Chefs Rod Lassiter and Parnass Savang of Summerhill restaurant Talat Market were recently named 2024 James Beard Award finalists in the Best Chef: Southeast category. They shared a recipe for Gaaeng Dang Goong (Red Curry Shrimp with Baby Corn and Thai Eggplant) for the AJC Food and Dining newsletter — keep reading to learn more, and sign up for the newsletter here.
Savang and Lassiter have brought Talat Market a long way from its days as a weekend pop-up dinner in Candler Park’s Gato Bizco Cafe. Mere weeks after launching in 2017, Savang and Lassiter were already attracting crowds hoping to snag one of the coveted seats, and just a few years later they raised enough capital with a Kickstarter campaign to open their first brick-and-mortar in Summerhill, right at the beginning of the pandemic.
During the seven years they’ve operated their Thai eatery, they’ve garnered plenty of accolades.
In 2018, Talat Market made Bon Appetit’s Top 50 Nominees for America’s Best New Restaurants list, and that same year, Savang was a James Beard Award semifinalist in the Rising Star Chef category. More recently, Talat Market earned a place in Atlanta’s inaugural Michelin Guide as a recommended restaurant.
It comes as little shock then that the duo was nominated for the James Beard 2024 Best Chefs: Southeast category, though Savang said he and Lassiter weren’t expecting it.
“At the end of the day, we kind of are chasing the restaurant dreams versus the awards,” Lassiter said. “But it is very fulfilling to have some notoriety, and (we’re) very humbled to have that.”
Talat Market’s rapid success can be attributed in part to Savang’s “Georgian Thai” style of cooking.
“I try to do things based in traditional Thai technique but really let the terroir of Georgia inspire and inform whatever comes to the plate,” he said in a previous AJC interview.
Savang grew up in Lawrenceville where he worked in his parents’ Thai restaurant, Danthai. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 2011, he began working under chef Ryan Smith at Empire State South. He later pulled double duty in Staplehouse and Kimball House, where he met Lassiter, a Tallahassee native who’s worked as a chef for over a decade in Atlanta restaurants.
At Talat Market, you’ll find traditional Thai dishes with a twist and an emphasis on fresh, locally sourced ingredients. The Gaaeng Dang Goong, or red curry shrimp with baby corn and Thai eggplant, is one such dish that combines classic Thai cooking techniques with seasonal Georgia ingredients, Savang said.
And while canned coconut milk and cream will suffice for this recipe, at Talat Market they make theirs from scratch.
Talat Market’s Gaaeng Dang Goong (Red Curry Shrimp with Baby Corn and Thai Eggplant)
Lime leaves can be purchased at the DeKalb Farmers Market or Buford Highway Farmers Market. You can also substitute fresh curry leaves.
Servings: 4
Ingredients:
1 cup coconut cream
3 tablespoons red curry paste
4 lime leaves
2 teaspoons palm sugar 4 teaspoons fish sauce, divided
1 2/3 cups coconut milk
8 ounces fresh baby corn
1 pound Thai eggplant, cut into 1 ½-inch cubes
1 pound shell-on (21-25 count) shrimp
2 cups loosely packed Thai basil leaves, chopped
Instruction:
Add the coconut cream to a medium saucepan and cook over medium heat until the oil breaks from the solids, about 15 minutes. Gradually whisk in the curry paste and cook about 15 minutes longer. Add lime leaves, 2 teaspoons palm sugar and 2 teaspoons of fish sauce, stirring constantly. Continue to cook 5 minutes longer until the curry darkens.
Add the coconut milk, baby corn and Thai eggplant to the curry mixture. Simmer for 3 to 4 minutes until the vegetables are halfway cooked, then add shrimp. Cook until the shrimp are springy and orange.
Add the remaining 2 teaspoons fish sauce and Thai basil. Remove the mint leaves. Serve immediately with jasmine rice.
Per serving: 620 calories (percent of calories from fat, 67), 24 grams protein, 31 grams carbohydrates, 12 grams total sugars, 9 grams fiber, 49 grams total fat (40 grams saturated), 143 milligrams cholesterol, 1,360 milligrams sodium.
