Also known as Bangkok’s queen of the wok, Jay Fai has been awarded the annual Icon Award by Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Managing Director of World’s 50 Best Restaurants Tim Brooke-Webb made the announcement via Instagram, saying: “This absolute star of Bangkok has just been named as Asia’s 50 Best Icon Award winner for 2021! Congratulations, Supinya ‘Jay Fai’ Junsuta!”
The one-woman cooking show started cooking more than five decades ago.
Her menu featured family recipes that were passed on from her mother, who supposedly once told her daughter that she could never make it as a real cook. Thanks to her inspiration and desire to show her mother that she was wrong, Jay Fai developed her own unique style.
Jay Fai shifted her focus to seafood, ensuring that all the ingredients in her kitchen were only of the highest quality.
This led her to have higher prices than a conventional street food stall, but it did not impede her success. Actually, this isn’t the street food legend’s first accolade.
Jay Fai has gained international recognition since her restaurant received a Michelin star in 2017.
She has created menus for Thai Airways first-class passengers and traveled to Copenhagen to cook her signature crab omelet at MAD, Chef Noma Rene Redzepi’s culinary symposium. Jay Fai also made it to the small screen, starring in the popular Netflix series Street Food: Asia.
She has also gotten praise from Bangkok’s most iconic culinary figures, such as Le Du chef Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn, who discovered the woman as “true icon of the chefs.”
