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From Pao

The heart of Gaaeng is simple: to preserve what already exists and let it shine in a new light. I’ve never been interested in inventing something new just for the sake of it. What matters to me is listening, looking closer, and going deeper into the stories, flavors, and local wisdom that quietly live within small Thai communities and have been passed down through generations of cooking.

What we do at Gaaeng is reimagine those traditions gently and thoughtfully, with care for sustainability, so that people who may have never known or tasted them before can experience them in a new way. In Thai, gaaeng means curry, but to me it represents something much larger. Curry paste is where everything begins, pounded by hand, shaped by memory, instinct, and time.

Gaaeng is also about local wisdom, the kind that lives quietly in old kitchens and reveals itself through taste before words. Every menu we create becomes a journey across Thailand, from the smoky hills of the North to the bright, salty winds of the South.

Some ingredients travel thousands of miles from home, things you simply can’t find here, but I want people to know them and understand where they come from. Others grow right here in my small Boston garden. Together, they remind me that distance doesn’t mean disconnection.

Cooking, for me, is a way of learning. Learning through ingredients is how I try to build something sustainable, a small way of giving back to the communities both here and back home.

When I build a menu, I start with what’s in season in Thailand, what’s growing under the Thai sun right now, and then pair it with what’s fresh here in Boston. That’s how new dishes are born, Thai at heart but shaped by where I am now.

Some of our dishes come from tiny villages, recipes passed from hand to hand rather than written in books. We study them, develop them, and tell their stories in our own voice. Some are so rare that even many Thais have never heard of them.

I may not have the loudest voice, but I’m proud to do something small for the food and the country I love.

At Gaaeng, it’s never just about the food. It’s about people, stories, and community. We cook, we share, we laugh, and somewhere along the way, people leave as friends, with full hearts and full stomachs.

That’s when we begin to rediscover what Thai food can be, beyond the familiar dishes, as a world of flavors still waiting to be explored. And maybe that’s the point. Because one dish can change the whole world,

if you believe it can