By Jim Donnelly
At first glance, it’s just an ordinary kitchen. Plain-looking. Flaked white paint. A stove. A few drawers and cupboards holding polished silver utensils and cooking equipment.
Yet this is the same room where some of the most exotic home cooking in Ottawa has simmered for the past half-decade – the kitchen of the recently retired Thai ambassador to Canada, Sunai Bunyasiriphant, and his wife and two daughters.
The Bunyasiriphants and their cook, Varaporn Akravitayapooh, have served traditional Thai fare at the ambassador’s official Rockcliffe Park residence since their arrival from Bangkok five years ago.
“I make curry, shrimp, rice, deep fried vegetables,” said Akravitayapooh, 33, a few days before moving back to Thailand earlier this week with Bunyasiriphant and his wife. “For lunch I make something like pad thai. It’s shrimp, tofu, noodles, and the sauce is a fish sauce.”
Breakfast for the Bunyasiriphants usually consisted of rice, croissants, or toast. Dinner included anything from rice and curry to roast quail, spring rolls and seafood. Chopsticks were optional.
Akravitayapooh learned the skills of Thai cookery, including the art of fruit and vegetable carving, in Bangkok.
“I love food carving,” she said in broken English. “I make roses out of carrots, and baskets out of watermelons with patterns over them. Out of a pumpkin I would make a flower, one either big or small.”
Other items in her victual-whittling repertoire include cucumbers and cantaloupes. And, according to the daughters at least, she’s good.
“She cuts the cucumbers in the shape of spread-out leaves,” said Chutima, 20, the family’s youngest, who still lives in the city while attending the University of Ottawa. “It’s very nice.”
Akravitayapooh said she averaged about four hours a day cooking all three meals for the Bunyasiriphants, and even longer when cooking for one of the ambassador’s well-attended dinner parties.
She says the family averaged over $200 per week on food purchased at local supermarkets and in Ottawa’s Chinatown. They also ate in Italian, Japanese, French or Thai restaurants regularly.
Plum, 25, who will be in Canada until the end of October, said having a cook was a matter of convenience and good food.
“Sometimes I like cooking for myself, but of course it’s nice to have food ready for you when you get home.”