6 top documentaries for Thai food lovers

Jay Fai is 81 now, still running her corner restaurant at 327 Maha Chai Road, the place that earned her a Michelin star.

Back in 2018, the UTOPICFOOD! crew decided to follow her and Chef Ton from LeDu restaurant all the way from Bangkok to Copenhagen. René Redzepi of Noma invited Jay Fai to cook at his MAD Symposium, where the world’s best chefs come together. There she was, cracking eggs and flipping her famous crab omelette in front of the culinary legends and something about her working her wok had film festivals calling from the USA to Italy to Russia.

The story hits because it’s devastatingly simple. Here’s a woman in front of scorching flames – day in, day out – the simple portrait of someone who shows up and just passionately does the work. The film doesn’t try to explain or justify her choices. It simply shows. And there’s something moving about people who found their calling, made it their life and stayed true to it.

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In a June 2014 article accompanying this Thailand episode, Bourdain describes eating here as ‘a deep dive into a rich, many-textured, very old culture of flavours and colours ranging far beyond the familiar spectrum’ and with one dramatic line: ‘Given our limited time on this Earth… you don’t want to miss any of it.’

Bourdain chose to centre on ‘eating and drinking’ around Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai with Chef Andy Ricker of Portland’s and New York’s Pok Pok restaurants. As Bourdain says of Ricker: ‘He may be a farang but he’s been moving back and forth between Thailand and America for 20 years or more and, well… Just eat his food sometime and you’ll know what I’m talking about.’ Ricker then describes the episode as ‘a prolonged bender, an increasingly addled tuk-tuk ride from place to place, shoving delicious things into my face and washing them down at turns with Thai whiskey, moonshine and beer.’

The episode moves with Bourdain’s philosophy of culinary pain. ‘I don’t like pain. I don’t even like minor discomfort. Except when we are talking food, in which case the older I get, the spicier and more painful I want it.’ Thai food is exactly that.

Basically, it’s a watch for when you want to see ‘an otherworldly sense of elation came over him as his brain flooded with endorphins’ – all from Northern Thai food.

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Bo Duangporn Songvisava leads this story with Dylan Jones, her partner both in life and at the stove, the pair behind the acclaimed Thai restaurant Bo.Lan. Their food is a collision of ancient royal Thai recipes and cheeky modern technique, stitched together with sustainability as the strong packthread running through it.

The story flashes back to Bo’s childhood, her first education in flavour and ritual inside a Thai-Chinese kitchen. Then comes the leap: Le Cordon Bleu, Griffith University, London, Nahm, David Thompson. A whole world of technique before returning to Bangkok in 2008 to plant Bo.Lan in her home city.

Bo is a fighter chef. She questions the system, lifts up small farmers and calls out the industrial machine. For her, food is life politics: ‘It’s not only cooking. It’s not only eating. It’s how you live your life.’

Visually, the episode is lush. Dishes appear as moving paintings, kinetic still lifes. It’s the story of a Thai woman’s passion told in the love language of cooking, where tradition and innovation wrestle stunningly.

Where to watch: Netflix

It’s a London father-and-son wanderlust reality show, with comedy rooted in cultural collision as son and dad take turns staying perpetually exasperated while exploring new places, with food emerging as the unwitting star.

We watch them, adventurous and anxious, navigate Thailand’s culinary landscape: prodding through Isan street food, then pivoting to a Bangkok rooftop, where a posh Brit dad settles into white tablecloths while Jack eyes the street chaos below. Family dynamics unfold, contrasting the inherited tastes of a British patriarch with the adventurous palate of his young son against a Bangkok backdrop.

Even their detour to Phuket’s Full Moon Party becomes a meditation on how food, or the lack thereof in favour of questionable beverages, marks generational rites of passage. These moments reveal how eating abroad becomes both bridge and barrier between worlds: the familiar comfort of what we know and the thrilling uncertainty of what we’re willing to try.

Where to watch: Netflix

Phil Rosenthal shows up with an open mouth and an open heart, a collector of culinary shocks and delights. For him, food is a universal handshake, the way strangers slide into conversation and leave as friends over shared plates and stories.

This episode is Phil in his element: being fed while tracing Bangkok's journey from the floating chaos of Lat Mayom Market to the Authors’ Lounge at Mandarin Oriental, Chinatown’s durian stalls and Michelin-starred Jay Fai.

He’s that exuberant uncle you can’t help but love, rapturous in the face of life’s little joys. His show reminds you to fall in love with being fed, the thrill of fullness and the often-overlooked privilege of eating and getting full.

Where to watch: Netflix

Mark Wiens owns Phed Mark, a name that flips his own into Thai: ‘phed’ is spicy, ‘mark’ is very, so ‘very spicy,’ just like the dishes served there. Phed Mark is a Bangkok spot that gets it: locals don’t want dumbed-down heat.

Watching him in this National Geographic episode, you see his signature head tilt, wide-eyed reaction, the little gasp when something truly surprises him. Good or bad, it’s all appreciation, a genuine excitement to taste, learn and discover.

You watch him drift through markets greeting vendors like long-lost relatives, sharing stories and learning something new every time. What makes this episode special is Mark’s genuine curiosity. He doesn’t explain Thai food to you; he discovers it with you.

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