By Manaow Prasatthong
Manaow Prasatthong — 3rd Generation Thai Chef
Taste of Thailand is run by Manaow Prasatthong, a third-generation Thai chef born in Nakhon Sawan in central Thailand. When she was two years old, her family relocated to the northern province of Chiang Mai — a move that would shape everything about how she cooks.
Cooking Thai food isn't something Manaow learned from a course or a cookbook. It's something passed down through three generations, with recipes, techniques and an understanding of flavour that comes from spending her childhood and teenage years inside a working Thai kitchen.
The Golden Castle Restaurant
Manaow's grandparents started out selling food at the local morning market in Chiang Mai in the early 1980s. To one side of their stall was a Chinese family selling tofu — something nobody in Chiang Mai had seen before, and which the locals initially mistook for soap. To the other side was a family from southern Thailand selling fresh coconut milk, which was equally unfamiliar in the north at that time.
But what Manaow's grandparents were selling caused the biggest stir of all. They had brought a dish common in central Thailand that northern Thais had never encountered: green curry. Not just a curry made with coconut milk — which was itself a novelty in the north — but a curry that was green. It took a while for the locals to come around, but eventually it did.
A few months later, her grandparents opened the Golden Castle Restaurant (ครัวปราสาททอง) on Meung Samut road in Chiang Mai city. The name was no coincidence — Prasatthong, the family surname, translates directly from Thai as "Golden Castle". It served traditional food from central Thailand — the cuisine that most people in the West associate with Thai restaurants — at a time when none of it was available anywhere else in the north. They also sold their own green curry paste, one of only a handful of people in the region who knew how to make it.
Growing Up in the Kitchen
It wasn't long before Manaow's parents began working at the Golden Castle, and from the age of three Manaow grew up in the restaurant — around the food, the techniques and the family recipes that had made it what it was. Her parents eventually took over, and through her teenage years Manaow worked alongside them, learning everything: how to build a curry paste, how to balance the flavours, how the dishes were supposed to taste.
There was no culinary school and no professional kitchen apprenticeship. Everything she knows about cooking came from three generations of family knowledge, learned at the source.
She worked there until she was 18, then moved to Bangkok to study Law at Ramkhamhaeng University. While she was there she briefly opened a noodle soup shop with a friend — but the demands of studying Law made it short-lived. It would be a long time before she worked with food again.
From Bangkok to Dorset
Several years later, Manaow met her husband Matthew and they relocated to the south of England. They still spent several months each year in Thailand, so a permanent restaurant didn't make sense. Instead, they set up Taste of Thailand — an outdoor Thai catering business that has been serving food at festivals and events across the south of England ever since.
Best Dish at Bournemouth Food Festival
One of the early highlights came at the Bournemouth Food Festival, where Manaow's Thai red curry was awarded Best Dish. It was recognition that the food spoke for itself — not a simplified or adapted version, but the real thing. The Bournemouth Echo was there on the day; their coverage of the festival is what the newspaper cutting above is taken from.
Over a Decade of Pop-Up Events
Taste of Thailand has been bringing authentic Thai food to Dorset for over 10 years. In that time Manaow has cooked at festivals, markets, music events and private occasions across the county — including Swanage Carnival, the Wessex Folk Festival, Tankfest, Upton House Music Festival, and events across Bournemouth, Poole and Weymouth.
Over the years the stall has attracted some well-known faces. At Buckham Fair in Dorset — actor Martin Clunes's annual charity event — Manaow's food caught the attention of the man himself. And at the Ipswich Food Festival, Michelin-starred chef Jean-Christophe Novelli paid a visit to the Taste of Thailand stall and gave the food his approval.
The format is simple: a pop-up stall serving a focused menu of dishes cooked fresh to order. No shortcuts, no pre-made sauces. If you've ever eaten Thai food at a street stall in Thailand and wondered why the version back home tastes different, it's usually because the ingredients and technique have been simplified somewhere along the way. That doesn't happen here.
Taste of Thailand is available for festivals, food markets, corporate events and private hire across Dorset. If you're interested in booking, get in touch here.
Authentic Ingredients, No Compromises
One of the things that sets Manaow's cooking apart is the sourcing. Key aromatics — galangal, fresh kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, Thai basil — are used fresh wherever possible. The difference between a curry made with fresh galangal and one made with dried powder is significant, and it's a difference that shows up immediately in the finished dish.
The same applies to the pastes. Manaow makes curry pastes using a pestle and mortar rather than a blender, following the method she learned growing up. It takes longer, but the texture and flavour are different — something that anyone who has eaten Thai food in Thailand will recognise immediately.
The Recipes on This Site
The recipes and guides published here come directly from Manaow's own cooking — the same dishes she serves at events, using the same techniques she uses in her own kitchen. Where a recipe has been in the family for generations, it's noted. The aim is to give people a genuine path to cooking Thai food at home, not a shortcut version that produces something vaguely Thai-flavoured.
If you try a recipe and have a question, or want to know more about an ingredient or technique, send us a message.
