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Chef Charlie SooTalay Thai Cuisine |
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561-691-5662 Chef Charlie Soo - Mr. September, 2011
Chef Charlie is a former investment banker, who always had a love of Thai cooking. He ran his aunt's Thai restaurant, Nan Thai Fine Dining, in Atlanta, before returning to South Florida in 2005, where he had previously attended Santaluces High School in Lantana. He worked as a manager at Legal Seafood in Boca Raton for two years. When he met his future wife, he knew he had to step up his game a bit before he could offer her the life that he knew she deserved. (Nice guy!!) In 2008, Talay Thai was born. And just one year later, in 2009, Talay Thai was named "Best New Restaurant in Palm Beach County" by former Palm Beach Post Food Critic, Charles Passey!
Joan Lipinsky Cochran's Sun Sentinel interview:
What do you think of the celebrity chef phenomenon?
I saw chef Anthony Bourdain on a TV program called No Reservations: Food Porn, and I have to agree that food is the new porn. Everyone's watching The Food Channel, but they're not really going to make the recipes on television. Food is like porn in that you can't define what fine cooking is, but you know it when you see it.
Do you have a favorite movie?
I like Dinner Rush. It's an independent movie about gangsters and food and the workings of a restaurant. I've seen it 12 or 13 times because it's fairly true to life.
What's your favorite book?
I've read "Waiting: The True Confession of a Waitress" by Debra Ginsberg a few times. It's about how servers are always waiting for something else to happen, for an acting job or another career. It gives you an idea of what goes on in a server's mind. The author was trying to become a writer and wrote it based on her experience as a waitress.
Is there any Thai dish you don't like?
Durian. It's a Thai fruit that smells like rancid pooh. I can't see why you'd eat something that smells and feels like rancid meat. It is sweet, though, and customers ask for it. I hate when my parents bring it into the restaurant. I tell them to take it away, it'll make the place smell.
Do you have a motto you live by?
Your destiny is your character. If you're a good person, if you believe in quality and service, your destiny will be good. I use that quote to motivate my staff. I tell kids who work for me and plan to go on to college or graduate school that if you do a good job here, you'll do a good job with other aspects of your life.
What's the best thing about being a chef in South Florida?
Florida's the only place in the U.S. where you can get one of the key ingredients in Thai food: kaffir limes or key limes. When I worked for my aunt, I used to drive down here to pick up key limes, keeping the air conditioner on cold to make sure they stayed fresh on the way to Atlanta. Lemon grass and galangal, also called blue ginger, also grow better in South Florida than anywhere else in the U.S.
Do you have any advice for cooks?
If you want to be a great chef, you have to taste your food. A lot of people go into this business but don't want to spend so much time at the restaurant. If you cook 200 meals a day, you can get palate fatigue. But if you don't taste the food, you can't assure its quality. I keep tons of spoons on hand and try to taste from every plate before it leaves the kitchen.
Charlie was our Guinnea Pig. Our very first photo shoot. We had no idea what we were doing.
Poor guy...this lasted, like, 3 hours. But Charlie it not only a fantastic chef, he is a goofy, funloving
little boy at heart and he made it so much fun as you can see by the pics. Afterwards, we gave him a ride in the rickshaw outside! Also pictured Hot Chef Owners Taylor Morgan (driving rickshaw) and
Judy Myers (riding in the back with goofy, funloving Charlie).
Makeup Artist, Gina Seebauer, Photography by Michael Herb of 204 Studios
