“If I cook pad thai, I want to cook the best pad thai,” says Narin “Jack” Kulasai, owner of new Haymarket Thai restaurant Porkfat. While many Thai diner menus in Sydney encompass dozens of dishes, Kulasai’s menu is focused and will change regularly – sometimes daily – depending on what he picks up at the markets.

Kulasai, an alumnus of David Thompson’s lauded Long Chim, explains that the menu is based on dishes and flavours that remind him of home. But while he’s originally from Saraburi in central Thailand, his cooking at Porkfat will take in the broad scope of his home country’s regional cuisines.

“I have some very good memories of eating my favourite food in Thailand that I have never been able to find since I moved to Sydney six years ago,” Kulasai tells Broadsheet. “So I want to introduce those flavours that remind me of home with family-style as well as street-style cooking.”

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He’s recreating those memories by making his own curry pastes and sauces, using 100 per cent palm sugar imported from Thailand. And, as the restaurant’s name suggests, he’s using pork fat as his main cooking fat, a staple of Thai cooking until commercial cooking oil became popular.

Staples include a deep-fried barramundi with mango salad and plenty of lemongrass, mint and coriander, as well as a Phuket-style curry with tiger prawns and betel leaves. Baked tiger prawn with vermicelli and ginger is also on the menu – Kulasai says the dish takes him back to when he worked at Thompson’s award-winning restaurant Bangkok restaurant Nahm (Thompson is no longer involved in Nahm).

“I started early in the morning and finished late at night, and after work I’d go have a beer with my head chef and I would order baked prawn with vermicelli all the time,” says Kulasai.

To drink there’s a selection of Thai beers and a simple wine list, and for dessert a refreshing house-made coconut ice-cream with roasted peanuts, palm seeds and candied pumpkin.

But for Kulasai it’s not just about the food. He wants to “bring everybody to Thailand”, and that comes down to the finer details at the 30-seater. This includes the Thai music that plays in the background, and allowing diners to peer into the wok-fired kitchen from the mezzanine level. Dishes are plated up on hand-painted ceramics from Wiang Galong, an ancient city in northern Thailand in the Chiang Rai province, as well as Kulasai’s own personal collection shipped from Thailand.

The intention of “bringing everyone to Thailand” also comes down to the restaurant’s hospitality, Kulasai adds.

“If you talk about food in Thailand, it’s not just about food. It’s about hospitality. It’s about kindness. It’s about the guests. It’s about Thai culture. We don’t separate food from the culture … hospitality is in the genetics of Thai people. Why do you think Thailand is known as the land of smiles?”

Porkfat
Shop 2, 61–79 Quay Street, Haymarket
0451 921 991

Hours:
Tue to Sun 11am–10pm

porkfat.com.au
@porkfatsydney