By Cinda Chavich | Photo by Belle White
At Nohra Thai Kitchen on stylish Estevan Avenue, Phen Bryan is elevating the classic cooking of Thailand with innovative ideas and Island ingredients.
At Nohra Thai Kitchen on stylish Estevan Avenue, Phen Bryan is elevating the classic cooking of Thailand with innovative ideas and Island ingredients.
Dinner starts with the Butterfly Effect cocktail (an exotic combination of Empress 1908 gin, lemongrass, chili bitters and ginger beer) and ends with a fresh mango and sweet sticky rice dessert — both rely on the Asian pea flower to impart that dusty blue hue, so common in Thai cooking.
Bryan offers familiar Thai dishes with her own creative spin. Think citrusy green papaya salad with beans and cashews, Dungeness crab cakes with bright cucumber and beet relish and minced turmeric chicken, scented with the floral notes of toasted kaffir lime.
There’s much to explore on this exotic Thai menu, which Bryan says will change with the seasons, offering heartier dishes for winter. It’s all infused with her infectious enthusiasm for the food she learned to cook while growing up in southern Thailand, and her love of her new Vancouver Island home.
“Thailand is a country where food is everything,” she says, “so being Thai, I come by my passion for food naturally.”
The restaurant is chic and comfortable, with shimmering gold ceilings, cozy booths and contemporary Thai touches, building on traditions in a modern culinary dance.