A culinary journey from Bangkok to Mumbai with Nara Thai
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Narawadee Srikarnchana built the restaurant Nara Thai as a retirement project. In 2003, she was part of the family business, the luxury watch retailer Pendulum in Bangkok.
She used to pass by the Erawan Mall everyday while shuttling between her office and watch shops. One day she thought it would be good to have a restaurant serving Thai food in the mall, because there was nothing like it in that locality. “It was a humble dream.
I thought it would be nice to run one or two Thai restaurants when I retire. But it grew beyond anything I imagined," shares the septuagenarian. She met me at the month-old Nara Thai in Mumbai’s Worli, styled elegantly in a voluminous white blouse, pearls and the classic Bvlgari Serpenti watch.
Nara Thai has expanded to eight countries—including Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Phillipines, among others—and its franchisee in India is owned by Aditya Birla New Age Hospitality. Srikarnchana, who prefers to be addresed by her nickname Yuki, was visiting the newest brand of Nara Thai in Worli for its opening last month. The first outlet of the restaurant in Mumbai launched in 2017, and during the research process Yuki discovered the preference for vegetarian food.
“About fifty percent of our menu had to be vegetarian. It’s interesting because I like vegetarian food. It was not hard to design the menu; you can still have the vegetables, flavours and all the other condiments, and only the protein component has to be replaced or removed," she explains.
The Thai summer rolls are typically stuffed with crab or pork, but tofu is used for vegetarian diners in Mumbai. Satays, pork skewers, are extremely popular street food in Bangkok. In the Mumbai menu, there’s a vegetarian version
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