That One Dish Spotlight, No. 6: Pailin Chongchitnant

A conversation with the proprietress of Hot Thai Kitchen about what she’s learned after a decade of teaching people about Thai food online + the evolution of the YouTube landscape

The that one dish. spotlight is a column that connects us with amazing AAPI writers, artists, chefs, creators, and entrepreneurs who talk about the “one dish” that best captures their experiences living at the intersection of one or multiple cultures. Everyone’s got “that one dish” that provokes a certain emotion, becomes a staple they lean on in the ups and downs of life, or immediately transports them to a formative time, Anton Ego-style. Our personal experiences continue to show how food and the five senses involved with both making and enjoying it evoke vivid memories that serve as meaningful links to the past. You can check out TOD’s archive of past interviews here.

For my sixth installment of the “That One Dish spotlight, I’m excited to be chatting with Pailin “Pai” Chongchitnant, the mastermind behind Hot Thai Kitchen. Pai’s been teaching and creating content about cooking Thai food for well over a decade now, first beginning her journey on YouTube in 2009 sharing videos of her cooking Thai favorites (think pad krapao, tom kha gai, and, of course, pad thai). Since then, it’s evolved into a community of over 2 million subscribers across her social media platforms, as well as a newsletter and two cookbooks. She’s also the co-host of the Canadian TV series, “One World Kitchen,” on GustoTV.

Pai’s love for food has remained steadfast ever since she started cooking as a child growing up in Hat Yai, in Southern Thailand. When cable TV became available to her as a teenager, Pai grew enamored with watching cooking programs hosted by Jamie Oliver or Nigella Lawson—all of which sparked within her the dream of, one day, being the host of her own show. However, with Thai food still considered too niche and obscure for mainstream networks, Pai tucked away that dream and headed to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she studied nutritional science. She’d later go on to attend culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu in San Francisco and work in professional kitchens.

Her dream persisted, though, and on her brother’s suggestion Pai launched a cooking show on her YouTube channel during a time when the platform was quickly rising to prominence. Despite being trained in classical French methods and Western foodways, Pai found herself returning to her roots; a longing for the flavors of home and a yearning to share the food she grew up eating with people motivated her to keep her channel’s focus on demystifying Thai cuisine. Throughout the next few years, she juggled creating new content while continuing her work in restaurants—but now, Pai dedicates all of her time to teaching others about Thai cooking. With an abundance of recipes on the Internet these days, Pai’s in-depth, thoughtful explanations of the ingredients and techniques that go into a dish, ability to empower her readers to be confident in the kitchen, as well as her charisma and joie de vivre (both on and off camera) have kept viewers tuned-in, even almost 15 years later.

Pai and I talked about what she’s learned after more than a decade of teaching people how to cook Thai food online, how her content’s evolving with the ever-changing YouTube landscape, as well as—of course—the one dish that best captures her experiences as a native Thai now living in Vancouver. Hope you all enjoy—and do stay tuned for next week, as I’ll be sharing a recipe for the aforementioned dish from her recent cookbook.

You've been teaching Thai cooking on YouTube for well over a decade now. What are some things that you’ve realized in that time about the way that people perceive Thai food—and do you think that’s changed over time? 

I’ve realized that most people's idea of what Thai food is comes from Thai restaurants, which makes for a limited view of any cuisine—especially outside of its home country. The way it works is that Thai restaurants like to copy each other. That’s how you end up with restaurants with almost exactly the same menus, to the point where somebody from a certain town will say, “Well, all the Thai restaurants have this dish”—but if you were to step out of that town, nobody else would have heard of it. I’ve had people ask me [to create recipes] for dishes that don’t exist. They say, “Well, every restaurant here serves it.” But it still doesn’t exist in Thailand, and those dishes aren’t a very good representation of Thai cuisine. So, there’s a lot of work I have to do to help people unlearn what they think Thai food is—and to teach them what it can be. 

You spoke with NPR a couple years ago about this idea of distinguishing between “authentic” and “traditional” Thai food. Can you speak to this a little more? 

To me, “traditional” refers to a way that a dish has been done for years and years and years. “Authentic” food is a bit harder to define because cuisines change; the way we make a dish today may not have been how we made it 30, 40 years ago. But I’d argue that that is still authentic because all foods change over time. It may not be traditional because it’s a new thing—but eventually, as time passes, it’ll grow into something traditional, because we only remember things from so many generations back. 

