The Resy Questionnaire
1. Favorite thing you’ve ever cooked?
Gai yang (Thai grilled chicken). It has a lot of nostalgia attached to it — I cooked it during my pop-up. It was my first time cooking outside of the world of restaurants, when I was trying to figure out how to cook my mom’s food. It took a while to get it right. It’s a whole chicken that I spatchcock; cure and brine low and slow with a marinade of turmeric, shallots, garlic, chiles, a little oyster sauce, and some fish sauce. It was a lot of steps to produce, but a really amazing product. We occasionally do it at the restaurant.
2. Kitchen tool or equipment you couldn’t live without?
A peeler. For ginger, carrots, and other vegetables, I really love a peeler.
3. What pantry items would you bring on a desert island?
Smoked paprika, pickled banana peppers, black pepper, chipotle, and fish sauce.
4. What’s your favorite place to get barbecue in Atlanta?
5. Favorite cookbook?
“The Drinking Food of Thailand,” by Andy Ricker.
6. Your drink of choice?
A cold Dr Pepper.
7. Favorite food movie?
“Chef.”
8. Your ideal dinner party guest, dead or alive?
Julia Child.
9. What restaurant industry person do you admire the most?
I’d say Andy Ricker because he works really hard, had this huge empire of restaurants, but he’s such a humble person. He’s very generous with his knowledge and values relationships — friendship is very important to him, and that’s very admirable.
10. The greatest restaurant experience of your life so far?
Izakaya Rintaro in San Francisco. I went last year around October. Just walking in, the environment itself, it felt like I was in a different country. It was a really great dining experience, it blew my mind.
11. Your greatest professional achievement?
Being a James Beard finalist this year [Savang was nominated alongside co-chef-and-owned Rod Lassiter for the Best Chef: Southeast category]. It’s taken some time to wrap my mind around it, it’s huge. We’re going to Chicago [where the James Beard Awards ceremony is hosted] — I’ve never gone to Chicago, either — and I’m still kind of pinching myself. The highest pinnacle of my professional career this far.
12. What single dish best describes your personality?
I’d say a whole fish. I like to get my hands dirty — throw out all of the niceties and “being proper”: be yourself and enjoy.
13. If you could go back in time, which restaurant would you dine at?
I’ve heard about this for a long time, from a lot of old chefs talking about it, and I’ve never gotten to eat there, but I wish I could go eat at Le Cirque in New York when Daniel Boulud was there. That would’ve cool.
14. Your favorite meal from childhood?
I really enjoyed jok. It’s a rice porridge, sometimes there are pork meatballs or pork ribs, and it has green onions. You can crack a coddled egg into it or a pa thong ko (crispy savory dough), with white pepper.
15. What is your wish for the restaurant industry?
I wish that people can make a lifelong career in it, as a server or as a cook. That you can do more than survive and that the industry can provide for you and your livelihood. That you can buy a house, save money, retire. I wish our industry could do that for people who want to work in it.
16. What do you wish you did better? What do you do well?
I wish I could time manage my life better.
What I do well: I have really interesting ideas that go against the grain of what normalcy is.
17. If you could eat through a city for a day, where would you go?
18. The one thing you can’t resist splurging on when you go out?
I can’t stop going to Dairy Queen and getting a Blizzard after dinner. No matter how far I go in my career, it still just makes me so happy.
19. What do you value most in restaurants?
A good underdog story and authenticity of the concept — when the chef or owner do what they love and don’t care what other people think.
20. It’s your last meal on earth, what are you eating?
I’m going to SingleThread in California!
Talat Market is open for dinner Wednesday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. and until 9 p.m. on Sundays.
