From a respect for traditional flavours: PAI

PAI didn’t start as a restaurant idea - it started as a place.Chef Nuit and Jeff Regular’s story begins long before Toronto, in a small northern Thai town called Pai. It’s where they lived, where Jeff fell in love with Thailand before he even met Chef Nuit, and where Chef Nuit spent years as a nurse, learning to cook the way her family always had — by taste, not measurement, guided by instinct and an understanding of sweet, sour, salty, and spicy.Their relationship began long-distance, built on connection and trust. When Jeff visited Thailand 25 years ago, it was the first time he truly experienced Thai food - something he hadn’t grown up with in Toronto. What followed was a shared belief: if you respect the flavours and use the best ingredients, the food will speak for itself.That belief was tested early. When they opened Sukhothai in 2008, they served just a handful of guests a day and were once told their food “wasn’t Thai” because their Pad Thai didn’t come with ketchup. They were making $50 a day, but they refused to change how they cooked. They believed that people didn’t want restaurants to make food they already liked. They wanted to learn about food from the places it came from.PAI was born from that conviction. Not as a “Thai restaurant in Toronto,” but as an attempt to make guests feel like they’d stepped into Thailand itself - into the streets of Pai, where generations mix, old bars sit beside new ones, and everything feels alive and deeply rooted at the same time. From the bones of the space to the layers of art, personality, music, basketball, and even Spiderman, PAI reflects everything they love.Chef Nuit and Jeff share how respect for flavour became their foundation, why protecting their relationship always came before business, and how cooking with honesty has led not just to full dining rooms - but to guests booking flights to Thailand because of what they tasted.Follow the podcast on Instagram and TikTokFollow Sam Jen on Instagram