‘Loud at Every Level’

Nam Prik Pao is one of the most compelling (and spiciest) pop-ups in the city

by Eileen Mellon

August 10, 2023

12:11 PM

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A chile dip trio served with vegetables from Nam Prik Pao (Photo by Jordan Hanna)

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Brennan Griffith of Nam Prik Pao (Photo by Arshan Yazdan)

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Banana leaf-steamed salmon with pork fat, red chiles, lemongrass, turmeric and dill (Photo by Jordan Hanna)

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Grilled beef ribs with nam jim jaew (Photo by Jordan Hanna)

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Pomelo salad with crab, fried garlic and fried shallots, roasted peanuts, toasted coconut, fresh chiles, tamarind, and crab paste (Photo by Jordan Hanna)

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Grilled shrimp with nam jim seafood sauce (Photo by Jordan Hanna)

Brennan Griffith has never worked in a traditional restaurant kitchen setting. In fact, “traditional” isn’t a word that applies to much of anything the force behind the Thai food-focused pop-up Nam Prik Pao does in his life or with food.

Self-taught, the queer chef with a strong affinity for spice is leading one of the most compelling pop-ups in the city. His next event, a Thai spin on a Southern cookout served as takeout dinners for two, is slated for Aug. 20, with preorders opening Aug. 15.

“I find that I tend to gravitate towards intense, loud things. I like loud music, even the way my house is decorated, and I feel like Thai food is loud at every level — the spice, the sour, the umami, the funk,” says Griffith, 37. “I love how intense it all can be but still balanced, and I find it really fascinating.”

That fascination has led to a decade-long journey exploring the inner workings of Thai cuisine through online videos of street vendors, an always growing cookbook collection, out-of-town food adventures at restaurants such as D.C’s Little Serow, and a little trial and error. While the Surry native has dabbled in the food and beverage industry, including time as a food expeditor at Ruby Tuesday’s and feeding hundreds of people at a time while working for a monastery in Hampton Roads, this is by far his most ambitious and personal endeavor.

“For the longest time, I felt nervous about being the white guy selling Thai food. I didn’t grow up with this, this is not my culture, a lot of the dishes I’ve never even had made by a Thai person, I’ve only read about them in these cookbooks, but … I can’t stop making Thai food. It’s captured my interest, and I fully recognize this isn’t mine, but I can’t stop learning about it.”

Named for the Thai chile jam, Nam Prik Pao held its first pop-up at the now shuttered Salt & Forge in 2019. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and Griffith put his project on pause. But after being dormant for a few years, he says, it’s time for a spicy comeback.

“I was missing it,” Griffith says. “I was feeling like, wow, I have really practiced so many dishes over the past couple years and really honed them in and worked on flavor profiles that I was never really familiar with before, and just feeling like, why have I let this kind of sit for so long?”

Griffith, who describes his baker’s rack as a “mini Tan A” (referring to the Richmond Asian supermarket), stocked with coconut milk cans, palm sugar, fermented chiles and pickled garlic, says he also had some words of encouragement from a friend.

“The real kicker was one of my best friends just outright saying, ‘You need to get off your a-- and do a f---ing pop-up,’” Griffith says with a laugh. “My soul was jolted.”

When looking to restart Nam Prik Pao and a place to host the events, Griffith reached out to the owners of Sub Rosa Bakery, whom he had invited to attend his first pop-up years before. Turns out his previous dishes had earned their seal of approval — they were on board.

“We eat the food first,” Sub Rosa’s Evrim Dogu says. “We would never say yes to [hosting] a pop-up we wouldn’t want to go to.”

At a pop-up in July, the Church Hill bakery was transformed into a dining room with long communal tables. During the reservation process, guests were encouraged to attend with a group of close friends — the event promised no utensils, plenty of sharing and spice sweats.

“When I was planning the menu, I felt very much like, OK, I need to come out of the gates swinging,” Griffith says.

Wanting to strike a balance between fresh and familiar dishes, he started the evening with a trio of chile relishes — nam prik noom (green chile), nam prik oong (pork and tomato) and nam prik dtakrai (shrimp and lemongrass) — served with a basket of sticky rice, cucumbers, radishes and carrots.

“If you’re doing this right, everybody is digging off the same plate,” Griffith says. “You take your sticky rice, you dip it on the sabbath plate so you can soak up the dressing. There’s a lot of overlap with Ethiopian food; it’s a shared meal.”

Next came a fiery, tangy grilled pork salad, the pieces of meat swimming in roasted red chiles and mint. Then a pomelo and crab offering, a subtly tart palate refresher bursting with herbaceous undertones from lemongrass to lime leaves, plus a funk permeating from fried shallots and garlic and fermented crab paste.

“Thai food is meant to be shared, it’s meant to be eaten together — the dishes themselves,” Griffith says. “It is this constant merry-go-round of flavors, it’s supposed to balance back and forth. Even with the two salads, I wanted one to be hot, fiery, citrusy and then one cool, sweeter and fruity."

Additional dishes included head-on shrimp served with nam jim, an intensely spicy and pungent seafood sauce that is ubiquitous in Thailand, yet not often seen at Thai restaurants in the United States. Honey-ginger grilled beef ribs were accompanied by a sweet and spicy nam jim jaew dipping sauce, while an herb-laced steamed salmon arrived wrapped in a banana leaf.

While Griffith is in no rush to introduce a permanent space for his concept, he says he’s enjoying the fluidity of pop-ups and being able to offer something that challenges diners, from a prix fixe menu with no substitutions and copious heat to using rice or one’s hands as a utensil.

“One of my key takeaways from that format was, this is how you get people to order those things they wouldn’t have otherwise. I want to see more of those kinds of things in Richmond,” he says. “I feel like the pop-ups around here are where you’re getting the advanced stuff, and I want that to be the norm. My end goal is for people to have those same kinds of ‘Holy s---, I didn’t realize tom yum [soup] was supposed to be this sour’ moments, and I feel like a pop-up can do that easier than a brick-and-mortar. It’s one night, you’re going to get the kinds of people that want that intensity.”

Follow Nam Prik Pao on Instagram for the latest pop-up updates.

by Eileen Mellon

August 10, 2023

12:11 PM