Thai Cooking: From the Siam Cuisine Restaurant [Paperback]

Kwanruan Aksomboon (Author), Diana Hiranaga (Author), Somchai Aksomboon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 1993

Siam Cuisine is a unique restaurant in Berkeley, California, which has been acclaimed since the early eighties for serving authentic Thai food rivaling that in Bangkok restaurants. Gathered here are more than 100 recipes for their superbly cooked dishes—chicken simmered in red curry with coconut and bamboo shoots...prawns and calamari with sweet basil and chilies...coconut soup with pickled garlic and red preserved bean curd.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Siam Cuisine is a little oasis of taste delights...more than sixty items of good, honest Thai cooking...the best place for squid dishes on this side of the Bay.
-Les Bank, East Bay Express

About the Author

Somchai Aksomboon and his wife, Kwanruan, owners of Siam Cuisine, were raised in the countrysidfe outside of Bangkok. Both their parents were merchants—Kwan's famaily sold fruits and vegetables. As Chai was opening his first Thai restaurant, he met Kwan, who had come to the United States with her two children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books (January 7, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556430744
• ISBN-13: 978-1556430749
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 0.6 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #517,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #52 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian > Thai

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Thai cookbook, authentic., August 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Thai Cooking: From the Siam Cuisine Restaurant (Paperback)

This is a great Thai cookbook. Simple to understand, a variety of dishes so the non-beginner won't get bored, and things uniformly taste wonderful. Apparently the authors run a great Thai restaurant in the East Bay area of San Francisco, California. It's the Thai cookbook I refer to the most of the several I own; and apparently the authors have produced a Thai cooking video as well, which it doesn't look like Amazon.com carries as yet. You can find the Siam Cuisine website, though, for further info, I suppose.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Thai cookbook ever, one of my favorites, June 30, 2002

By 

Jeffrey T Barker (Savannah, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thai Cooking: From the Siam Cuisine Restaurant (Paperback)

I bought this book when I was 18 and working my way through college as a cook. I loved Asian food, but did't have much experience cooking Thai food. The fact that this cookbook makes you (lets you) make all the curries from scratch is wonderful. It took some searching to get all the ingredients exactly right, but the first few meals I made with this book were just amazing. I continued to cook, and became a professional chef with a giant bookshelf full of cookbooks, well over 200. Now, 14 years later, I rarely use cookbooks, but whenever I do, or if a friend wants to borrow a book for something new, this is the one I give them. I love all of the Charlie Trotter books for the pics and ideas, but this book is the best for recipes. (I know I'm crossing cultural barriers, but I hope you get the point.) After I made my first meal from this book, for a girlfriend, I vowed that I'd go to this restaurant if I ever "made it to San Francisco." Well, now every time I'm there, I make sure I hit Berkeley to go there. The restaurant lives up to all of the recipes, and, this might surprise some, the dishes in the restaurant taste JUST LIKE the ones made from the book. It's one of my favorite restaurants, definitely the best Thai restaurant I've ever been to, and without a doubt, if we're judging cookbooks by the number of times they've been opened, this is the best among my collection. If you're in a smaller city, you might have some trouble getting some ingredients, but if you can't improvise you can always get something from the net. Even if you DO have do substitute some ingredients, I would recommend this cookbook above any other Thai cookbook I've seen, and above any other Asian cookbook as well.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars helps you make good thai food, December 12, 2009

By 

nom de plum "Nom" (NH) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Thai Cooking: From the Siam Cuisine Restaurant (Paperback)

Another reviewer talked about having to make sauces and normally I would agree - it is daunting to have to make sauces first. But in this case, the food you get when you make it is some of the best food ever - better than most Thai restaurants. The Pad Thai is incredible. The yellow chicken curry is the best I have had in twenty years. Just outstanding. If you hunger for really good Thai food, then get this book!