in each of Thai Rama’s dishes also depends on a team that has stayed and learned together. Take longtime server Panee Kitbanjong, who has been a familiar presence in the dining room for years.
In the kitchens, Makulsawatudom trains the cooks to add ingredients into the wok in a deliberate order, using sound, aroma, appearance, texture, and taste to tell them when to adjust. She believes a written recipe can only take a cook so far. Makulsawatudom connects that attentiveness to patience, meditation, and the larger role cooking plays in Thai culture.
She even considers Thai cuisine a form of “soft power,” introducing people to the country through flavor and hospitality while giving Thai immigrants a way to return home for a meal. That welcome extends to her staff and the customers whose lives she has watched unfold. She said she’s there as regulars celebrate milestones and weather divorces, and she describes staff and customers as family.
“You don’t come out to eat because you’re hungry,” she said. “You go out to have a good time.” 1221 W. Camelback Rd., Phoenix, thairamaaz.net
Chanpen Thai Cuisine
The Restaurant Becomes Your Life
One of Chanpen Thai Cuisine’s most popular off-menu dishes started as Alan Ramonaitis’s personal favorite meal. His mother, and the restaurant’s namesake, would make him a dish of Pad Kra Pao Gai (ground chicken, basil, vegetables, a fried egg, and chile-laced fish sauce) as his normal dinner. But once customers saw it land in front of him, they began asking for it.
But running a restaurant was never his original plan. Ramonaitis once pictured himself becoming a teacher and was even accepted into Teach for America, but as that future loomed, he felt unsure of his chosen path. Then, his mother opened the South Phoenix restaurant.
Business remained slow for its first year or two, and the dutiful son worried about Chanpen Thai Cuisine’s future. So, he stepped in as a Phoenix New Times review brought in a rush of diners. Over time, his help with grocery trips and inventory runs gradually turned into a full time stewardship of the restaurant.
Chanpen herself still has a hand in the business, but Ramonaitis has given the space a looser style and more comforting atmosphere. Overall, he wants Chanpen to be a place where people can unwind, including the friends he rarely sees elsewhere. And some of those friendships came from the longtime customers, which, over time, has made the restaurant almost like a personal gathering place.
A Hang But Make It Professional
The relaxed mood of Chanpen Thai Cuisine does not mean low standards or less heat in the kitchen. The wok needs enough fire to sear ingredients almost instantly, sending up smoke as garlic, herbs, and oil hit the pan. Makrut lime leaves, once brought back from Los Angeles in long drives for the best ingredients, now come from a Thai grower in Arizona. The floral fragrance runs through the Pad Prik King with crisp green beans and red curry paste, filling the dining room with a mouth-watering aroma.
Though the unassuming exterior is easy to miss, the dining room is almost always busy, a testament to how well Ramonaitis has hit the mark with guests. He has learned that if the restaurant is going to occupy so much of his life, fun is a necessary part of the day. He moves through the never-ending to-go orders and plates heading to tables with a loose, unstudied ease. He is quick to laugh at himself and entirely at home in the role he never planned to take on, but one the South Phoenix community clearly needed. 2727 E. Broadway Rd., Phoenix; and 2700 W. Baseline Rd., Tempe, chanpenthaiphoenix.com
