Take an eclectic tour of Thailand at this new downtown Phoenix restaurant and cocktail bar

From northern Thai curry to southern Thai seafood, a new restaurant in downtown Phoenix promises a culinary tour of Thailand’s rich, regional cuisine.

Yotaka Promtun-Martin and her husband Alex Martin started Lom Wong in 2019 as an intimate dinner party in their home in Scottsdale and over the years it has evolved to become one of Phoenix's most acclaimed pop-ups. Now the couple is preparing to showcase Yotaka’s family recipes at their first brick-and-mortar restaurant and cocktail bar.

Lom Wong will open in a bungalow on Roosevelt Row that previously housed fine-dining restaurant Character. Doors are scheduled to open in early March.

Bringing Thai home cooking to metro Phoenix

“Lom wong” translates roughly to gathering in a circle to eat. It is meant to evoke the warm feeling of cooking and eating with someone, Yotaka told The Arizona Republic in 2021.

“The idea is that we cook for you like you're our family, and being really sincere to the people who have really honored us to cook their food,” she said. “‘My family doesn't say 'hello, how are you,' we say 'have you eaten?'"

Yotaka grew up on her family’s farm in San Makhet, a village in northern Thailand, where she learned to cook many of the dishes that have appeared on Lom Wong’s rotating menu. She met Alex in Chiang Mai and the two began working together in the nonprofit sector, focusing on educational tourism and sustainability issues, before moving to Arizona.

In 2019, the couple started hosting weekly dinners in their Scottsdale home. These dinners were put on hold for several months when the pandemic hit. They eased back into things by offering takeout and eventually returned to in-person, outdoor dining.

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Regional Thai dishes are inspired by friends and family

The pop-up dinners at Lom Wong typically focused on foods from three different communities in Thailand.

Yotaka’s home, a tropical village located in Chiang Rai, is in Thailand’s northern-most province. Cooking there is a communal experience, where neighbors borrow ingredients from each other’s gardens and her family made foods such as curry paste and water buffalo jerky from scratch, she described.

The couple is also close to Won Pen, a chef who's like family. Her village is located in the densely forested Erawan National Park in western Thailand. Won Pen, who runs a farm and donates food to the local school, taught Alex and Yotaka some of her dishes, including fried chicken and a herbaceous, shrimp and lemongrass salad.

Some of Lom Wong's dinners also raised money for the Moklen people, an Indigenous fishing community that lives on the coast of the Andaman Sea in southern Thailand. The 2004 tsunami gave the Moklen a brief respite from developers that had taken over their land, but now the Moklen are fighting once again for access to their ancestral land.

Dishes they've learned from their Moklen partners include yam sai bai, a seaweed salad with curry paste, toasted coconut, green mango and anchovies.

Yotaka and Alex plan to cross-train with their Moklen partners, who have started restaurant in Thailand, and in the distant future, offer guided cooking tours in hopes that eco-tourism can help the Moklen keep their land.

The couple wants their restaurant in Phoenix to feel like a collective, a contrast to the chef-driven culture where a lone chef is given credit for a menu, Alex said. In reality, dishes pass through many hands, from those who grow the ingredients to those who teach their cooking methods.

“Our goal is to be sincere to the people who taught us their dishes,” Alex said. “We want to eliminate the ‘self.’ The more you educate yourself, the more you realize it’s more complex than what happens in the kitchen. We do not claim ownership of the menu.”

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What's on the menu at Lom Wong

Everything at Lom Wong will be made from scratch, from the chile paste to sauces, Alex said.

Guests at Lom Wong can expect a main menu featuring foods from northern Thailand, such as sai oua, grilled sausage made with minced pork, makrut lime leaf and cilantro root; nam phrik ong, a tomato and chile dip served with vegetables and sticky rice; gaeng phet, made with hand-pounded red curry paste, coconut milk, Thai eggplant, Thai basil and beef.

Recipes will stay true to what they learned in and around Yotaka’s village, so even a familiar dish like laab — a minced meat salad that's the national dish of Laos — is prepared in a northern Thai style, mixed with culantro and topped with pork rinds.

