Written by Max Veenhuyzen
This smiley chef has been serving real-deal Thai food in Katanning for almost a decade.
Supawan Thomas may have been born in northern Thailand, but she’s found a home – and appreciative dining public – in Australia’s Great Southern region.
Supawan Thomas, like anyone that grew up northern Thailand’s Isan region, likes her food hot and sour, not least when it comes to som tum, Thailand’s famous – and famously hot – salad of shredded green papaya.
Yet as the face and owner of Katanning’s popular Wan’s Aussie Thai restaurant, her demeanour is cool and sweet. Rather than bombard customers with chilli and spice, the warmth is, instead, in Thomas’s welcome and easy smile. But if guests like it hot, she’ll happily oblige.
“When I cook for new customers, I ask them if they want me to cook Aussie or Thai,” says Thomas.
While purists may balk at such fluid notions of “authentic” Thai cooking, Thomas’s approach says as much about her story as it does that of Katanning and a well-founded reputation as one of Australia’s most multicultural communities.
Born in the major Northern Thai city of Udon Thani, Thomas was taught by the rest of her family how to cook home-style dishes. After relocating to Katanning in 2007 for love, she parlayed these skills into a business, initially as a mobile food caravan before setting up a permanent shop in 2020.
While Thomas might enjoy food with lots of oomph – in addition to deploying plenty of chilli, Isan food also leans heavily on the unfiltered, funky fish sauce known as pla ra – the cooking at Wan’s Aussie Thai borrows liberally from the Bangkok and Central Thai kitchen playbook. Sugar and lime provide sweetness and acidity while Thomas reaches for the coconut cream more often than she would back at home. (The climate in northern Thailand is too cold for coconuts to grow.)
The result? A crowd-pleasing mix of Thai favourites running from creamy tom yum soups and hefty pad thai noodles to puffy Thai-style omelettes. Factor in other broadly “Asian” dishes – think meat and veg stir-fries, Japanese-style omurice starring fried rice wrapped in omelette, plus bubble tea – and it’s not hard to understand why such a broad church congregates at Wan’s.
One afternoon while eating an early dinner, a Fijian family comes in to dine. As I finish, some tradies barrel through to grab some takeaway. Although the menu is built for mass appeal, Thomas can, if ingredients and time allow, prepare classic Isan dishes. Tom sarb is a zippy, sour soup fizzing with bright makrut leaf acidity while larb is a gutsy minced meat salad crunched up with toasted glutinous rice powder. If you’re in luck, she’ll have the ingredients on hand to make that aforementioned som tum too.
In addition to cooking for guests, Wan’s also caters for those that want to cook for themselves with the front of the store doubling as a small Asian grocery store. Not only does she stock Thai products, she also carries items from Indonesia, Korea and other parts of Asia. It’s yet another way that Thomas is looking out for the good people of Katanning.
Wan’s Aussie Thai, 77 Clive St, Katanning WA 6317