Chef Tommy Tang: Brilliant Father of Modern Thai Cuisine

(Gerry Furth-Sides) Tommy Tang’s breezy, animated celebrity-filled restaurant with its reputation as serving the absolutely best modern Thai cuisine anywhere is closed now, and yet it still parallels his life. Just as the restaurant catapulted Melrose Avenue to international fame, so Tommy introduced and ignited the public’s love for modern Thai cuisine through personal appearances, his eponymous book, PBS Show, and his line of seasonings and sauces.  And he contributed to charity projects every step of the way.

I realize now, how brilliant an executive producer he always was, maintaining a “cool” demeanor at all times while convincing people in high places to fill in the pieces.   I became a part of his tv show when it filmed in China and Thailand.  I was also a member of his team of six when Tommy also almost singlehandedly, created the first Thai Festival in Los Angeles at the Design Center in 1999 and 2000.   It eventually evolved into a major civic event and moved to Thai Town, Hollywood.

Our paths first crossed when I was writing up Frommer Guides, and he was already a success in LA and New York.  I featured him in a promotion for a Waiters Race (then the one and only summer food event!) He was one of the top ten chefs in LA.,  and he was as enthusiastic when we did a “faux” race for tv publicity, as if competing for his first job.

When he was a guest on a TV Show in Beverly Hills I hosted, we had plenty of time to chat during set-up.  He was amiable and I loved his food so much I was happy to eat his food while he talked about his grand ideas for events and TV show.  And I was summoned at times to the restaurant with my husband late at night to be the requisite American when Tommy entertained top government officials.  Tommy was just the low-key guy, putting one foot in front of the other.

For his TV show, now on PBS, Tommy obtained financing for the show, which he also syndicated.  He, himself, did all the jobs on the production end except for filming.  He would have a theme – one year when I was with him, it was following the famous silk road, Marco Polo-style, to find a particular noodle he loved as a child.  He could come upon the most rustic cooking in the countryside, and within a short time, transform it into something sublime and yet with the characteristics of the historic original.

It seemed he was born with the gift.   As the eldest son of a chef whose cafe and house burned to the ground in his native Thailand when he was eight years old, Tommy began working to support his family — his father had hidden all of his cash in his bed.  Jobs ranged from factory and construction worker to phone operator. It was as a small, agile welder sent up on the high beams at building sites, that Tommy found his trademark colorful head bandana that still instantly identifies him today.

He became fascinated with America through his successful tour business of entertaining Vietnam War American soldiers on leave around Bangkok.  He immediately envisioned a career for himself as a rock and roll manager.

Tommy worked his way to America, earned himself a college degree (on a basketball scholarship in Blythe, California!).  And he began knocking on doors in the music industry.  All the while he continued to cook his superb Thai food. When Chan Dara opened in Hollywood, Tommy as chef put the place on the culinary map.

At the same time, he learned that rock music at the time had no room for minorities.  So he opened an airy, inviting, elegant restaurant in 1982 on a desolate corner of bedraggled Melrose.   With American wife, Sandi’s marketing help, he built a business it was an instant hit.  The business expanded into entertainment catering with Tommy Tang Global Cuisine Catering operated by Gary Arabia, Sandi’s brother.  Size never mattered, and the company has cooked for as many as 15,000 people (in New York City, where the kitchen took up an entire closed off side street).

Tommy’s volunteer work with Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams at Comic Relief, and the new Tsunami Foundation dedicated to housing young homeless in Thailand are the best known of his charity efforts.

Today Tommy is famous for:

-Pioneering  the world-famous  Melrose Avenue dining and shopping scene with the high-style Tommy Tang’s Modern Thai Cuisine which still attracts a devoted following of celebrity and neighborhood clientele

-The first chef to have his own PBS cooking show, about to start its 15th season

-The first chef to have his own international line of Thai Seasonings and Sauces

-The first bi-coastal chef

-Tommy Tang’s Global Cuisine Catering company

-His best selling cookbook, Modern Thai Cuisine 

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