The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters
Aug 25, 2026 · 30 min · 13 segments
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify |…
Austin BushGuest
Francis LamHost
[upbeat music] So we'll go from the first English language cookbook on the food of El Salvador to what I'm pretty sure is the first English language cookbook on the food of Southern Thailand, and it's called, well, it's called The Food of Southern Thailand.
Austin Bush is an American from Oregon who moved to Thailand, learned to speak fluent Thai, and spent over 20 years there traveling the country with his camera and his notebook to write travel guides and, more passionately, to document home, roadside, and restaurant cooks and their recipes.
The definition of an old soul, Austin is old school in his approach, a classic food journalist.
He reports extensively about the spicy and coconutty cuisines from Southern Thailand, and he went far away from the tourist resorts and got deep into the Malay, Indonesian, and Chinese inflected cultures of this incredibly vibrant part of the world.
I'm sure it's not comprehensive in that as you travel, like you're always seeing, "Oh my God, I didn't know that.
I didn't know about this place or this dish." But, um, it's really an enorm- like a magisterial work I think we'd say.
It really feels like I'm traveling through so much of Southern Thailand, um, when I'm in that book, and I, I wanna eat all the food.
So I wanna ask you though, um, you know, so this book is The Food of Southern Thailand, and obviously I knew you, uh, through living in Bangkok, through your work reporting on food mostly in Northern Thailand.
And in recent years I feel like here in the States there's been a lot more English language coverage.
[upbeat music] So we'll go from the first English language cookbook on the food of El Salvador to what I'm pretty sure is the first English language cookbook on the food of Southern Thailand, and it's called, well, it's called The Food of Southern Thailand.
Austin Bush is an American from Oregon who moved to Thailand, learned to speak fluent Thai, and spent over 20 years there traveling the country with his camera and his notebook to write travel guides and, more passionately, to document home, roadside, and restaurant cooks and their recipes.
The definition of an old soul, Austin is old school in his approach, a classic food journalist.
He reports extensively about the spicy and coconutty cuisines from Southern Thailand, and he went far away from the tourist resorts and got deep into the Malay, Indonesian, and Chinese inflected cultures of this incredibly vibrant part of the world.
I'm sure it's not comprehensive in that as you travel, like you're always seeing, "Oh my God, I didn't know that.
I didn't know about this place or this dish." But, um, it's really an enorm- like a magisterial work I think we'd say.
It really feels like I'm traveling through so much of Southern Thailand, um, when I'm in that book, and I, I wanna eat all the food.
So I wanna ask you though, um, you know, so this book is The Food of Southern Thailand, and obviously I knew you, uh, through living in Bangkok, through your work reporting on food mostly in Northern Thailand.
And in recent years I feel like here in the States there's been a lot more English language coverage.
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