You’re combining Thai barbecue traditions with the low ‘n’ slow traditions of the US. Why?
Ben Humphreys: It is a bit random. I’ve been cooking Thai food for over 20 years (his wife Bo is from Thailand). Often when I’m eating other cuisines I think ‘this would marry well with Thai flavours’. I spent a bit of time in Miami last year opening Lucky Cat for Gordon Ramsay and I had a bit of a lightbulb moment at this amazing barbecue place that combined US barbecue with punchy flavours from places like Mexico and Korea.
Will you be serving Thai barbecue classics like moo ping and gai yang at Bangkok Diners Club?
BH: Yes. We will be serving half chickens grilled Thai-style with nam jim and will also kor moo yang (grilled pork neck and jowl). But our takes will be cooked a little differently utilising our two upright smokers. Thai barbecue is fast and furious but our approach at The Edinburgh Castle Pub will be a bit slower, although we may look at getting a Thai-style grill at some point.
Bo Humphreys: Ben’s dishes are so creative, but he always stays true to Thai flavours. Whenever we cook together it always takes me back home. Other dishes on our launch menu include roast pork belly pad prik king, with rhubarb and holy basil; crab fritter with karee mayonnaise and pineapple molasses; artichoke and golden beetroot massaman curry; and fried banana cake with coconut caramel ice cream.
Danny Collins: We will have a different offer on a Sunday that is intended to rival the classic pub roast. A lot of people want that on a Sunday, but we don’t want to do a UK-style roast. We will offer larger sharing plates, including slow-smoked brisket and whole fish. We’ll also be serving some of our more snack-y dishes downstairs in the pub, but our focus will be on the upstairs dining room, which seats a little over 30 and offers table service. We’re launching Bangkok Diners Club in partnership with Nick and Hayley Muir (the owners of the well-known Ancoats pub).
What will your prices be like?
DC: We don’t want Bangkok Diners Club to be a special occasion place, and the pricing will reflect that - £100 for dinner at the moment is a big ask. We’re certainly not spending that sort of cash on a meal right now ourselves. We’re looking at a spend per head of roughly £30 on food but it will also be possible to come in and have a few things and spend much less.
What about the design?
DC: We’re not changing much. It will still feel like a classic pub dining room, it won’t be Thai themed. We want it to feel like part of the pub, even though it is kind of separate. We’re freshening it up a bit with a new paint job and some new art but that’s about it.
Tell us about your backgrounds
BoH: I’m a chef. I grew up in Isan in northeast Thailand. From the age seven I learnt how to cook for my dad every day while he was working on my auntie’s rice farm. I’d usually cook dishes like laab or tom saeb which I would flavour with whatever I could forage from the farm that day. When I moved to Bangkok with my dad aged eleven, I learnt how to cook central Thai food. My favourite dishes to eat there were beef grapao with crispy fried egg and tom yum seafood.
BH: I was visiting Thailand for a friend of the family’s wedding. I met Bo within hours of landing in Bangkok. I sat next to her on a little plastic chair that was way too small for me and ordered some street food. We talked all night, which looking back was quite an achievement as Bo spoke very little English and my Thai was non-existent. Since that night we’ve barely spent a week apart. I’m originally from north Wales but I’ve spent most of my cooking career in Manchester. I’ve become a specialist in Asian cuisine and have been part of the senior team at a number of big Manchester openings including Lucky Cat by Gordon Ramsay, Tattu and The Rabbit in the Moon (Michael O’Hare’s short-lived ‘space-age Oriental fine-dining restaurant’).
BoH: Ben and I got married in 2008. We moved to his hometown of Llandudno to launch a Thai kitchen above a pub (called Bo-Thai!). After a few years we moved to Manchester. Pretty soon after that I started cooking at KPMG for Restaurant Associates and I’m still there. But I’m cooking at Bangkok Diners Club most evenings and supporting Ben in all areas of the business. I’ll also be heavily involved in the development of the food alongside Ben.
DC: I’m not a chef. My background is food and beverage management. I started out in bars and ended up working my way up to management at Harvey Nichols Manchester. Following that, my partner and I saw a gap in the market for a small ramen restaurant in the city, so we launched Ramen Shop (formerly Tokyo Ramen). Ben was our head chef, that’s how we met.
You launched District together in 2020, but it only lasted a few years. What happened?
DC: We were unlucky because we ended up getting the site two weeks before the first lockdown. We were serving a much more progressive style of Thai food in a tasting menu format. We got a great review from Marina O’Loughlin (then at The Times) but we were always running against the wind. It was a real shame to let it go.
Do you see yourselves as the first new wave Thai place in Manchester?
BH: Yes. There are some good family-run places in the city but there’s nothing like what we’re doing here. London is second only to Bangkok for this sort of food following David Thompson being there with Nahm and then all the people who trained under him opening up their own places.
DC: There will be some education to do as we will be serving a style of Thai food that hasn’t really been seen in Manchester before. We are trying to use as few Thai words as possible on the menu. We don’t want to be like those snotty French places of old in which nobody had a clue what they were ordering. But sometimes you do need to use terms like nam prik otherwise things get too wordy. If people need more info our staff are clued-up and up for a chat.
BH: Thai food in a pub just works, but it’s more of a thing down south, it’s less common up here. It’s a bit of a full circle moment for Bo and me as we did it soon after we met in Llandudno. It was very difficult to get Thai ingredients back then, especially in north Wales. What we’re doing now is much more creative, but it’s still weird to have gone full circle and ended up back in the pub.
