thai – C-VILLE Weekly

More than meets the Thai: Chimm specializes in Southeast Asian street food

For Nui Thamkankeaw, part of the fun of being a chef is making every component that goes on the plate, down to the sauces and the curry pastes.

“If you’re a real chef, you really want to get into it,” says Thamkankeaw, executive chef at Chimm Thai & Southeast Asian restaurant, who spoke with C-VILLE through a translator. He grew up in Chiang Mai, the largest city in northern Thailand, and worked in the hotel restaurant industry in Bangkok for years before coming to the U.S. two decades ago.

Chimm, which opened May 23 between The Yard food hall and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema at 5th Street Station, is a sister restaurant to the Thai Cuisine & Noodle House on Commonwealth Drive, co-owned by musician and educator Jay Pun, his software engineer aunt Pim Little and his retired physician dad Pong Punyanitya. They worked with Thamkankeaw years ago, at their previous restaurant, Thai!, one of the first Thai restaurants in town (there are now more than a dozen.)

“There’s so much more Thai food than what people see” in most Thai restaurants in the U.S., says Pun, which is why they’ve focused Chimm’s menu on Thai street food in the hopes of giving Charlottesville a wider taste for Thai cuisine.

Thamkankeaw and Punyanitya explain that Thailand is full of food court-type places where dozens of stands and carts, each specializing in a different type of dish, offer an astounding variety of food.

In addition to the familiar curry dishes, pad Thai and fried rices, Chimm’s offerings include an extensive variety of starters such as chicken satay, skewered meatballs and grilled pork, all of which pair well with the ramekins full of Thamkankeaw’s fresh sauces that a server delivers to the table so they can be enjoyed with any dish. There’s a steamed dumpling stuffed with ground pork, crab and water chestnut served with a ginger soy sauce; salads, including laab, a ground meat or tofu salad in a spicy lime dressing with red onions and ground toasted rice; soups, noodle bowls and classic pho of the beef, chicken and vegetable/vegetable broth varieties. Thamkankeaw will offer daily specials, too, and they’ll be a tad more expensive than the other dishes on the menu, which run between $3 and about $15.

So, which dishes are Chimm’s owners and chef particularly excited for? Pun’s a pho and Thai noodle bowl fan, and Thamkankeaw recommends the khao soi and crispy duck (he loves duck and roasts his own in-house), while Punyanitya’s fond of the wonton soup—so much so that he eats it almost daily for lunch.

Rocket fuel

A new coffee shop has opened at the busy intersection of Route 250 and Crozet Avenue. Occupying the old Gateway Market spot, Rocket Coffee’s aim is to serve quality coffee to the steady stream of commuters that drives by. Owner Scott Link took inspiration for his shop from atomic age iconography, lending the space an almost “Jetsons”-like feel that emphasizes both its convenience and the pep given from its beverages. “It’s simply snappy, it really says coffee,” says Link. In its pursuit of tending to commuters, Rocket Coffee also serves MarieBette Café & Bakery pastries, as well as homemade grab-and-go sandwiches and salads.

Tasty tidbits

Tavola received kudos from Wine Spectator magazine for its “affordable exploration of Italian wines” (C-VILLE arts editor, Tami Keaveny, co-owns the restaurant with her husband, Michael). The write-up, posted to Wine Spectator’s website on May 10, notes that “Wine director Priscilla Martin’s Award of Excellence-winning wine list of around 100 labels is concise but strong.”

Augustiner Beer Hall, in the Glass Building (the former Bebedero space), held a soft opening last week, with full service. They’ve built out a deck into the parking lot, too, just in time for the summer weather.

Jeremiah Langhorne, who grew up in the Charlottesville area and attended Albemarle High School, won the Best Chef Mid-Atlantic accolade at the 2018 James Beard Foundation Awards. Langhorne trained under chef John Haywood at the now-shuttered OXO restaurant before moving on to McCrady’s in Charleston, South Carolina. In 2015, he opened The Dabney in Washington, D.C., and in 2016 the restaurant received one of the city’s first Michelin stars.

E-Z peel exposé: Thai slave labor puts crimp in holiday shrimp

The Associated Press investigation the week before Christmas revealing that slave labor routinely is used in Thailand to clean and peel the shrimp that makes its way into major American grocery chain freezers has some locals fretting about whether to serve the nation’s favorite crustacean over the holidays.

AP reporters followed and filmed freshly peeled shrimp coming from locked peeling sheds holding between 50 to 100 people forced to work 16-hour days. The shrimp went to major Thai exporters, and the AP tracked the shipments into the food supply of major chains such as Kroger, Whole Foods and Harris Teeter.

Americans each eat about four pounds of shrimp annually, a total of more than 1.3 billion pounds. C-VILLE Weekly checked with some local markets to see whether the human trafficking news from Thailand has slowed appetites for shrimp and how to buy slave-labor-free shrimp.

“Our customers are aware that we do not sell shrimp from the illicit facilities at issue in the AP’s investigation,” says Kristen Rabourdin, Whole Foods marketing team leader for Charlottesville and Richmond, in an e-mail.

Whole Foods has zero tolerance for human rights abuses, she says, and the company has done its own on-site inspections of Thai Union facilities, one of the exporters named in the AP investigation, and is confident the shrimp supplied to Whole Foods did not come from an illicit processing facility.

“We are encouraged by Thai Union’s decision to swiftly bring all shrimp processing in-house in an effort to ensure transparency and full oversight of their shrimp processing, and we urge the government of Thailand to regulate and enforce issues of labor and human rights within their country,” Rabourdin says.

Pete Morris, who works in the seafood department at Foods of All Nations, has not had customers asking about slave-peeled shrimp. “We have a whole bunch of shrimp,” he says, coming from the Gulf of Mexico, North Carolina, Vietnam and Thailand.

Harris Teeter has had one customer ask, but company spokesperson Danna Robinson in North Carolina refused to say at which store, nor would she reveal whether holiday sales had been impacted.

Harris Teeter, too, is “ deeply concerned” by the AP findings of forced labor and slavery in the seafood supply chain in Southeast Asia, she says. The company audits suppliers annually, and in light of the recent allegations will increase its audits, she says.

“This is a very difficult issue and one that the entire supply chain needs to work together to resolve,” Robinson says. “Harris Teeter renews its call for everyone in the industry, from governments to retailers to suppliers to local fisheries, to take the necessary steps to end these horrific human rights violations.”

Not worried about his supply chain is Chris Arseneault, owner of Seafood @ West Main. The majority of his shrimp is U.S. wild-caught from North Carolina and the Gulf. He carries farm-produced shrimp from Asia, but says, “We buy from highly reputable importers. We’re very selective about who we buy from.” He says he would be shocked if any of his shrimp came from human trafficking.

Arseneault’s advice to consumers squeamish about the source of shrimp? Buy from someone you trust. “We’ve cultivated a level of trust with our customers, who would not expect us to sell products harvested under slave labor conditions.”

He adds, “I have a more elevated level of concern because I’m a professional and those concerns are built into my business model.”

Calls and e-mails to Kroger media relations were not returned.