A Q&A with Kat Thirakomen and David Fiske owners of Bangkok Belly.
When Kat Thirakomen and David Fiske opened Bangkok Belly on Belmont in November their idea was to offer dishes from Thailand that they missed and craved the most. Judging by the restaurant’s popularity, Portlanders will soon be craving these foods, too. The menu centers on skewers and salads, with seasonal specials like goong ping—grilled wild Mexican shrimp skewer with green garlic nam jim seafood sauce—and Yum Tua Waan, a sugar snap pea salad with housemade chili jam, cilantro, mint, shrimp paste, coconut, peanut, and fried shallot. The couple met in Bangkok and then moved to Portland to go to grad school—David in urban planning and Kat in business—before returning to Thailand, until recently. Now they live south of Sunnyside, in Richmond. We talked about the swing dance scene in Bangkok, what they love about this part of Belmont, and what “yum” means in Thai.
So your family has a restaurant business in Thailand. Tell me about it.
Kat: I’ve always been around restaurants, but the food here [at Bangkok Belly] is not the same as what we serve at my parents’ restaurant. [More on that later.] We have: a tight concept of the dishes that we love and miss from when we both lived there together for almost ten years. So: skewers and Thai salads. We toss herbs with different things like proteins—steelhead trout, pork collar to give two examples—and a variety of bright, sweet, tangy dressings. And we have a cocktail program that’s ingredient-forward. David spearheads that.
David: Thai spins on the classics is my approach to the bar program. So we have a really good Martini on the menu with a Thai basil shrub. And there’s an Old Fashioned with a little bit of banana liqueur and rum inspired by a famous Bangkok banana fritter.
Kat: This makes us different from other Thai restaurants in town. It’s a really small space with a small kitchen, so we keep everything tight. We also make everything from scratch using quality ingredients. We make curry paste from scratch, we make our own chili jam. Everything is fresh, using local ingredients you can’t find in Thailand when we can, and people have been tasting and noticing that.
What made you decide to choose Sunnyside as a place to open your business?
David: The space became available—the previous restaurant [Daily Fuel] was leaving. And we really fell in love with the space. It’s a 100-year-old building with tall vaulted ceilings and the original windows let in a lot of natural light. We also liked the size of it, and the layout seemed perfect for our concept. We like the open kitchen—we want it to be intimate and community-driven. What’s even cooler is that we uncovered the original floor tiles from when it used to be a Pantorium.
A what?
Kat: A Pantorium.
David: Essentially, it’s a fancy word for a dry cleaner. It was like a drapery dry cleaning service. One of our first Instagram posts had original photos of it. This building has had many lives. I knew it when it was a pizza restaurant, and then it got chopped up into two spaces. I’m from Portland, and I’ve always loved this stretch of Belmont. This is my favorite commercial stretch in Southeast. It still has an old Portland vibe, even though the businesses have changed.
Kat: What’s cool about this block is that the business owners are always around. We know the owners at Los Puñales, at AnnamVL—there are three generations there. Sugar Hill, Olivia at the tattoo shop across the street, the new owners at Aalto Lounge…
David: There’s also H Mart, and with that and AnnamVL, there’s a connection of Southeast Asian people and people who like Asian food. We felt that was another great reason for us to be here.
Do you guys ever get ingredients from H Mart?
Kat: We source from purveyors most of the time. But if we need more limes…
David: It’s definitely nice if we run out of something. It’s like our emergency pantry.
Do you ever get anything from the farmers market?
Kat: We have some seasonal dishes on the menu. Currently we have a sugar snap pea salad, which is our take on a winged bean salad. It has the same kind of crunch. We are sourcing it from a local farm, Pablo Muñoz Farms. And one of our purveyors is Organically Grown Co. We get a delivery from them every week. We try to use organic whenever we can. One of our skewers is oyster mushroom, and that’s from OGC.
How did you guys meet in Thailand?
David: Kat is from Thailand and I moved there in 2011 to teach English. I thought I would stay a year, and then I met Kat. I ended up staying for almost four years. We moved back here, both went to grad school, and then moved back to Thailand in 2018 for about five years. But we initially met through swing dancing.
Really? Is there a swing dancing scene in Bangkok?
Kat: It’s bigger than the one here, now.
David: It was just starting when we were there, and we both started learning at the same time.
Kat: One of my really good friends from middle school, went to the US for school and he brought it back.
He brought it back single-handedly?
Kat: Yeah, and then he found another American teacher who also loves swing dancing and they joined forces to build a scene together. And we were part of the scene-building.
David: Kat was learning from her friend, a Thai guy, and I was learning with an American guy who I met through some friends. When they joined forces, we met, and the rest is history!
Kat: We ended up teaching swing and lindy hop together in Thailand on Saturdays.
David: We were dancing like three, four times a week and when we first moved back to Portland we were dancing a lot. We don’t dance as much these days! But, you’ll notice that the music that we play in the restaurant has a lot of swing-style jazz and other music from that era.
Kat, tell me how your family’s restaurant differs from Bangkok Belly.
Kat: My parents do hot pot. Hot pot is when you put fresh vegetables, fresh meats, meatballs into boiling broth. It’s communal—you cook it together, family-style. Then you dip it in sauce. We don’t do that here, but I’ve tried to put a lot of how they run their business into our restaurant, like taking care of our team and customers as a first priority.
I’ve had hot pot before, but thought it was Chinese.
Kat: I think it originates in China, and other versions exist throughout Asia. Like in Japan with Shabu Shabu. Thais have their own take on that.
What do the two of you love about Sunnyside?
Kat: I like that the business owners are always around. It’s really nice to connect with the other business owners on the block. I also like the diversity of businesses and people on this block, too.
David: We’ve had a lot of neighbors that come in and who have become regulars. It seems like a lot of people that live in Sunnyside are proud to live here. There’s definitely a strong neighborhood and community vibe.
Kat: Everyone is so nice and friendly! People are so graceful and gracious.
David: It’s been really nice just to be welcomed and feel like we’re a part of the neighborhood. That’s really what we want this place to be–a neighborhood spot.
What do you think needs improvement in Sunnyside?
David: The only thing I can think of is that I would love for this street to have more streetside seating—like there is on 28th and Burnside. It would make it more of a great food block if the whole block had seating like that.
Bangkok Belly is located at 3342 Belmont and is open from 5–9 p.m. Wed.–Saturday. (4–8 p.m. Sunday). Follow the restaurant on Instagram at @Bangkokbellypdx.
