A new Thai street food restaurant is getting ready to spice up a familiar Glasgow unit.
Chawp Pet Noi is the latest eatery to pop up in Shawlands and we were invited along for a sneak peek behind the scenes of the new hot spot.
Long-time friends and chefs John Opfer and James Robertson took over the former Julie’s Kopitiam on Pollokshaws Road earlier this year when celebrity chef Julie Lin closed shop to focus on her Partick restaurant, Ga Ga.
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After a heart-warming passing of the torch, John and James are looking forward to bringing their dream to life.
The inspiration for Chawp Pet Noi came when John, 29, spent six weeks in Thailand before living abroad in Melbourne and fell in love with the food.
He said: “When I got to Melbourne I realised how much I missed the food, so on my way back to Glasgow I decided I would stop over again and try to learn as much as possible about the food in Thailand.”
John went back to Thailand for another six weeks, travelling from the very north to the very south of the country to learn everything he could about the food.
The name Chawp Pet Noi comes from a phrase John found himself using time and time again during his travels. It means ‘make it a little bit spicy’.
John said: “That was one of the buzzwords I used when travelling. I always used that wherever I went.”
As John learned more about Thai cuisine, he was “blown away” by how simple the food was.
He said: “For a long time I tried to cook Thai food and I really overcomplicated it.
“But in Thailand, at the mum-and-pop places, you watch them cooking in front of you, and seeing what was going in the food and just how really simple it was and it blew my mind.”
John returned to Glasgow just before the pandemic hit, putting the brakes on his plans to open up his own restaurant.
He teamed up with fellow Glasgow chef James, 31, and the pair started preparing their next steps.
John said: “James was always a great, great friend of mine whose been a chef for a long time.
“So we decided to sit down and over Covid get some plan in place, learn the food inside and out and just try to set up a business and go forward from that.”
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Settling into their new unit, John and James have big plans to expand the kitchen and turn the space into a friendly, takeaway-focused restaurant.
Customers can look forward to specialised Thai dishes like Phrik Khing Gai, a dry red curry flavoured with kaffir lime and dried red chillies.
John said: “We’re really excited about it all, but there is one dish that stands out.
“It’s a regional dish in Thailand that’s really hard to come by. It’s called Phrik Khing Gai.
“It’s super regional. A lot of people I know who have spent time in Thailand probably haven’t heard about this dish.
“It’s the first dish that I spent a lot of time trying to perfect with James. We’re really excited to churn that out.”
The chefs are looking to open Chawp Pet Noi at the end of March.
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