🇹🇭 Thailand · Thai cuisine · b. 1965
The food-blogger-turned-Michelin-chef restoring royal Thai cuisine at Nahm Bangkok.
Pim Techamuanvivit is a Thai-born chef and restaurateur who took an unusually circuitous route to professional cooking. Born in Bangkok and educated in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and the Berkeley/Stanford research community, she spent the first part of her career in technology and academia in California. She began writing the food blog Chez Pim in 2002, which became one of the most-read food blogs in the world during the early-to-mid 2000s, mixing recipe writing, restaurant reporting and travel writing with a distinctively confident, opinionated voice.
She transitioned to professional cooking in her 40s. In 2014 she opened Kin Khao, a small Thai restaurant near Union Square in San Francisco, with the explicit project of cooking Thai food the way it is actually eaten in Bangkok — without the sweetness, butter, and 'Thai-American' template that dominated American Thai restaurants. Kin Khao won a Michelin star in its first year of eligibility (2015), making Techamuanvivit one of the most rapid Michelin recipients in the modern guide.
In 2018 she was approached by the Como Hotel group to take over the kitchen of Nahm, the celebrated Bangkok Thai restaurant founded by Australian chef David Thompson. She accepted, becoming one of the very few Western-trained chefs to be invited to lead a major Thai restaurant in Thailand itself. Under her leadership Nahm has continued to hold critical acclaim and has been positioned more explicitly around royal Thai court cuisine, drawing on the surviving recipes and rare techniques of the late-19th and early-20th-century Thai royal household.
In 2021 she opened Nari in San Francisco — a more ambitious Thai restaurant than Kin Khao, exploring regional and royal Thai traditions for an American audience. She was named James Beard Best Chef California in 2022.
Thai food is not the food at Thai restaurants. Techamuanvivit has been outspoken throughout her career that Thai cooking outside Thailand is overwhelmingly distorted by Western expectations — too sweet, too creamy, simplified, anglicised. Her restaurants are built around the project of cooking what she calls 'the food Thai people actually eat' and 'the food the Thai royal household actually cooked,' which she regards as among the most refined cuisines in the world but largely invisible to Western diners.
One of the most celebrated Thai restaurants in Thailand; Techamuanvivit took over from David Thompson in 2018. Focus on royal Thai cuisine.
Modern Thai restaurant; opened 2018. Named after the Thai word for woman.
Earlier restaurant, opened 2014. Won a Michelin star in its first year of eligibility.
These recipes from our database reflect the thai cooking tradition that Pim works in. They are not direct reproductions of Pim's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“The food at most Thai restaurants in America is not Thai food. It is what Americans want to think Thai food is.”
— Pim Techamuanvivit, interview
“Royal Thai cuisine is one of the most refined cuisines in the world. The fact that almost nobody outside Thailand has eaten it is a failure of cooks, not of the cuisine.”
— Eater interview, 2019
Studies computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and later in the Berkeley/Stanford research community.
Begins writing the Chez Pim food blog, which becomes one of the most-read food blogs in the world.
Publishes The Foodie Handbook.
Opens Kin Khao in San Francisco — her first restaurant.
Kin Khao earns a Michelin star in its first year of eligibility.
Takes over the kitchen of Nahm in Bangkok from founding chef David Thompson; opens Nari in San Francisco.
Nahm reorients more explicitly around royal Thai court cuisine under her leadership.
Wins James Beard Best Chef California.
Pim Techamuanvivit is a Thai-born chef and restaurateur who runs Nahm in Bangkok and Nari in San Francisco. She is one of the most prominent international advocates for authentic Thai fine dining and royal Thai cuisine, and one of a very small number of women chefs running a major Thai restaurant in Thailand itself.
Chez Pim is the food blog Techamuanvivit started in 2002. During the mid-2000s it was one of the most-read food blogs in the world, with a distinctively opinionated voice that mixed restaurant reporting, recipe writing, and travel writing. The blog was the basis of her transition from technology and academia into professional cooking.
Yes. Nahm was opened in London in 2001 and then in Bangkok in 2010 by Australian chef David Thompson, who is widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on Thai cuisine. In 2018 the COMO Hotels group, which owns the Bangkok location, replaced Thompson with Techamuanvivit. She is one of the very few chefs internationally to have been invited to lead a major Thai restaurant in Thailand itself.
Royal Thai cuisine is the formal cooking tradition of the late-19th and early-20th-century Thai royal household — a body of dishes, techniques and presentation rules developed within the Grand Palace in Bangkok. It is characterised by extreme refinement of knife work, layered flavour balancing, hand-shaped fruit carving, and rare ingredient pairings that are almost never seen in Thai restaurants outside Thailand. Techamuanvivit has been central in bringing it to international culinary attention.
No. Techamuanvivit trained as a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and worked in technology and academic research for the first part of her career. She is largely self-taught as a chef, having transitioned to professional cooking in her 40s after years of writing the Chez Pim food blog and cooking obsessively at home and on trips to Thailand.
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