In recent years, I think people have become careful with the word “authentic.” They don’t want to use it because they’re, like, “What’s ‘authentic?’” or “Is this new thing ‘authentic?’” I know what people mean when they ask, “Is this authentic?” They’re asking if this dish is done the way it would be done in Thailand. They’re asking me if, to Thai people, this is recognized as being a Thai dish and if it tastes right. I used to stress over the word “authentic” and what it meant, but I think my attitude toward it is more relaxed these days. I don’t shy away from using it anymore because most people know what I really mean, and I also know what they really mean when they use this word. 

Can you give an example of that—a dish that’s seen a lot of change over the decades? 

Tom yum is a good example of it. It’s one of the oldest Thai dishes, free from foreign influence. But these days, there are so many variations of it. People will make tom yum with evaporated milk for a thicker, richer broth, even though evaporated milk isn’t even a Thai ingredient in a strict sense of the word. Of course, if you want the original tom yum, you’d need to take out the evaporated milk. But it’s become so much a part of the Thai food landscape that I’d argue it’s an authentic dish—even if it contains an ingredient that’s not even endemic to the land. 

You’ve talked about how people’s perceptions of Thai food comes primarily from restaurants—which, at the end of the day, makes sense. So, how do you approach bridging that knowledge gap in your content? 

When I do recipes, I make sure that the dish is done the way it would be done in Thailand—and if, for some reason I’m doing anything differently, I will always say, “This is not the way it’s normally done in Thailand, but we don’t have such-and-such ingredient here, so this is what I’m doing instead.” I’ll always point out anything I do that might be a substitute or a modification, because at the end of the day, we’re not cooking in Thailand. But it’s important to let people know what things are different. 

You’ve mentioned that Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver’s cooking shows inspired you a lot as a child to get into the food media space. What was it about having your own cooking show that was so intriguing and exciting for you? 

I always loved presenting things. Most kids hate getting up in front of a class and doing oral presentations, but I enjoyed it. I was nervous, but loved the adrenaline that came from it. I always had a penchant for performing, as well as a love for teaching—and that’s another thing I loved to do even as a kid. I’d find myself tutoring friends struggling in school and as I did that, I started to realize that I had a knack for explaining things in such a way that helped people understand them easily. That’s something I often hear from my viewers: “You make Thai food so easy to understand!” And I love food. You put all those things together, a cooking show was the ultimate combination of the things I liked. 

YouTube came along in 2005, but I didn’t know anything about it until 2009. I kept telling my brother about how much I wanted to have a cooking show. He said, “Well, you’re not gonna just be put on TV. Nobody puts random people on TV, right? Why don’t you put a cooking show on YouTube? People are starting to do that.” That was the first lightbulb I had—like, “Oh, I can do that? I can just have a cooking show and put it up on YouTube without anybody’s approval?” That’s when I realized that this thing I always thought was a dream is actually doable. I didn’t want to be Jamie Oliver because he’s famous—but because he gets to cook and teach people. I was so happy to be able to put videos on YouTube because finally I was able to do what I wanted to do. At the time, I thought this could be something I add to my resume for when I applied to the Food Network or something. 

I remember getting an email notification when I got my very first subscriber. I was, like, what is a subscriber? I remember getting so stressed out. I was thinking about magazine subscriptions and how I’d have to give them something like a magazine every month or so. I wanted to turn it off because I felt pressured. I initially wanted to do this at my own pace; I didn’t want to feel like an audience was waiting for something. I was panicking quite a bit when that happened. It’s funny because nowadays, all everyone wants is a subscriber. But the best and most genuine storytelling comes from when you’re not trying to get subscribers or followers or money. I think that’s something lost on content creation these days. 

How have you seen the YouTube landscape change from when you started your channel way back when to now, as well as the way you create and share your content? 

Oh, it's changed so much. It's almost unrecognizable from what it was before. When I started, YouTube was still primarily used as a place to share family videos, cat videos, whatever—videos that you wanna share with your friends, right? But it was a sharing platform; you couldn’t make money on it at the time, and very few people were actually using it as part of their business. People who started a YouTube channel at the time when I did was mainly doing it out of passion, as a hobby. Fast forward to now, YouTube’s now a money-making platform for content creators to make a real career for themselves. 

