Chef McDang: Thais don't give a damn about Thai food

Why is it that so many people, both Thais and Westerners, insist that they know so much about cooking Thai food when none of them really even knows the structure of our nation’s cuisine?

Or even our eating culture. 

In the past 10 years Thai cuisine has become very popular worldwide. Yet, Thais continue to take Thai food for granted.

Cooking in Thailand is not a vocation with honor. We are a land of plenty; preparing food is important but it is done by the servants and the cooks. 

Therefore, there has never been a perceived need to have a professional school that organizes the material for Thai culinary arts, gives it structure, rules and regulations, and use this as a training tool for future chefs.

And this is terribly unfortunate. 

When the global Thai cuisine craze took off, Thais were more than happy to sit back and watch foreign chefs learn, memorize and absorb some of our culinary culture and go out on their own and write books about cuisine that do a great service for Thai eating culture. 

But the information that is drawn from these people is not always correct or original information. This is because most Thais don’t even know the structure of Thai cooking, let alone our own cultural heritage.

So how are they going to teach a foreigner something they themselves haven't mastered?  

This also brings to mind another important question. Why do Thais need to get the approval of Western culture before we can promote our own cuisine?

Why don’t Thais support each other in our quest to yank the ownership of our culinary knowledge back from the West, instead of letting foreigners pawn themselves off to the Western media as “the authority” on Thai cuisine? 

Yet, as we saw in 2010, when these same foreigners started mouthing off about the lack of authenticity in Thai cuisine, promising that they will be the ones to bring greatness back to Thai food, every Thai threw up their arms and said, “How dare you presume to be the authority on Thai cuisine?” 

But we have only ourselves to blame. We’ve been kissing white people’s butts as long I can remember and never looked among ourselves to tell the rest of the world what our cuisine and its structure is all about. 

And once again, now that the furor has died down, Thais are back to not giving a damn. 

In a small way, I have attempted to rectify the situation by outlining the structure and the do’s and the don’ts of Thai cooking in my latest book, the "Principles of Thai Cuisine."

Yet, it pains me to admit that I was given a better reception abroad than in my own homeland; here in Thailand I have found little support for my vision to take true Thai eating culture to the rest of the world.

Being a descendant of the Thai royal family prevents me from being taken seriously as a chef, as someone with a brain in Thai society. I am a celebrity first, a royal second and a pedigreed person third.

But never a chef. 

So, that is why my book is in English. After all, I still need Western approval of my intellect before I can be taken seriously by my fellow Thais.