Nutchtakamol Songkhramsee

A total perfectionist

Nutchtakamol Songkhramsee, Khun Tai, is the proprietor and chef at the highly acclaimed Tanya’s restaurant in Khao Tao.  Her restaurant is so well patronised, with reservations highly sought-after, that she can set her own terms.  If you want to eat her “taste of love”, be prepared for the fact that you will have to make an on-line reservation well beforehand, select your dishes in advance from a menu you will receive via email in Thai or English, and pay a deposit before you even think of arriving.  And the restaurant is only open 5 days a week, because Chef Tai and her dozen staff work long hours and deserve a reasonable work/life balance.  So, you will only eat Tai’s food following her stipulations but the number of regular, repeat customers clearly demonstrates that no-one minds, the food is so good.

Tai is a passionate chef, fun-loving and generous.  She arguably spends too much time meeting the needs of others -her customers, her extended family and her friends – when she should be paying more attention to her own health and well-being.  Close friends have been known to shake their heads knowingly when Tai takes days to respond to even a simple Facebook message.  This lady overcommits herself.

Tai began her life in Udon Thani in the Isan region of Thailand, and completed her early schooling there, as the oldest of 3 children in the family.  Tai’s father was in the military when she was a child, and when she was high-school aged, the family relocated to Loei province which borders Laos across the Mekong River.  Tai remembers, not particularly fondly, just how cold it gets in that mountainous province in winter months, and how many layers of clothing were necessary to feel minimally warm. The warmth of Hua Hin, its natural environment of sea and sand, its closeness to Bangkok, and it’s small-city appeal are what Tai now values in Hua Hin, but that was not what brought Tai to the local area some 20 years ago now.

Tai followed her then boyfriend, now husband, Pupay, when a work opportunity saw him moving here.  It was quite a leap of faith for Tai, who had never even visited Hua Hin before she packed her bags to head to Hua Hin.  However, young Tai had seen Hua Hin feature in television dramas and felt that it was a place she could aspire to live.  With Pupay by her side, she embraced the opportunity with an open heart, despite being aware they both could have secured more profitable employment in Bangkok.  Even as a woman in her early 20s, Tai was seeking a lifestyle the bustling capital could not provide her. Around 3 or 4 years later the couple were so sure they had made the right decision that they moved their extended family, including Tai’s parents and sister, here as well. Having her family live nearby now provides Tai with a welcome sense of security and family involvement, as she enjoys the role of doting aunt to her 3-year-old niece.

As a child Tai was diligent and studious, and frequently had her head stuck in a book.  A high achiever who set a very high benchmark for herself, Tai was often preparing to compete in province- level reading and writing competitions between the ages of 7 to 11.  Tai won quite a few prizes as a result of her academic prowess, yet now understands these wonderful childhood memories laid the foundation for her distress when she later was unsuccessful for the first time.

The name Tanya became an alternate name for Tai while she was at university studying a Humanities and Social Science degree, majoring in English.  To earn money, Tai had secured a job as a tutor to some Japanese students who had come to study abroad in Thailand.  Readers will all acknowledge that the tonal Thai language can present difficulty to speakers of other languages. Tai found that her nickname, cutely meaning “rabbit”, was incorrectly pronounced, meaning it sounded like “dead” instead.  So, with some complicity on the part of a lecturer, “Tanya” was born, and will forever be commemorated in the name of her restaurant, although Tai does not use the name regularly any more. One significant event while at university was Tai’s first taste of failure.  Receiving a failing grade on a writing task left a scar on Tai that she has carried well into adulthood.  It has been with her, in her nightmares, until only quite recently, when, with the assistance of a life coach, she has been able let it go and focus on her many successes.

Tai’s first job after her university graduation was as a secretary in a Japanese company that imported and exported metal technical parts between Japan and the Philippines. After her extended family moved to Hua Hin, they were involved for a while in running a breakfast café on Soi 88, but gave that up when the family resettled in a more peaceful part of the local area, Pranburi, a little to the south, where proximity to the local dam ensures a more reliable water supply and better water pressure than many areas of Hua Hin district, a problem Tai has still not seen addressed despite living here for two decades now.