Rotating menu items will change with the seasons and the owners’ whims. This means diners can expect traditional dishes for Thai holidays and in the summer, “foods you eat when it’s hot,” like thang mo pla haeng, a watermelon and dried fish snack. Other specials expected to pop up include curried crab and goong chae nam pla, or raw marinated prawns.

Lom Wong will also serve Moklen specialties, such as chu bai neung boo wak now,  steamed squid and squid eggs in chile, lime and makrut lime leaves.

"I want people to feel like they are eating out of the country," Yotaka said. "I want that if my mom or Won Pen came here, they are satisfied, not embarrassed."

Spice levels depend on the dish because, as Yotaka and Alex explain, not all Thai dishes are meant to be spicy. Part of the Lom Wong experience is educating diners on regional dishes and different flavor profiles, they said.

Gaeng hang lay, a pork belly and tamarind curry dish that’s popular in northern Thailand, is mildly spicy compared to gaeng khua phrik, a pork rib curry dish from southern Thailand “that will melt your face off,” Alex explained.

“Spice is just an element, it’s not meant to be the whole thing,” he said. “You need to be able to taste the other flavors, the funk, the sour.”

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What drinks and desserts will be offered?

For dessert, diners can expect ice cream sandwiches made with Thai-style coconut milk ice cream (pronounced ai tim) sandwiched between white bread, as well as sufganiyot, Israeli deep-fried jelly doughnuts served with three sauces: passionfruit strawberry, black cardamom and makrut lime leaf, and pandan custard. The idea for the sufganiyot came from Alex’s mother, who wanted to blend their family’s Jewish heritage with Thai flavors.

Thai bartender Nuthapong "Thunder" Vance will head the bar program. Vance grew up in Chiang Mai and formerly mixed drinks at Glai Baan, a popular Thai restaurant in Phoenix.

Cocktails will include a twist on the pi?a colada based on the Thai soup, tom kha, which features coconut, makrut lime and lemongrass. Then there's the 11 Tigers, which gets its name from a brand of Thai herbal mix intended to help digestion. For the drink, the herbs are infused in vodka where it ferments for a month before serving.

Rop Nong is a gin-based cocktail that Lom Wong began serving in 2019 at dinner parties. It's made with tom yum syrup, nam prik pao, gaeng phet curry paste and Thai chile-infused ice. The flavors of Rop Nong will change as the ice melts, he explained.

One of the cocktails represents Vance's home area of northern Thailand, the Chiang Mai province, a mountainous area with mild temperatures, is known for its coffee farms. The cocktail is named after Chao Phraya, a river in Thailand, and is made with bourbon-washed coffee, Phraya rum, vanilla liquer, Campari and house-made bitters.

"What we use in cocktails are ingredients we use in Thai cooking," Vance said. "We want to represent in cocktails ingredients you can find anywhere in Thailand."

The building behind Lom Wong will also house Khla, a separately-owned cocktail bar being opened by Tyka Chheng, Colton Brock and John Sagasta, the team behind Baby Boy bar at the Pemberton. Khla, which means tiger in Khmer, will also serve Asian-influenced drinks.

"I want to make cocktails that represent me a little more," Chheng told The Republic.  "I'm happy to play with ingredients that are lesser-known and bring them to the forefront."

Lom Wong is developing a bar snacks menu for Khla.

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What to expect at Lom Wong

Vance and Yotaka grew up in a place where houses had gardens in the backyard and they wanted to replicate that homey experience at the restaurant.

"Whenever you need something, like mint or basil, you can grab it from your backyard," Vance said. "We want to represent that at the restaurant so we can use our own ingredients for cooking. We kind of make you feel like that when you're at the restaurant, like welcome to the family."

Vance is working with the owners to put in a garden with jasmine and herbs.

Lom Wong has a soft opening scheduled for early March. The restaurant will be open for reservations-only dinner (reservations can be made online) and there are plans to add brunch in the future.

Both indoor and front patio seating are available along with bar seating.

Details: 218 E. Portland St., Phoenix. lomwongaz.com. Follow Lom Wong on social media at instagram.com/lomwongaz.

Reach the reporter at [email protected]. Follow @priscillatotiya on Twitter and Instagram.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Explore regional Thai food at new downtown Phoenix restaurant Lom Wong