Angus An (photo: Heth PR)
Interview by Megan Cole
We caught up with Angus An, owner of acclaimed Vancouver, BC Thai restaurant Maenam, and talked with him about how he became a chef and what it takes to cook like a chef at home.
Maenam has become a bit of an institution in Vancouver and a favourite spot for many diners. It really seems like the perfect fit for you, but did you always know you wanted to be at the helm in your own restaurant?
I guess I realized I wanted to cook in second year of university. I went to UBC for fine arts. All my jobs had been in kitchens cooking, so when I graduated from UBC I moved to New York to go to culinary school at the French Culinary Institute. I had the choice of staying in Vancouver for culinary school or obviously going some where else. I really wanted to be in city where you have great restaurants and chefs, and I just felt New York was a better opportunity if it was available to me and it was. By moving over there I just felt that being around that city really allowed me to jump start my career in a way.
Sounds like the perfect way to, like you said, jump start your career. Where did you start to accumulate experience when you left New York?
After I graduated from culinary school I worked around and mostly on the East Coast. I worked in New York and moved to Montreal where I lived for three years. After that I moved to London, England and I really wanted to be in Europe and that was something I really wanted to see and do for my career. It wasn’t until about after a year and a half of living in London I decided to move back to Vancouver.
The first restaurant you opened in Vancouver was Gastropod, and it was in the same location as Maenam?
Yeah, it was open for just a bit over two years, I believe.
What was the vision for Gastropod?
The vision was that I wanted to open a restaurant that was different and I think at that time there was a lot of casual fine dining, and quite a few fine dining, but there wasn’t a lot of in the middle. We wanted to open a restaurant that was more like a nice bistro in Montreal or in New York, more of a neighbourhood fine dining restaurant. We wanted it to be an everyday fine dining kind of restaurant.
How does Maenam differ from Gastropod?
I had learned mostly French and European cuisine when I was going to culinary school, and the reason I opened Maenam was because I kind of stumbled upon a great chef by the name of David Thompson who knew a lot about Thai food. When we moved back to Vancouver, a Thai restaurant was kind of always on our radar – it was going to be our second restaurant – but eventually during the economic downturn in 2009 we decided that instead of having two places we would just rebrand Gastropod into a casual restaurant, and even though I always wanted Gastropod to be a neighbourhood fine dining restaurant, people in Vancouver decided it was going to be fine dining or it wasn’t and because of the white table cloths it was still treated like an ‘event restaurant’ you go to once a year for special events. It was never our intention to make it like that. We wanted to bring something more casual to Vancouver and there was a huge whole in the Thai restaurant scene so we wanted to fill that and we wanted to connect a lot of dots and get the restaurant that we wanted.
Koh Soi Northern-style Chicken Noodle Soup (photo: Heth PR)
It seems like it was the right decision to make, especially when you look at the acclaim.
I don’t think I really try to pay attention to the acclaim. It’s definitely great and I’m very flattered that it happened but I think for me one thing I’ve learned is I don’t think we open restaurants to win awards or to be labelled as this or that. I think we just focus on what we need to do in terms of serving good food and satisfying our customers and those things would come. Winning awards is not something that we constantly want to do. But at the end of the day having a profitable business and happy customers is more important to me and if those thing generally happen and you’re doing well in your business those acclaims naturally come but we try not to go after those things. I think sometimes chefs open restaurants trying to specifically win certain awards and I tell a lot of younger chefs that are starting out that I think the restaurant business is a business and it’s not something you do for your ego. You don’t want to open a restaurant with the goal of earning the title of best restaurant, but you have to be profitable and survive. One of the reasons Gastropod had a harder go maybe was because we strive to be the best or one of the best and I think sometimes that’s hard on business because when you get to a certain point the restaurant may not be as profitable as it can be but with age and everything, right now we focus on what we need to do as a business and that is to be profitable and to make sure we have happy customers. I think that is a better formula for a business instead of going out there and trying to win all these awards which means a lot to me but at the end of the day if you’re not making money it doesn’t matter how many awards you have, it’s still a failed business.
With all the time that goes into cooking at Maenam, do you still find time to cook at home?
Yeah. We have two days off so we try to cook at least one of the days at home for a nice dinner and we often have friends over for dinner. I definitely like to cook more and more at home now because Maenam is very Thai focused, so generally when I cook at home I cook more what I used to do like easy European-style meals.
Do you have a favourite dish to prepare?
I don’t really necessarily have a favourite. I go through phases. I have a lot of cookbooks, so I go through phases where I really want to make the best paella for example, so for the next few months I’ll have friends over and we make different paellas. I had a phase where I was cooking Mexican food a lot, so it really depends on what I feel like. It’s very seasonal too what we eat at home. We have a little garden so it’s really about fresh salads from the garden and we go to the Trout Lake Farmers market, so it’s about what’s seasonal and whenever the spot prawns are in season we are usually eating those every weekend, we just throw them on the grill and enjoy them like that. I don’t really have a favourite because we are cooking different things all the time but it is generally very simple, comfort-style food.
I love entertaining and am always trying to make things better and easier when I have people over. Do you have any tips for people like me?
To be honest I entertain a lot at home and I think the best tip I could give is to be organized. It’s not necessarily a cooking skill to be organized but for the most part people say they don’t throw parties at all because whenever their friends come they get nervous and don’t have time to sit down with them. People have to get organized and in some cases start their cooking process as much as a few days in advance. They should look at their menu and go through and see what dishes they can prepare a day in advance so they don’t leave things last minute. I think too many times people leave things last minute and sometimes they don’t realize certain dishes like stews or braises, it’s better if you do it the night before and let it sit and develop flavour rather than making it right before your guests come and before you know it it’s not ready yet everyone is really hungry. When I usually have people over I get everything going and I sit down eat with my guests and whenever the next course is ready I’ll get up and put it on the plate and sit down again. It’s really about being organized and going through your menu and doing the proper planning, which is one of the most important cooking tips I can give to anyone because too many times people leave things to the last minute and go shopping on a Sunday morning when they have friends coming over Sunday night. They get stressed out because they couldn’t find certain ingredients they needed for that night so they waste a lot of time, when a lot of that stuff could be done a head of time to get it out of the way and then on Sunday enjoy the day, play some music and cook. Get all the stressful things out of the way first and then try to relax and have fun when your friends come.
Are dinner parties the right time to be showing off a new dish or experimenting with something new?
People always have to find a fine balance between experimenting and doing the same dishes. I think if you’re not comfortable with a certain recipe, and I mean cooking is about experimenting as well and I have to admit that I don’t always succeed on the things I try. My friends realize that as well. That being said if you’re being gutsy and pulled out this recipe that you’ve never done before and is really complicated, you might want to take some time and go over it thoroughly. You might not want to try it if you’re really trying to impress someone. You might want to just have some dishes you’re really comfortable and familiar with and try to stay away from the things that have a 50 per cent success rate. I think it’s knowing what you and your kitchen are capable of, I think that is really important. There are some dishes that were meant to be cooked in a professional kitchen not necessarily a tiny apartment kitchen, which is what most Vancouver residents have, but I think it’s just making sure you read through the recipe and knowing what you have to do and understand whether or not you can accomplish that.
Maenam is located at 1938 West 4th Avenue,Vancouver, BC.
No Comments