Chef Aphisith Phongsavanh’s culinary and artistic passions have intertwined to produce a unique way of storytelling through food. He chats about his culinary ethos, ingredients and the launch of his Laotian cuisine concepts
I’m a chef by trade, a creator by night – and day!” Creativity in the culinary field is a given, but now and then, a chef comes along who is simply bursting at the seams with innovative ideas. Meet Aphisith Phongsavanh.
Canadian-born with roots tracing back to Laos, Aphisith (also known as AJ) had an early foray in the culinary world – from washing dishes standing on a milk crate to helping in the front of house. He says, “My parents were refugees from Laos in northern Thailand, before they moved to Canada in the 80s. Out of survival mode, they got into the F&B industry. Fast forward a few years, my aunts and uncles opened restaurants of their own. And it just took off from there.”
The next step of his journey took him from Toronto (at the likes of David Chang’s Momofuku) to New York (at the Waldorf Astoria). He landed in Dubai just under a decade ago and now works as an F&B consultant for various brands, while also collaborating with other chefs (Faisal Naser from Lento, Rita Soueidan from Maisan 15 and JP Anglo from Kooya) over various concepts. AJ is full of praise for the potential of the country as a whole. He notes, “There is plenty of opportunity here. You don’t necessarily have to work in just a restaurant. As you know, Spinneys has a really great F&B programme with the ready-made meals and the counter. There are so many avenues in the UAE where you can pursue F&B without having to work in a restaurant or a hotel, per se. Even as a consultant, a lot of businesses reach out to me whether it’s for product development, menu development, team development… the world is your oyster here in the UAE.”
An important aspect of his world is the art of storytelling through food – and nowhere can you see this more clearly than his concept called The Legendary Naga which is described as a ‘culinary union between Laos, Persia, GCC and the Levant’. He says the inspiration for the concept harks back to his childhood, and explains, “There’s this one particular dish that always piqued my interest, and that is gaeng massaman. There were spices in there that were vibrant to my taste buds… cumin, fennel, nutmeg and cinnamon. And these are spices that you wouldn’t normally have in Laos and Thai cuisine, it’s an influence from abroad.”
So naturally, AJ did some research. “Some food researchers said that ‘massaman’ is a bastardisation of the words ‘muslim man’. There’s one thing for certain, and that is massaman curry has Arabic influences from the spices.”
This discovery led AJ to wonder what other dishes from his familial cuisine were similarly influenced by trade and cultural exchanges. “I went down the rabbit hole of West Asia in terms of Iran, the Levant, GCC, even Pakistan and India. I looked at the food and the recipes and I looked at the history of the Silk Road and the spice trade. I put things together in a thoughtful way that made sense and it wasn’t wacky.”
Ensuring the right flavours of Laotian cuisine come through to diners is paramount to AJ, and doing that comes with a deep reverence for ingredients and more importantly, for sustainability. “There are certain ingredients that are must-haves like lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf which we don’t get in the region. If I can substitute something that makes sense which I can get here, then I will do that. A dish that really encompassed that idea was a coconut curry that I made from lentils and chickpeas from this region, as opposed to using ingredients from back home.”
In addition to The Legendary Naga, AJ also has a casual dining arm called Al Naqa Lao Kebab House. He says, “Al Naqa is more of large silver tray platters of coconut saffron rice laced with toasted cashews and mint, my grandma’s double fried chicken with no batter, koobideh kabab Lao-style with lemongrass kaffir lime leaf and spicy chutneys. Another dish on that menu is ‘biryani noodles’. I’ve made my grandmother’s chewy rice noodles doused with my own biryani gravy with roasted local UAE pumpkin.” With these mouthwatering dishes, AJ wants to take his pop-ups to the next level and reveals that Al Naqa is opening a brick-and-mortar venue later in 2024. Eventually, AJ says, The Legendary Naga is also something he’d like to pursue as a physical restaurant.
He adds, “A lot of people would say it’s crazy, even my parents. My family having three restaurants and me being in the industry at a young age, I know how hard it is – and your parents never want you to take the hard path. But to me, it’s not the hard path. It’s the fun path. To me, having a restaurant is more than just cooking food and serving guests. It’s this amalgamation of crazy chaos that becomes refined when all of these ragtag individuals come together back-of-house, front-of-house, management team and you just get it done. It’s a beautiful experience and that’s what I strive for.”
