Chef Ton's Grandmother, a 2026 Michelin Star, and the Roof Over Wat Pho
Contemporary Thai cooking in a Phra Nakhon shophouse where the welcome bites are served on a rooftop looking straight at Wat Pho. Set menu only, deposit up front, and worth the planning.
The first thing here is not a plate. It is the roof — a narrow terrace above Maha Rat Road where the welcome bites arrive with Wat Pho lit up over the tiles, close enough to read the roofline. You eat two or three small things standing up, watch the temple change colour as the evening drops, and then descend into a dining room done in olive green and gold that feels smaller once you are inside it than it did from the street.
Nusara is Chef Ton Thitid Tassanakajohn's second Bangkok room after Le Du, and it is named for his grandmother. It won its first Michelin star in the MICHELIN Guide Thailand 2026, and it is No. 5 on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants 2026. The kitchen cooks contemporary Thai on a traditional spine — the recipes are family, the plating is not — and the format is a single set menu that everyone at the table eats together.
A rooftop over Wat Pho, a grandmother's recipes, and the whole bill paid up front.
Editorial Deep
The menu is a tour of the regions rather than a single one, and it is anchored in family recipes rather than a chef's search for a new idiom. A quartet of regional relishes lands early and does the work an amuse would do elsewhere — it tells you what the kitchen thinks Thai food is, and the answer is a country, not a city. Later the crab curry arrives with betel leaf and horseshoe crab roe, which is the dish most people are here for and the one that earns its billing: heavy with roe, sour and salty in the right proportions, the heat a decision the kitchen has made rather than one it has argued down for the room. A Thai wagyu stir-fry with holy basil is the plate that sounds like a hedge on the menu and reads as one on the table — competent, correctly seasoned, not the reason to book.
At eight on a Thursday the room is mixed in a way that reads as the restaurant's own draw rather than a hotel spillover: a pair of Bangkok couples in linen and open collars at the two-tops, a table of four Singaporeans over from the weekend, a Japanese couple who have clearly worked back from the menu, and one four-top of Europeans in the kind of clothes the dress code was written to prevent (long trousers, closed shoes, no flip-flops — the door holds the line). Ages run mid-thirties to late-fifties. Nobody is loud.
You are met at the door of the shophouse by a host who has your name before you give it, walked through to the stairs, and taken straight up to the roof — the welcome bites are already plated and the temple is doing its work across the road. That first minute sets the pacing for the rest of the evening: unhurried, informed, warm without performing it. The floor knows the menu in the detail you want them to, and the wine and pairing team read the table rather than reading from a script.
The trap here is the top pairing. If you want to drink seriously, corkage at THB 2,000++ is the honest move; bring a bottle you actually want with the crab and stop there.
The circumstance that would bring this reader back is a first visit for someone from out of town — the rooftop is the single most legible piece of Bangkok fine dining to hand to a friend who has flown in, and the set menu takes the decision away from a table that is still working out what Thai food does at this level. That is a specific occasion, not a rotation. Two or three times a year at the outside, and only when the evening is built around the room rather than around the meal.
What to eat
Don't miss.
The quartet of regional relishes and the crab curry with betel leaf and horseshoe crab roe; mid-tier pairing over the top one; corkage if you want to drink seriously
“A modern Thai room, Michelin-starred since 2026, where the rooftop opener over Wat Pho is the reason to book and the crab curry is the reason to stay.”
Go for the occasion — a first Bangkok fine-dining table for out-of-town guests, with the rooftop welcome and the family register doing work the plating alone would not. Skip if you eat at this tier in Bangkok every week: Le Du, Chef Ton's other room, runs meaningfully less and lands the cooking without the deposit rule.
The Verdict
