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Sep 12, 2025 · 1 min read
What happens when a Nashville kid raised in a Thai restaurant grows up to become both a chef and a drag performer? You get a cookbook that’s bold, heartfelt, and original.
Chef Arnold Myint - known to drag audiences as Suzy Wong - grew up in his family’s Thai restaurant, the very first in Nashville, Tennessee. Recently celebrating its 50th anniversary, the restaurant is a landmark of Thai food in the South, and the heart of Arnold’s own story. His mother was the pioneer behind it all: she not only opened the first Thai market and restaurant in the city, but also wrote a Thai cookbook in the early 1980s, while pregnant with Arnold’s sister.
After her passing, Arnold knew he wanted to continue that legacy. Family Thai became his way to do it. He took her handwritten recipes, written in her Thai-English voice, and carefully reworked them with his own culinary expertise, transforming family memories into the language of a professional chef.
For Arnold, drag is part of who he is - but it’s not the headline. As he explains, “Drag is part of my identity, sure, but my taxes, my résumé, my career - they all say ‘chef.’” That balance of honoring the past while embracing his full self is what makes Family Thai so powerful. It’s not just a cookbook. It’s a celebration, a healing process, and an open invitation for readers to taste his family’s story.
Ask Arnold about the dishes that feel like “home,” and he doesn’t hesitate. For him, the platters section of the book is where memory lives. Those big, shared plates remind him of being raised in the restaurant’s kitchen, eating after school with the women who looked after him.
He recalls one vivid memory: “My favorite was Nam Prik Kapi (shrimp paste chili dip) with fried mackerel and omelet with cha-om - wrapped up for me in foil inside a KFC box. That’s not restaurant food; that’s family food. That’s what makes me feel at home.”
Cooking also became a way to prove himself. As a child, Arnold proudly made pumpkin custard, watching with delight as his mom filled pumpkins with custard while other kids carved them for decoration. Later, he taught himself to make saku sai moo (tapioca dumplings stuffed with pork), because he craved it and no one else in Nashville was making it. His uncle’s praise was the turning point: “That was when I felt, ‘Okay, I can really cook.’”
One of the boldest decisions in Family Thai is what Arnold left out.
He explains: “The biggest one is that Thai food equals Pad Thai - cheap, fast. That’s not the full picture. Thailand is a food country - we have endless flavors, techniques, and traditions. In Family Thai, I deliberately don’t include Pad Thai. There’s an essay called ‘99 Recipes, but Pad Thai Is Not One.’”
For him, Pad Thai is already in the American vocabulary. His mission is to expand it. He’s seen customers in Nashville go from ordering only Pad Thai to falling in love with dishes like Khao Kluk Kapi (shrimp paste fried rice) - all it takes is a little nudge.
As a drag performer, Arnold knows the stage as well as the kitchen, and he sees the same boldness in his book. “If Family Thai were a drag performance, it would be Miss Grand Thailand. Bold, glamorous, colorful, full of strong opinions, and very confident. Just like a great drag show, the book is both beautiful and unexpected.”
The cookbook also doubles as an education in the Thai pantry. Arnold knows that many American cooks freeze up when faced with a shelf full of bottles. “Western cooks think of soy sauce as just one bottle - usually Kikkoman. But Thai cooking uses a whole family: dark soy, sweet soy, Golden Mountain, oyster sauce, and mushroom soy sauce. Each one has a specific purpose. My tip: don’t treat them as interchangeable. In Family Thai, I explain how to use them so they become tools you can trust, not mysteries.”
Arnold believes that creativity only shines when it’s built on discipline. “Hold onto your uniqueness, but also build a foundation,” he says. At Jean-Georges, he once peeled shrimp for a year straight. It wasn’t glamorous, but it taught him to respect every ingredient. That discipline, he insists, is what makes individuality truly unstoppable.
At its core, Family Thai is about much more than professional lessons. It’s Arnold’s tribute to the flavors that raised him, the lessons that shaped him, and the mother who started it all. “Family Thai is about honoring where I come from, celebrating the flavors that raised me, and inviting others to share in that journey.”
Chef Arnold isn’t just publishing recipes - he’s cooking history into the present. And the table is set for everyone.
📖 Family Thai — Cookbook by Chef Arnold
📍 Nashville, Tennessee & beyond
📷 Follow @arnoldmyintbna
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