Growing up in his father's and grandmother's groundbreaking LA restaurant Talesai, Kris Yenbamroong has Thai cooking in his blood. But when it came time for him to take over the family business, he wanted to cook the food he grew up eating at home, not what restaurant customers--the Hollywood elite--asked for. Craving more spice, more sour, more funk, Kris opened Night + Market as an offshoot to his family restaurant, featuring the intense flavors of Northern Thai cooking, the kind made famous in the United States by Pok Pok.
Since then, though, he's come back around on "inauthentic" cooking, realizing that who he is as a chef is wedded to who he is as a person: a postmodern American. In his debut book, Kris shares his techniques for the fiery Thai food his grandmother grew up on, as well as taking the flavor lessons and techniques from that food and transforming them into favorites like Thai fried chicken sandwiches and pastrami drunken noodles. Along the way, we see what it means to be an Asian American chef today.