The World's Best Female Chef Pichaya 'Pam' Soontornyanakij On Her Culinary Journey & Restaurant, Potong

Position Potong among the world’s best restaurants. Establish the hospitality group, The X Project. Become a celebrity television chef. Win the title of Best Female Chef in the World. These are just a few milestones in the remarkable journey of Pichaya 'Pam' Soontornyanakij (Bangkok, 1989).

Her delicacy and sweetness are perfectly matched by her charisma and strength. She comes from a family that has practised traditional Chinese herbal medicine for four generations, having immigrated to Thailand in the 1880s. On June 19, in Turin, she was awarded the title of Best Female Chef by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Following in the footsteps of culinary luminaries like Brazil’s Janaina Torres and Peru’s Pía León, Chef Pam becomes the first Asian — and the first Thai — to receive this global honour, after already being named Asia’s Best Female Chef in 2024.

“My love for gastronomy came from the first memories I have of being in the kitchen with my mother, observing and learning. It was never just a hobby; it was a way to connect with people. That's what made me fall in love with this profession,” she explains to ELLE Gourmet.

“We wanted to build something bigger than a simple restaurant, a space for creative risk.”

She decided to move to theUnited States to study at the Culinary Institute of America. “I wanted to challenge myself in a different and competitive environment. In New York, I worked on the three-star Jean-Georges; it opened my eyes to refinement,” she recalls.

In 2018, she founded The X Project with her husband and partner, Tor Boonpiti. “We had been working behind the scenes for years, and we realised that we wanted to build something bigger than a simple restaurant, to build a platform, a space for creative risk and authenticity, where bold culinary ideas could evolve without limits or labels. The X represents the unknown and experimental; it reflects our vision of food, not as something static, but in constant development.”

The first step was The Table, “an intimate concept of the chef's table that allowed me a personal connection with the diners”. That evolved into Smoked, an American barbecue with a Thai vision, with four locations in Bangkok. And, finally, in 2021, Potong, which means simple, arrived, his haute cuisine project. “We built it inside my family's century-old pharmacy, in Bangkok's Chinatown.” Occupying five floors, they tour as part of the experience in a building “whose history influences the energy of the dining room”. Above Potong, there is the Opium cocktail bar. Later, Tora Izakaya arrived, “a Japanese-inspired concept based on seasonal precision”. The latest was Khao Sarn Sek, “an informal fine-dining establishment that celebrates Thailand's sacred ingredients, where I can explore their flavours more freely.”

All in all, Potong is its crown jewel. With a Michelin star and ranked 13th in the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, “is where I channel my Thai and Chinese roots into avant-garde and innovative cuisine that reflects who I am as a person and as a chef. I investigate from a very intimate perspective, which evokes memories, emotions and discoveries, based on tradition, but expressed through modern techniques and a contemporary sensibility.”

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The proposal is based on a single tasting menu priced at 170 euros – excluding drinks – which serves 40 people per night, and follows the philosophy of the Five Elements —salt, acid, spices, texture and the Maillard reaction — and the Five Senses. Signature dishes include All About the Duck, Abalon Noodles or her version of Pad Thai with shrimp. “I seek to represent a new generation of refined, deep-rooted and progressive Chinese-Thai cuisine,” she concludes, as she prepares for the July opening of RA-U, “a modern Thai grill” located in Siam.

Read the original article in ELLE Gourmet Spain.