Pun Pun
Monday, 4 August 2008 by nalika
At Wat Suan Dok in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, there is a cute outdoor restaurant under a big tree.
It's a part of a project, Pun Pun, which means one thousand varieties in Thai.
It started with a Thai husband Jon Jandai and American wife Peggy Reents team. Their homeground in Thailand where they maintain a sustainable farming, earthen house, and seed saving center is in Mae Taeng, approximately two hours from the city of Chiang Mai.
I met Jon and Peggy early last year at one of the open talks about sustainable agriculture and movements against GMOs.
A couple of months later I bumped into them at a vegetarian center operated by Santi Asoke, a Thai Buddhist group that supports sustainable living (to make it short), and learned that they were opening a restaurant at Wat Suan Dok.
I stopped by when they were preparing to open, and painted some of the signs :-)
..and I also visited them at their farm in Mae Taeng.
This is one of the earthen houses they have built.
... and a hut I slept in.
... and a view from the hut.
At their restaurant at Wat Suan Dok, they offer one of the best cost performance lacto-ovo vegetarian food in town.
They use as much produce as possible from their farm where they do not use chemical inputs. When they are short of supplies, they obtain supplies from other regular organic markets in town.
The chef, lung (uncle in Thai) Wat used to work in Bangkok hotels, but decided to work with Jon ... and he knows how to make an eye-catching presentation.
For instance, this is "super salad"
...with salad leaves, beans, dragon fruits, tomatoes, carrots, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, scoops of avocado and sweet corn niblets, with pumpkin or sesame or avocado dressings to choose from.
Phat Thai served on a banana leaf.
You can even request brown Phat Thai if you can wait a little longer, because brown noodles take longer to soak.
Fried rice with fried egg on top.
The rice they use is by default brown rice.
Most of their menus are between 30-40 baht range.
They also have lovely smoothies and juices.
For instance, I like their banana/mango/yogurt lassi and beetroot/ginger juice with no sugar added.
They also make lovely soap-based shampoos with kaffir lime, which, according to Maytel, Hock really liked when I brought a bottle once.
Pun Pun Restaurant is now closed on Wednesdays.
Opens all other days from 9am ish to 6:30pm or so.
Bring repellent if you are popular with mosquitoes, like me.
It's a part of a project, Pun Pun, which means one thousand varieties in Thai.
It started with a Thai husband Jon Jandai and American wife Peggy Reents team. Their homeground in Thailand where they maintain a sustainable farming, earthen house, and seed saving center is in Mae Taeng, approximately two hours from the city of Chiang Mai.
I met Jon and Peggy early last year at one of the open talks about sustainable agriculture and movements against GMOs.
A couple of months later I bumped into them at a vegetarian center operated by Santi Asoke, a Thai Buddhist group that supports sustainable living (to make it short), and learned that they were opening a restaurant at Wat Suan Dok.
I stopped by when they were preparing to open, and painted some of the signs :-)
..and I also visited them at their farm in Mae Taeng.
This is one of the earthen houses they have built.
... and a hut I slept in.
... and a view from the hut.
At their restaurant at Wat Suan Dok, they offer one of the best cost performance lacto-ovo vegetarian food in town.
They use as much produce as possible from their farm where they do not use chemical inputs. When they are short of supplies, they obtain supplies from other regular organic markets in town.
The chef, lung (uncle in Thai) Wat used to work in Bangkok hotels, but decided to work with Jon ... and he knows how to make an eye-catching presentation.
For instance, this is "super salad"
...with salad leaves, beans, dragon fruits, tomatoes, carrots, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, scoops of avocado and sweet corn niblets, with pumpkin or sesame or avocado dressings to choose from.Phat Thai served on a banana leaf.
You can even request brown Phat Thai if you can wait a little longer, because brown noodles take longer to soak.Fried rice with fried egg on top.
The rice they use is by default brown rice.Most of their menus are between 30-40 baht range.
They also have lovely smoothies and juices.
For instance, I like their banana/mango/yogurt lassi and beetroot/ginger juice with no sugar added.
They also make lovely soap-based shampoos with kaffir lime, which, according to Maytel, Hock really liked when I brought a bottle once.
Pun Pun Restaurant is now closed on Wednesdays.
Opens all other days from 9am ish to 6:30pm or so.
Bring repellent if you are popular with mosquitoes, like me.
good job with the sign!
.... looks like a beige food paradise.
self-sufficiency is enticing. I think growing up in an earthquake danger zone made me think a lot about what all the typists and bean-counters would do when society finally got shook down to a mess of boulders.
I was reading an article in the NY Times about this paranoid lady who lives in rural america and wrote a book about 'preparedness'. She has tonnes of dries milk and flour stashed throughout the house and a solar oven. They also have emergency backpacks hanging by the door with flashlights and stuff in them.
Very creepy, but deeply appealing to me.
The problem is that you have to cook with the dried foods all the time so that they don't go off, and replace them with fresh stuff. The kids were complaining about having to eat reconstituted egg all the time. hah.
erik owns a meadow in his dad's village Urft. I was totally dreaming of building a hay bale house there next to the river ......until he told me the land is adjacent to a boy's correctional facility.
his dad's garage on the edge of that field gets broken into all the time.
plus the land is at the bottom of the valley so it doesn't get much sunshine, literally, either!
as far as I know, the ground has not been cursed by an actual witch, though.
hmm, pun pun looks like the shining example of the King's sufficiency economy ideas.....have royalty descended on the place yet?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Now you made me hungry to Pun Pun, Nalika. When can we go again together? I have been thinking about going to the farm as well, you're pictures make it seem quite nice, aj.D
To me it is not clear.
Did you know that the first person to be served a meal at Pun Pun was Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh? Yes, it is true.
a terribe unhygienic place and if you remove my comment ! it states even more that its true !
a mess - a disorganised bunch of weirdos pretending to run an organic farm - while serving very very mediocre food - coming out of an extremely dirty unhygienic kitchen - purchasing inorganic commercial vegetables and using prefab spices - selling it as an organic kitchen served on dirty plates washed by the person who used it the day before without any control -the showers and toilets are on latrine standard and the entire marketing pictures collapses in one second if someone has a bit of a clou how to run things in general - YOU WOULD DO THINGS JUST SIMPLY GOOD WITH AN EFFORT WITH PROUD AND WITH PASSION ! and this is lacking completely !
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