Siam Authentic Thai Restaurant 1st in Sask. to get special recognition from Thailand

This article was originally published on March 26, 2019. It has since been updated.

Siam Authentic Thai Restaurant is no mystery to the downtown lunch crowd in Regina. But if you're anything like me (I've never attempted to cook Thai food at home), what goes in Siam's food is an altogether foreign alchemy.

When I was tasked with finding a great spicy dish in our city, I was excited to go to Siam, sit down with the owners — and to eat something that would make me sweat.

I am greeted by the owner, Thutchai Srisodsai, holding a rattan serving tray with eight small bowls of spices. These ingredients are different sources of heat and flavour for all sorts of spicy Thai dishes, he says.

"This dry chili? This pepper? It's all spicy, right? But it's a different kind of spicy. That's how you're going to taste it in Thai food. Like some dishes, you're going to taste it as spicy in your tongue. Some dishes, you taste it spicy after, in your tummy. And some dishes, you're going to regret when you go to the toilet after," he explains with a laugh.

Next, Thutchai has me taste Siam's "Hot Shot," the hottest appetizer on the menu. It consists of five shot glasses with cooked shrimp inside, with yum sauce.

You can definitely taste the basil right off the top and the yum sauce with all its layers of flavour. The fresh chili is hot but not painfully so. Thutchai instructs me to eat the cucumber and lettuce to cool my palate before taking the next shot.

This time, it's a slow burn. My mouth feels hotter and so does my throat. Beads of sweat form on my forehead. It's not unpleasant, though; it's very good.

I ask Thutchai why spicy food is enjoyable to Thai people.

"For me, spicy is fun. It's not boring, right? When you have spicy, especially for Thai food, we balance with everything. It's also sweet, right? ... So it's fun in your mouth." He laughs.

It's true. The Hot Shot was herbal, it was garlicky, it was spicy. There was some pungency from the fish sauce. There were a lot of things, but it wasn't just hot.

Thutchai and his wife, Youi, first came to Regina as exchange students in the early 2000s. Youi was studying computer science in their hometown of Bangkok and her university allowed students to do some of their courses abroad. She pursued the opportunity to go to the University of Regina and Thutchai came afterward, enrolling in ESL courses.

The couple quickly learned there wasn't an authentic Thai restaurant in Regina.

"We missed Thai food," Thutchai recalls, "so we had to cook it ourselves."

Eventually they decided to introduce Regina diners to the real thing.

First, Thutchai went back to Bangkok to do a year of culinary school and a six-month apprenticeship at a traditional Thai restaurant. He and Youi hunted out the best Thai dishes in Bangkok and did their best to replicate them – and the different regional specialities of Thailand – in building the menu at Siam.

They came back to Regina and opened the restaurant in 2006.

They so effectively represented genuine Thai cooking that the Thai Minister of Commerce, who dined at the restaurant last fall unannounced, urged them to seek "Thai Select" certification.

The minister expedited their application and they received official certification in November, the first restaurant in Saskatchewan to obtain it. The Thai Select window decal hangs on their front door.

"It guarantees that we serve the Thai food the way it should be, the way we have it in Thailand," says Thutchai.

"So we are proud of it, and we hope that Regina people will be proud of it too, that you have the real thing from Thailand in your city."