How Max Wittawat Puts His Own Spin on Thai Street Food at Bangkok Supper Club
When the team behind the famously “no pad Thai” restaurant Fish Cheeks opened their second restaurant in 2023, it was always going to be big news. After opening last fall, Bangkok Supper Club has delighted New Yorkers with their inventive, creative Thai dishes, many of which were inspired by Thai street food, ever since.
Now, a year after opening, it should be noted you still won’t find any pad Thai on the menu. “I was raised in Bangkok, and I maybe ate pad Thai once a year,” chef and partner Max Wittawat says with a laugh. You will, however, see some new dishes appearing soon, thanks to an upcoming trio of special dinners that begins this month and continues into October and November. Each of the tasting menus for the three dinners will be themed: The first dinner on Sept. 16 commemorates the restaurant’s one-year anniversary, while the second event on Oct. 15 focuses on the cuisine of Northern Thailand. The third installment, on Nov. 11, will be all about noodles and, who knows? You may even find a pad Thai-inspired dish for that one.
We sat down with Wittawat for get the stories behind some of Bangkok Supper Club’s menu mainstays, plus details on a few never-before-seen dishes that you can only get as part of their upcoming events this fall.
Whether you come for those dinners, or simply stop by anytime, however, Wittawat’s one piece of advice is: Sharing is caring. “One thing that sometimes hurts my feelings is when a group of four comes in and they all order the same food. They don’t want to share, so they get the same thing. I want to encourage people to order and eat more family-style. Try more. Explore more,” he says.
And with that, here’s a closer look at five menu staples — and two never-before-seen dishes — in Wittawat’s own words, that you’ll want to order on your next visit to Bangkok Supper Club.
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1. Uni and Crab Tartlet
“This one is very small and flavorful — a lot of people say it’s their best bite of 2024. It’s not like a European or Western tart, where you make the dough and bake it. It’s more like a crêpe batter. You dip the mold into hot oil and then into the batter, then back into the oil to fry until it’s crispy. In Thailand, we call that kratong tong, which sort of means ‘golden bucket.’
“The inside is lon (relish). There are so many kinds of lon; you can make it with crab, tofu, fish, or even mushrooms. In Thailand, we eat it with fresh vegetables like cucumber, and you dip it into a relish.
“The lon here is made with coconut cream cooked with shallot and lemongrass, seasoned with fish sauce, tamarind paste, and coconut sugar. It’s a little sweet, sour, and salty, but very well balanced and creamy. We put some chile, too, to give it a little kick. There are also a lot of herbs.
“We put the fresh crab meat inside and top it with Hokkaido uni and Ossetra caviar. That’s not common in Thai cuisine at all, to put uni and caviar. Normally, I’m kind of against it when you go to a restaurant and you have an uni or caviar supplement and it doesn’t do anything for the dish, but with this one, the briny flavor of the uni and caviar really complement the subtle sweet and sour lon, and it’s a good contrast with the tartlet — like a symphony in my mouth. It’s become our signature right now.”
2. Prawn Satay
“If you go to Thailand, you’re going to see satay with pork, beef, or chicken on a skewer served with peanut sauce, and the pickled cucumber, shallot, and chile in a different bowl. You eat the skewer and dip it in the sauce.
“Here, I use prawn, which isn’t very common. I wasn’t sure if people would want to use their hands or not for a skewer, so I just made it without one. All of the marinade is the same: I marinate the tiger prawn with lemongrass, turmeric powder, and coconut milk overnight. Then we put it on the charcoal grill, which is really the highlight of the restaurant. It’s the five-foot charcoal pit that makes everything so special.
“My business partner, Jennifer Saesue, who owns Fish Cheeks, is allergic to peanuts, so we turned [that aspect] into a cashew sauce instead. We roast the nuts and blend them until it becomes a cashew nut butter, then add soy sauce and curry paste and spread it on the plate.
“For the pickles, I strain them and put them directly on the nut butter. So, the cucumber, the shallot, and the chile will be ready on the plate. When you eat it, you cut the prawn, scrape the sauce, and add a cucumber — it’s a perfect bite.
