About Jam

I'm Jam Sanitchat — chef, cookbook author, and for 23 years, a Thai cooking teacher in Austin, Texas. I own Thai Fresh and Gati, two spots in Austin built on the food I grew up eating, and I've spent my career trying to hand that food down to anyone willing to stand at a stove and pay attention.

This is Jam's Thai Table, the home I'm building for that teaching now that live classes are winding down — recipes, the stories behind them, and the techniques I've spent a lifetime learning.

Growing up in the kitchen

I grew up in the south, watching my grandmother cook there. During summer months, I'd visit my other grandmother in a suburb of Bangkok, whose charcoal stove I sat beside for years, handing her whatever she reached for and listening to her talk about her own strict parents and how hard she'd worked as a young woman. Between both of my grandmothers and my mother, I learned that every ingredient in a dish matters — why it goes in, when it goes in, and how long it's supposed to cook for. Nothing goes in by accident.

By the time I left home, I'd spent about 25 years absorbing how Thai food is made without ever really making it myself.

Twenty-five years of watching

I didn't start cooking on my own until I moved to the United States, and by then my mother wasn't around to ask. I came to Austin for graduate school at the University of Texas, where I finished my master's, and decided to stay and explore food and teaching instead. I began teaching cooking classes in 2003 — first in students' homes, then in a kitchen of my own so small it fit five people.

The strange part was how much I already knew. I used to call my mom to check a recipe once I started teaching, and one day she asked me, surprised, "When did you learn how to cook?" I hadn't realized it myself, but all those years on the kitchen floor had taught me everything.

Thai Fresh, and everything around it

I started small, selling food at farmers markets, where I learned to cook with local, sustainable ingredients — and invented a Thai Omelet Taco for the morning crowd that's still on the menu today. In 2008, that stand became Thai Fresh, my restaurant in Austin. In 2020, I opened Gati nearby — a coconut milk-based ice cream shop, bakery, and coffee shop that's since grown into a full breakfast and lunch restaurant too. In 2025, I added a breakfast menu inspired by my travels. I taught cooking classes at Thai Fresh for years, took a break, and reopened the cooking school at our current location in 2023.

Alongside the restaurant, I wrote a cookbook, told in the same story-and-recipe format you'll find here — a little history before every dish. I spent eight years working as a writer and photographer, and I still take photos everywhere I go. Every year, I go home to Thailand to see family and walk through the markets — that's still my favorite part of any trip, and where most of my new ideas come from.

Why Jam's Thai Table

After 23 years of teaching live, in person, I'm doing something new: moving my teaching online, into Jam's Thai Table. My classes almost always sold out months in advance, and I loved every one of them, but I can only fit so many people in a kitchen at once. This is my way of opening the door wider — recipes with real instruction, the stories that go with them, and the techniques I've spent a lifetime learning, available to anyone who wants to cook alongside me.

I don't cook with a wok, by the way — I use a saucier, and once you try it you'll understand why. That's the kind of thing you'll find here: not just what to cook, but why I cook it the way I do.