While Sanitchat doesn't have formal culinary training, she has been helping out in the kitchen since she was a child. She launched her first resturant, Thai Fresh, in 2008, with Gati Cafe following in 2020. (Courtesy Chad Wadsworth)
Thai Fresh started nearly two decades ago, moving from pre-prepared meals and counter service to full table service and a spin-off concept in East Austin. It remains rooted in serving fresh food with a people-first mentality.
Meet the chef
Owner Jam Sanitchat got her start in the kitchen as a child helping her mother and grandmother prepare meals. It wasn’t until she moved from Thailand to Austin in 2001 to attend graduate school that she really started cooking solo. Sanitchat soon started throwing small dinner parties for friends, which served as an inspiration; she loved seeing how happy her cooking made others.
"It's such a good feeling: happy and also very rewarding,” Sanitchat said. “That's how it all started, [with] being a host.”
Then, Sanitchat started teaching cooking classes during a gap year between graduate school and her Ph.D. program. She eventually decided to continue teaching instead of attending school, which led her to open Thai Fresh in 2008. The space was intended to be a cooking school with pre-prepared meals and later turned into a made-to-order restaurant with table service.
Menu items include the Pad Thai ($17) made with rice noodles, eggs, shallots, pickled radish, sprouts and chives with house-bade souce. (Courtesy Liz Harroun)
Must-try menu items
The menu is composed of classic Thai flavors, as well as dishes Sanitchat grew up eating. Menu staples include Pad Thai, Pad Sea Ew, drunken noodles and a range of curries. Thai Fresh also serves up stir fries, soups, salads and different fried rice options, including pineapple, spicy basil and green curry.
Dishes born from Sanitchat’s creativity include shrimp fritters, which include the batter that street vendors in Thailand use to make banana fritters.
The drink menu
Thai Fresh offers Thai iced coffee, pandan matcha latte, white blueberry iced tea and more. House specials include the basil lime fresca, which features Thai basil, lime juice, cane sugar and sparkling water.
Patrons can also find sake, wine, draft beers and specialty cocktails. The cocktail menu brings new takes on classic drinks, like a sake old fashioned, made with sake and bitters, and the kombucha spritz, made with seasonal kombucha and sparkling rose or prosecco.
Jam Sanitchat, along with Kim Lane, also launched a Thai Fresh cookbook with savory recipies and sweet treats. (Courtesy Liz Harroun)
Staying local
One of the menu’s key features is its locally and sustainably sourced ingredients. Sanitchat learned about local produce and meat when she sold her food at local farmers markets before opening up a brick-and-mortar location. She used to trade leftover food for fresh produce from nearby vendors, slowly adding ingredients from the market into her rotation.
“I started learning how big the U.S. is, how things could travel from far away [and] what common footprint it creates if it has to be shipped from too far away,” Sanitchat said. “So, I started the principle of using all local meats ... [and] vegetables whenever possible.”
Respecting the craft
Another pillar of Thai Fresh is the menu prices. After moving from counter service to table service, Sanitchat chose to raise prices in 2016 to reflect production costs and pay employees a livable wage.
“The price that [customers] pay reflects the labor,” Sanitchat said. “We [offer] employees paid time off, paid sick leave, insurance and then paid them, at that moment, the rate of a livable wage that was published for Austin—not just for Texas—but for Austin.”
One more thing
Thai Fresh also has an expansive dessert selection, ranging from cakes to cookies, bars, pies, tarts and coconut milk ice cream with flavors like Thai coffee, Thai basil and pandan. The brand’s popular desserts caused Sanitchat to expand into a new concept: Gati Cafe, which serves ice cream, breakfast and lunch in East Austin.