Looking to establish her own business, Tai turned to her hobby, baking.  She didn’t actually have any real expertise nor much experience in the area, but what she had in abundance was self-belief and the ability to do whatever it might take.  While now everyone seems to turn to YouTube to acquire new skills, back then Tai was reliant on books to provide the necessary instruction. Tai began baking an assortment of delectable sweet treats for Velo Café and word soon spread, and with it grew Tai’s reputation as a baker and her customer base.  Then, in 2016, Tai decided to sell directly to the public by opening her own café at the now defunct but then highly trendy and Insta-worthy Seenspace on the beach just north of Hua Hin centre. Never one to rest on her laurels, Tai was constantly looking for ways to augment her business, but came to realise she did not possess the full skill-set required of a career baker.  She needed to either learn new skills again to meet the ever-changing trends in the business, or adapt in some other way. So, Tai pivoted the business, while still located in the entertainment, retail and dining precinct of Seenspace, and Tanya’s came into being as a Thai restaurant.

Teenage Tai would never have dreamed of being a chef.  Sure, she had always loved her food, and had great memories of meals cooked by her grandmother, but had no formal training. However, she had a distinct talent for recreating the tastes of her childhood, and adding a great deal of love to every recipe. To this day, if it isn’t something Tai doesn’t personally love to eat, you won’t find it on the seasonally-changing menu at Tanya’s. Tai actually closed her business just before the pandemic, struck, and flew to London to take up a position in a restaurant in the fashionable London district of Soho just before lockdowns began, but was forced to fairly promptly turn around and return to Thailand.  London’s loss became Hua Hin’s gain, once restrictions started to lift and customers were again clamouring for Tai’s “taste of love”, initially delivered in takeaway form.The establishment and successful running of Tanya’s, now located in Khao Tao, since Seenspace closed in 2020 during the height of the Covid pandemic, is what Tai believes is her greatest achievement to date.  There is no doubt she would like to see various branches of the business pop up at some time in the future, but she is content to wait.  Tai and Pupay’s only child, Jeng, features in her succession planning.  Now a young man of 19, Jeng is studying a degree in Business at Stamford University and is likely to provide insight into how to make the business more effective and efficient.  Tai is certainly not doing a bad job in this, even without Jeng’s full-time involvement yet.  She has been able to attract several high-profile social media influencers to Tanya’s, and although she posts on Facebook, Instagram and Line herself, Tai believes it is word-of-mouth promotion from these influencers which sees all her seats regularly and solidly booked.

The vast majority of the customers at Tanya’s are Thais from Bangkok who are taking a few days respite from its hurley-burley. Tai often receives compliments along the lines of, “Your food is just like the food my grandma cooked for us.” So, in this respect, what Tai cooks can be summed up as a more sophisticated take on Thai comfort food, evoking memories of family belonging, while at the same time making eating fun. Tai admires Jay Fai, a Michelin star omelette chef, who is still cooking in her 80s and is proud that Jay Fai has visited Tanya’s on two occasions now and been very positive and encouraging.

Early 2024 has seen Tanya’s relocate to a nearby temporary site as its home undergoes some renovation and refurbishment.  Tai had not set a time-frame for the improvements to the venue she wished to undertake, but snapped up the opportunity when a nearby site with a full kitchen serendipitously became available.  Tanya’s permanent home, located by the Khao Tao reservoir, is having a fresh coat of paint, new floor tiles, an upstairs fit-out to facilitate additional dining space and the addition of an organic kitchen garden, making it even more eco-friendly. The concept of ordering your meal in advance was already environmentally conscious as it ensures a much closer-to-zero wastage in the kitchen, which also looks to source its premium ingredients as locally as possible for a similar reason.

Tai hopes the newly renovated Tanya’s is complete in early April 2024 and she is able to move home again. Starting in the restaurant business in the second part of her 30s was not easy, and she now wishes she had had the foresight to embark on Tanya’s at least a decade earlier. That said, Tai is supremely happy with the life she is living.  She claims not to have an active bucket list, preferring to live in the now and enjoys spontaneous experiences such as travel, over planned ones. Thai’s ideal day-off will see her start with her only guilty pleasure, coffee. Just the scent of her morning coffee, brewed for her by Pupay every day, signals to her the comforting fact that he is still by her side. Tai is likely to follow the coffee with meditation and then later move to listening to music and drinking wine, then a meal of Som Tam with fermented fish. There is nowhere in the world Tai would rather be than in Hua Hin. A remarkable achievement from a woman from Udon Thani who most would have no clue started her business just 5 thousand baht in credit.