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Charmaine Mok

For the second year in a row, the Asia’s Best Female Chef award has gone to a Thai trailblazer based in Bangkok.
On February 13, Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants named Tam Chudaree Debhakam the winner based on the votes of a panel of food and hospitality experts.
The accolade is another milestone for women working in restaurants in the Thai capital; in 2024, the award went to Pichiya “Pam” Soontornyanakij of Potong in Bangkok.
It is early February when we speak to Chudaree via video call at her restaurant, Baan Tepa, in Bangkok’s northwestern Ramkhamhaeng district, outside the city centre.

It was the proverbial calm before the storm, and Chudaree admits she is not quite sure what to expect once the news of her is announced.
“Honestly, I don’t know what to expect at all,” she says with a relaxed smile. “People who know have been asking me, ‘Are you prepared?’ I’m like, prepared for what?”
It is not the first time Chudaree has landed in the spotlight; in 2017 she won the first season of cooking reality show Top Chef Thailand when she was just 24 years old and the show’s youngest contestant.
Despite the glory, it was a time in her life that she has described as being incredibly stressful.
She had just moved back from the United States, where she had trained at New York’s International Culinary Center and spent time working under chef Dan Barber of two-Michelin-star Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York.
Her family had wanted her to rejoin the fray.
I’ve never really been super prepared for anything that has happened
Tam Chudaree Debhakam
“I was a little bit lost,” she has previously said of that chapter of her life, unsure whether she wanted to go back into the restaurant business or pursue her interest in agriculture and farming.
After entering Top Chef “with nothing to lose” and walking away with the grand prize, Chudaree put all she had learned into opening her own restaurant, Baan Tepa, in the historic family home that was built in the 1980s and once owned by her grandmother Lady Suwaree Debhakam.
Opened in 2020, the restaurant is a bit out of the way for those in Bangkok’s city centre, but benefits from a large footprint and massive garden, which Chudaree describes as the perfect ground zero for her dining concept.


“I realised that I really wanted to have a garden to grow the produce that we are working with, at least the herbs that we use every day,” she says. “And if we are going to make compost from all the food waste, we needed all the space we can get.”
In the garden, the chef and her team at Baan Tepa tend to aromatic herbs and plants such as galangal, white turmeric, Siam tulips and garlic vines – ingredients that deliver a lot of punch in small quantities.
“We have to be smart with the choices that we make for the garden, just because of the space that we have,” she says. “Every time I go away to different provinces around Thailand, I always come back with these ‘weird’ plants and try to grow them.”
Chudaree describes these trips as not only a way to discover different pockets of food culture around the country, but also to understand more about the ways that different Thai people cook.

“To get ingredients is one thing, but to understand how they use it in cuisine is also very important. There are all these little insights into why we eat certain ingredients a certain way at a certain time of year,” she says.
“We’re trying to incorporate that into the menu as well, just to show the people who visit us the versatility of Thai farmers – what they’re able to do and produce.”
The possibilities of Thai cuisine and, by extension, the fascinating array of ingredients grown on Thai soil is feeding Chudaree’s curiosity and powering her hunger to maintain an ever more sustainable restaurant business.
I’m just gonna go in with no expectations and just take things as they come
Tam Chudaree Debhakam
Baan Tepa was never envisioned as a fine-dining restaurant. Rather, Chudaree intended the space to become a production kitchen – she had been doing a lot of catering at the time – but realised there was space to put a dining table for customer tastings.
“Then it became a chef’s table. We had 12 seats, and we used to do around eight courses,” she recalls, describing her cuisine as “much more raw” back then.
“It was kind of like me trying to understand more about the ingredients and flavours of Thai cuisine, but showcasing it in a different way.” Slowly, her cooking style took shape.
“I just wanted to see if I can push the boundaries of Thai cuisine a little bit to present it in a more modern, more fun and creative way. And I think that was like the mission. And then everything else in terms of the local sourcing, the sustainability sort of came after.”
One ingredient that has stayed with Chudaree from the beginning is the river prawn. “It’s one of my favourites, and something of a delicacy so you only get to eat it when you’re having a family celebration.












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“It’s a little bit pricey, and the best way to have it is cooked on the charcoal grill, so most homes wouldn’t do that. The best ones are actually around Bangkok, in a district called Yang.”
The crustacean is given the spotlight in her dish Anatomy of a River Prawn, which has gone through at least six iterations; each part of the fleshy shellfish is enhanced through the detailed application of cooking techniques, from brushing the body with prawn oil and finishing with a prawn emulsion to garnishing the tail with red pepper tuiles.
Piece by piece, Chudaree is building Baan Tepa into something to be proud of. Four years after opening, the restaurant is ranked No. 42 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list, and has two Michelin stars and a Michelin green star for sustainability.
She credits her success to the women in her family, who had a strong work ethic – “all of the women around me worked when I was growing up” – and pursued their interests with passion.

Most importantly, she learned from them that it is important to persevere, even if you are standing at the edge of the unknown.
“I feel like I’ve never really been super prepared for anything that has happened to me or to Baan Tepa, and it’s worked out OK so far,” she laughs.
“I can’t say that I know fully yet who I’m gonna become. It’s just like another year of me growing up a little bit more and being a little bit more seasoned as a person and as a chef, and being a little bit more understanding of the world and the people around me.
“It was tough because I started really early. But now I feel OK, having done it for six years now, I feel a little bit more at ease. I feel like I know the type of leader and person I want to be for my team.
“So I feel like I’m just gonna go in with no expectations and just take things as they come, and be natural and authentic about all of it. You know, go with the flow.”


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