The menu at Chat Thai’s Campbell Street flagship is long. Really long. We’re talking more than 100 items long. If Anderson had to choose her favourite dish, though, it’d be the gaeng bpu, a coconut-based yellow curry of crab meat and betel leaves with rice vermicelli noodles. “It’s the culmination of an R&D trip my mother and I took to Phuket,” she says. “I love how warming, aromatic, herbal and spicy it is. We make the curry paste with turmeric fresh in-house and use lots of spanner or mud crab meat, depending on what’s available. It’s a real crowd pleaser.”
Perhaps being a spark plug runs in Palisa Anderson’s blood. Anderson is the daughter of the late Amy Chanta, who founded the first Chat Thai restaurant in Darlinghurst in 1989 and, as a result, became a pivotal force in introducing unadulterated Thai cooking to the Australian palate. There are now Chat Thai outposts all over Sydney – from Randwick and the CBD up to Chatswood and Manly – but the 2007 opening of the Campbell Street location proved especially transformative for the city’s Thai people.
“Back then, that small pocket between Chinatown and Surry Hills was more isolated than it is now,” Anderson says. “Ours was one of a handful of Thai businesses that conglomerated in the area and attracted a whole lot of other people that saw its potential. You’d build it, and they’d come.”
And come they did. So much so that, in 2013, the Haymarket stretch of Campbell Street and portions of Pitt and Goulburn Streets were officially given a name by the City of Sydney – Thai Town – making it arguably one of only two Thai Towns in the world (the other being in Los Angeles). Two years later, the family opened Boon Café around the corner, fusing traditional Isaan cuisine and East-meets-West creations geared towards a new generation of diners – think bacon-and-egg congee, fried chicken burgers garnished with green papaya salad and pandan coconut chiffon cake.
More than just an all-day eatery, Boon is also home to Jarern Chai, a grocery store packed with Southeast Asian pantry staples, snacks, ready-made meals and specialty certified organic produce from Boon Luck Farm, a 107-acre plot in the Byron Bay Hinterland that Anderson, her husband and two children began tending in 2015.
These days, when she’s not planting green peppercorns or overseeing day-to-day restaurant operations, Anderson continues building on her mother’s legacy as an ambassador for Thai culture, flavours and ingredients. She’s a fixture at the country’s foremost food festivals, including Gourmet Escape and Tasting Australia, and produce from Boon Luck Farm regularly graces the menu at revered restaurants like Quay and Bennelong. Her column in The Guardian has explored everything from the virtues of durian to the joys of keeping bees and her 2020 SBS miniseries, Water Heart Food, provided viewers with an even deeper look at her memories and inspirations alongside some of Australia’s finest chefs.
Anderson wears so many hats – farmer, chef, restaurateur, writer, television host – that it’s almost impossible to define her. Ask her how she defines herself, however, and you’ll get a different answer entirely.
“As I get older, I realise more and more that I’m a conduit,” she says. “I’m a ‘third-culture kid’ – not exactly Thai, not quite Australian, but a combination of the two. I see myself as a translator of the food and the culture of, and for, both sides.”
I’m a ‘third-culture kid’ – not exactly Thai, not quite Australian, but a combination of the two
As the owner of multiple ventures who splits her time between Sydney and Byron Bay, Anderson understands the importance of a streamlined workflow better than most. “I’m an organised person, but not always as organised as I could be,” she says, “so the Everything Button on the Google Chromebook is a very handy tool for a small business owner.”
The Everything Button is a 'search key', the one button that helps you find everything you need fast, such as files, apps and answers online. Finding documents, spreadsheets and emails quickly has been a “game changer”, Anderson admits, but easy access to search the web is the biggest pro. “Especially in such uncertain times, knowing that I can find anything and everything for my businesses – whether it’s staying on top of award rates, finding more sustainable packaging or what the growing conditions are like for the holy basil – takes a big weight off my shoulders.”
Haymarket was one of the first parts of Sydney to feel the impact of the pandemic, and when the current lockdown ends it's more important than ever that diners discover and experience Haymarket's Thai gems. With that in mind we asked Palisa to recommend her five Thai Town must-tries. Here's what she told us.
Watch: Discover how a Chromebook, some holy basil and the Everything Button are helping Palisa on her road to recovery
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