Chef Nutcha’s Baan Lao: Best Restaurant in North America

Nutcha Phanthoupheng of Baan Lao

On Wednesday night in Jamaica, at a gala at the Princess Grand Jamaica resort, Nutcha Phanthoupheng accepted the title of North America's Best Restaurant 2026 at the World Culinary Awards for Baan Lao Fine Thai Cuisine, her restaurant on the Steveston waterfront in Richmond, south of Vancouver. It is the first Canadian win, and Baan Lao was also named Canada's Best Restaurant for the third year running.

Now in their seventh edition, the World Culinary Awards are run by World Luxury Media Group as a sister programme to the World Travel Awards, which have been handing out hospitality honours since 1993. There are no anonymous inspectors, as with Michelin: winners are decided by online voting from registered members of the public and verified culinary professionals, with industry votes counting double. The highest scorer across Canada and the United States takes the North American title.

This year's category drew 22 Canadian and 18 American nominees, and past winners include The French Laundry, Le Bernardin and Atelier Crenn. Twenty seats of Royal Thai cooking finishing ahead of that company makes people far from Vancouver look up. None of this surprises me. Baan Lao debuted at No. 12 on the inaugural North America's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2025, and Canada's 100 Best named it the country's Best Destination Restaurant the same year. I have written about it twice, and left both times convinced it was one of Canada's most serious kitchens.

From the hospital ward to the kitchen

Chef Nutcha grew up on a family farm in Isaan, northeastern Thailand, growing rice, raising buffalo and foraging for mushrooms, wild honey and insects. She became a registered nurse and then a cancer researcher at Bangkok's Princess Chulabhorn Hospital, chosen by the Princess herself, before turning to cooking in 2019 after thirteen years in healthcare.

She watched patients on chemotherapy lose their appetite and strength, while others went home, ate what they loved and spent their last days with family. Hospitals, she concluded, had the treatment right and the eating wrong. "Appetite matters. Happiness matters," she wrote earlier this year.

She trained under Chumpol Jangprai of two-Michelin-starred R-Haan and royal chef Vichit Mukura, then opened Baan Lao in February 2021, in the middle of the pandemic.

Royal rules, peasant ingredients

Braised Water Buffalo Shank and Massaman Curry

Royal Thai cuisine is the most rule-bound cooking you will find in a Canadian dining room. Bones and pits are removed by a technique called pawk riew, flavours are balanced away from extremes, and the sous chef spends ten minutes carving each carrot gift box for one bite of the amuse-bouche. Produce comes from farms within 90 km, and the rice from 15 acres in Khon Kaen that have been in her family for 80 years.

What lifts Baan Lao beyond faithful reproduction is what sits at the centre of the plate. Water buffalo is peasant food in Thailand; she gives it court technique, much as Diego Rossi does with the quinto quarto at Trippa in Milano.

The eighteen-item tasting menu, From Thailand With Love, travels the four corners of the kingdom. Miyazaki A5 Wagyu arrives on a pandan leaf over smouldering charcoal. The massaman of braised buffalo shank yields to the side of a spoon, its sauce holding sweetness, salt and warm spice in perfect balance.

Then comes the twist: pad thai as the final savoury course, wrapped in an egg net woven strand by strand over four hours. Dessert, a smoked ice cream with sticky rice from the family fields, remains one of the best I have eaten anywhere.

Seven ways to drink

Baan Lao pours seven parallel flights, from wine and sake to two tea flights, each built by a different specialist. The cocktails are overseen by Kaitlyn Stewart, the first Canadian to win World Class Global Bartender of the Year, and borrow the kitchen's aromatics: tamarind, pandan, lemongrass, kaffir lime and palm sugar.

"This award encourages us to keep improving"

"I wanted to show people that Thai food is more than just street food and introduce them to the beauty of Royal Thai cuisine," Chef Nutcha said. "This award encourages us to keep improving."

"Our goal was to become the best Thai restaurant in North America," said co-owner John Phanthoupheng. "To be named the best restaurant overall is immensely gratifying."

What comes next

The couple are not slowing down. In May they opened MaKaam at Time Out Market Vancouver in Oakridge Park, serving modern takes on casual Thai classics. Next summer, two restaurants open side by side in Granville Island's Chain & Forge building: Baan Baan, Thai Farmer's Table & Bar, devoted to the charcoal-grilled, fermented flavours of Isaan, and Le KaNom, Thai Desserts & Caffe, serving gluten-free and dairy-free Thai sweets by day.

"Baan Baan means village or community, and Granville Island feels like that," she said. "It will allow people to experience my food in a more casual way."

Baan Lao proved that Bangkok's court cooking belongs among the continent's best restaurants. Baan Baan will bring the flavours of the Isaan farm where Chef Nutcha started out to a wider audience. For a chef who left medicine believing that appetite and happiness matter, both make the same case.