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Bangkok’s culinary scene: Starting by setting the food menu for the then-new, but now landmark, Thong Lo cocktail bar Rabbit Hole, he quickly went on to open Canvas down the street not long after, where he made a name for himself as one of the city’s most progressive chefs. The menus might be broad-ranging and boundary-crossing, but there have always been consistent themes: a passion for regional and seasonal market products, wild artistic presentation (art lovers might see shades of Pollock and Dubuffet), and maximalist, explosive dishes.
However, his new 'Oomph' menu, launched in September 2024, marks a subtle shift – most of the descriptions on the menu front-load the ingredients rather than the concept. 'Spiced crayfish.' Full stop.
Becoming ‘Oomph Soup’
As Sanders sums it up: “I wanted to dial it all back and focus on just a few flavours at once, and really try to highlight just the ingredient. But I still wanted it to be exciting, unique, special, and have a big impact.” In other words, something that goes oomph. “It’s a minimal word, just one syllable. It says that this is something that’s special.”Yet despite the move towards a more focused, ingredient-centred style, the “main dish” (if you can use that term on a 28-course menu) is what Sanders dubs Oomph Soup. Colourful, chaotic, and bursting with ideas, it might act in its appearance as a sort of Rorschach test for diners – it might be a Grandmaster Flash-era New York subway car festooned with graffiti, it might be the bustle of a Thai morning market, or it might be a burbling swamp in an ’80s children’s adventure movie.
The science behind the dish
“There are so many minimal dishes… I knew that I wanted to have this Canvas-style dish with a lot going on, a lot of sauces and proteins and vegetables. I’ve always loved shabu and hotpot… I thought we could bring that here and do something a little bit different with that idea… Let’s say you are going to have a shabu or a hotpot or something like that. Those first couple of bites you have are different from the last couple of bites. It gets reduced and more intense as you’re eating it. So we use that as a reference point and also have our flavours built that way. So we put the more light ingredients and light flavours at the first part… and as you continue it gets more spicy, more savoury, with some more bitter ingredients at the end of that soup where each bite is different, and the soup changes as you eat it.”
Secrets to his signature dish
The whole process starts with the plate – each plate is made using the Japanese nerikomi technique, in which clays of multiple colours are marbled together to make intricate patterns, all of them completely unique (seeing a theme here?).The dish starts with the sauces – eight of them. “It’s a clock, we work our way around. That’s how we organise these sauces, so we have eight of these sauces. We’ll start with one here, and then we’ll do them in this order. That’s how we build from lightest to heaviest.” He moves around the plate, squeezing jagged lines of sunchoke buttermilk, koji cream, holy basil, calamansi, red cabbage, cashew, and celery sauces onto the plate, each brilliantly coloured and precisely flavoured. This is followed by dozens of tiny portions of vegetables and herbs, which on the day of the interview included different kinds of seasonal mushrooms, grilled hearts of palm, pickled torch ginger, candied rose petal, and crisp, miniature chomphu or rose apples that have a more vegetal flavour than the sweet versions sold by cut-fruit vendors on Bangkok’s street corners.
But as Sanders puts it, “another huge part of the soup itself is the seasonality of the ingredients. Typically it’s six different kinds of protein, 25 to 40 different kinds of vegetables and herbs, eight different sauces, three different seasoning powders, three different oils, and then a hot broth.” Other than that, the dish is largely dictated by the happenstance of that day.
Next on to the proteins – today, the kitchen has Phuket lobster, squid and cobia, both from Surat Thani, pork belly from Nakhon Ratchasima, lamb loin from nearby Khao Yai, and Thai wagyu beef from Sakhon Nakhon. Dab on some oils, and the soup is ready. Well, except for the soup part.
The final oomph comes with the soup base – a smoky, ultra-umami tomato water-based broth that acts as a template for the flavours to come, poured into the bowl at the table. And with the soup base, a hot stone is dropped in, taking the broth to a rolling boil. Get the camera out, if so inclined.
As for how to eat it? Like at any of the chain hotpot restaurants around town, everyone is going to have their own approach. Taste every component individually, and experience the sharp and unique flavours. Or freely mix them together. Every day is different. Every person is different. Every bite is different. So maybe – like so much of the best in fine dining -- it is a reminder that all one has is this moment.
Illustration image: © Anuwat Senivansa Na Ayudhya/ MICHELIN Guide Thailand