It’s difficult to balance creating a channel that’s enticing to the public, but also true to what you want to make. In the food space, recipes used to do really well. People loved looking at recipes on YouTube, but now they’re everywhere—and now, recipe-only channels have stopped getting as many views as other channels with food-related, non-recipe entertainment. It’s just like how the Food Network has moved on from traditional cooking shows that show you different recipes to these food competition shows; it’s moved from instruction to entertainment. 

People who are making how-to content have to be really on top of the entertainment part in order for their instructions to be relevant. You have to be fun to watch, but also have enticing titles and thumbnails. It requires so much more thinking and strategizing now. To do that while trying to maintain the core of what you want to teach is the biggest challenge right now for any content creator. 

How has that, in turn, affected your content creation process? 

Nowadays, I do a 50-50 split between recipe videos and non-recipe videos. For non-recipe videos, I’ve done a grocery store guide, as well as an ingredient deep-dive—comparing different brands of curry paste, for example. I also did a video on how to order Thai food properly in a restaurant so that your meal is balanced. I have so many recipe videos, but now I want to talk about other aspects of Thai food—things I never had the opportunity to talk about when I was doing just recipes. When I do a recipe video, it’s only going to entice people who’d like that recipe, you know? If I were to post a beef curry recipe … well, if you don’t eat beef, that video’s irrelevant. And if you’re not in the mood for beef curry, you probably won’t watch it, either. There are so many things that affect whether you’ll want to watch a specific video. But I know how to eat Thai food. And if you’re interested in Thai food, then the chances of you being interested in that is higher. 

It’s a good place for me to be at, and my audience seems to like it when I do non-recipe videos. They have a wider appeal—and to be honest, after having written and done only recipe content for so many years, it’s much more fun for me. They’re more interesting, I get to really nerd out over a specific thing, and it’s just overall a more satisfying thing to do. 

Without thinking about what’s authentic, what’s one dish that encapsulates your experiences as a Thai who’s now living in Canada?

Tom yum would be it, for the same reason we discussed earlier. It’s a Thai dish that’s so Thai in its origin—but has been incorporated, modified, and turned into so many different things. If you were to search “tom yum” on my website, you’ll find tom yum pizza, tom yum spaghetti, tom yum fried rice, all sorts of things. Tom yum is a flavor that works so well in so many situations. If I want to turn something Thai, I make a tom yum flavor. You put lime leaves, lemongrass, and galangal into something, it’s going to be unmistakably recognized as Thai. 

How do you personally make it?

I start off with good broth. Chicken stock, pork stock, fish stock. Whatever it happens to be, it has to be strong. Then I boil what I call “the tom yum trinity”—lime leaves, galangal, lemongrass—in it for about five minutes. I season it with fish sauce and sugar, then finish it off the heat with lime juice. Whether or not you add Thai chili paste or even when you add your protein all depends on what kind of tom yum you’re making. That’s another thing about tom yum, it’s so flexible. I can make tom yum anything; as long as I have those herbs, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, and chili, I’m good to go. Everything else is modifiable. 

What do you miss about Thailand when you’re living in Vancouver—and what would you miss about Vancouver if you went back to Thailand?

One thing I miss about Thailand is the availability and diversity of food. It just feels like food is just out and about wherever you go. Here in Vancouver, you gotta go find food. But one thing I miss about Vancouver when I’m back in Thailand is the fresh air. There’s nothing like clean, fresh air and just how walkable the city is. The walkability of Vancouver and many other cities in North America is unparalleled. Bangkok just isn’t that walkable, especially because it’s so hot. Even if you could walk the distance, you’ll be sweaty by the time you get [to your destination]. And crossing the roads is genuinely very dangerous. Once, in Bangkok, my friend and I were going to walk to a restaurant. He says, “Let’s take a taxi,” and I go, “Dude, it’s a four-minute walk.” And he goes, “Yeah, but it’s a four-minute walk in Bangkok. Different playing field here.” I’ll walk the four minutes—but any more than that, I'd have to think about it. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.