Saam, SoMa: A Bangkok Michelin Chef Opens His First U.S. Restaurant Friday

One SF/Bay Area opening a day, chosen and checked. Today: SoMa's turn, as the Bangkok chef behind two Michelin-starred restaurants, Le Du and Nusara, opens his first kitchen outside Asia on Brannan Street this Friday, casual, family-style, and with no plan to turn down the heat.

Thitid "Ton" Tassanakajohn runs more than 10 restaurants across Thailand and Asia, and two of them, Le Du and Nusara, hold Michelin stars and have appeared on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. On Friday he opens the first one outside the continent, and it is not in New York or Los Angeles. It is at 415 Brannan Street, a block from Oracle Park, in the room another Thai restaurant, Sun & Moon, left behind (SF Chronicle, SF Standard).

The name is the tell. Saam means three in Thai, and the three are Tassanakajohn as executive chef, Tee Atthapon as general manager, and Ty Choosuwan as chef de cuisine. Atthapon owns Song Wat on Divisadero and Kan Kiin in Daly City; Choosuwan came up at Boulevard and Prospect. Tassanakajohn lives in Bangkok, so most of the menu was built over text messages, photos of dishes flying both ways across the Pacific until he landed in San Francisco last week to lock the final versions and stay through the opening (SF Chronicle).

He is going casual where his reputation is fine dining: a la carte, family-style, the soup and rice and meat passed around the table the way they are in Thailand. The dishes the Chronicle names read like a regional Thai tour built on Bay Area produce: a Thai-Javanese lamb curry pounded by hand with chile, cardamom, clove, and cumin, simmered in coconut milk, and served with roti; a curry built around foraged cauliflower mushrooms; a charred tomato relish; green papaya salad with soft-shell crab; beef tartare with Thai herbs; khao tod pakiem, fried rice balls topped with anchovy; and a pork chop with peaches and a house Thai chile jam. The kitchen will not soften for the address. "We will not bring down the heat just because we opened in the U.S.," Tassanakajohn said. "The dishes will be as spicy as they need to be, as we eat in Thailand." He name-checks San Francisco's two Michelin-starred Thai rooms, Kin Khao and Nari, as the bar: "hopefully, close to that level" (SF Chronicle).

The room seats about 60, with wood walls and backlit shelves of clay pots and cooking vessels shipped from Thailand. The bar pours Thai beer, Bay Area drafts, wine, and sato, the bubbly fermented sticky-rice drink from Isan that Tassanakajohn says has boomed in Thailand the way makgeolli has in Korea. Dinner comes first on July 24; a shorter lunch of curry bowls over rice or noodles follows later. Reservations are already live and, per Axios, going fast (Axios).

Why this one matters this week: a chef with nothing left to prove in Bangkok picked San Francisco for his first kitchen outside Asia, built the menu by text message from across the Pacific, and is bringing the full Thai heat with him.

Also opening

Notte Divino, Sausalito (opens Jul 24). The 20-year Osteria Divino closed after owner Elizabeth Nebot died in March; two of her regulars, bartender Jaxton Funk and bar owner Johnny "Love" Metheny, reopen the Caledonia Street room with the same chef, Yovani Castillo, back after 12 years, Southern Italian food, and live jazz pushed to 1 a.m. (Marin IJ)
Mile Limit, West Berkeley (grand opens weekend of Jul 24). Sergio Monleón and Emily Sarlatte, of La Marcha, turn their San Pablo Avenue wine shop into a wine bar and vinyl lounge with oysters, crudo, anchovy-butter toast, and DJs. (Berkeleyside)
Reef Zaman, Redwood City (grand-opened Jul 19). The former Sizzler's charcoal grill, crowned here July 15, held its grand opening Sunday with a Jordanian dance performance and DJ; the 280-seat room is now fully lit, daily 11 to 9. (Redwood City Pulse)