“Sometimes when you put a dipping sauce on the plate, especially if it’s something new, people aren’t sure how to eat it, even if we explain. They might eat the satay by itself, without trying the sauce; this way forces them to try everything I want to showcase.”
3. Hokkaido Scallop Ceviche
“If you’ve been to Fish Cheeks and had the raw shrimp, it’s served flat on the plate; this was inspired by that. It’s called goong chae nam pla, which translates to prawn soaked in fish sauce. We wanted to make it a little more elevated without changing the flavor. So, instead of serving that sauce, I turned it into granita.
“There’s mint leaves and garlic, and mint leaves go well with watermelon. I love watermelon, so I put the juice into that sauce to give it more volume and scrape it into the granita. So, it’s still spicy and sour, but the sweetness of the watermelon really enhances it. It makes an already cold dish even colder and more refreshing. We also add a cube of the rind, pickled, with pickled garlic and a mint leaf.”
4. Pork Jowl
“This is our most popular dish, the best seller. Every table needs to order this one.
“We make the baked garlic rice, and on the bottom there’s crackling, which we make from the pork fat. We cut the fat into small pieces and cook it until it renders, then fry it until it’s crispy. We mix that with fried shallot, fried garlic, salt, and chile flakes to make it crackling.
“We put that on top of the fried garlic rice, and then add pork jowl that’s thinly sliced. Then there’s sliced shallot and lime juice.
“I recommend that customers squeeze the lime and toss and enjoy everything together. This one is from my memory: My dad used to cook this for me. I would say you couldn’t find this dish in other Thai restaurants because it’s too simple. In Thailand, you can buy the crackling in the supermarket, which my dad used to do to make a quick breakfast for me.
“It’s so simple, but no one really makes it here because it’s like a household recipe. Here, you can’t buy the pork crackling, so I make it, which means it’s really special.”
5. Pandan Cake
“Pandan leaf is used often in Southeast Asian desserts. We blend the leaf with water and squeeze the juice out, and then we make a chiffon cake and pudding out of that juice. You may have seen it on social media; we serve it in a whole coconut. We cut the coconut and clean it up, and then put the cake on the bottom layer with coconut pandan pudding in between. Then, we put salted whipped coconut cream on top. On the side, there’s a coconut crumb. It’s a lot of texture and flavor, but it’s not too sweet. There’s a balance of saltiness and sweetness.”
And here are details about two never-before-seen dishes appearing in the restaurant’s anniversary dinner on Sept. 16 …
Bonus: Yum Som O
“In Thailand, we only use pomelo in this salad, which has a very distinct flavor, but for our anniversary dinner on Sept. 16, I plan to use a variety of citrus to give it more dimension: grapefruit for a hint of bitterness, and a pop of sour and sweet from tangerines. And instead of peanuts, which we don’t use because Bangkok Supper Club’s owner Jenn Saesue is allergic, I’m using pistachios, which are rarely seen in Thai cuisine. Like all the dishes we’re serving at this dinner, this is a salad that I’ve long wanted to add to our menu. It perfectly captures our philosophy: authentic Thai taste, beautiful, innovative presentation, and made with new and local ingredients.”
Bonus: Beef Short Ribs with Grilled Eggplant in Green Curry
“Although our anniversary event will be a tasting menu, we wanted the main course to reflect our dining philosophy, so it’ll be served family-style. Green curry is well-known in Thai cuisine, and like our take on massaman curry, we wanted to offer something that would be simple and comforting, but in our signature style. For this dish, we slowly braise the short ribs and serve them with our own green curry paste, made from scratch, and grilled local eggplant, which I prefer to the more traditional apple eggplant or eggplant berries that are often used in Thailand. The smokiness from the grilled eggplant is a wonderful addition to the curry, which we’ll serve with jasmine rice.”
Bangkok Supper Club is open daily for dinner starting at 4 p.m. Book your tickets ($135/person) for their first special dinner, commemorating their one-year anniversary, here.
Ellie Plass is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. Follow her on Instagram and X. Follow Resy, too.
