Clair's Table started as a food journal kept during years of living and eating across Southeast Asia. What began as personal notes on the best street stalls and hidden restaurants eventually grew into a guide that friends and fellow travellers relied on.
Today the site covers regional cuisines, street food culture, fine dining, and the ingredients and techniques that make Southeast Asian cooking extraordinary. We write about the som tam vendor in Udon Thani with the same seriousness as the Michelin-starred tasting menu in Bangkok, because both represent mastery of craft.
The name honours the original Clair's — a bed and breakfast in British Columbia that believed hospitality starts with good food. That principle guides everything we publish: food is not just sustenance, it is culture, history, and connection.
What We Cover
Our writing focuses on four areas. Regional Flavours explores the distinct cuisines of Southeast Asia's regions and cities. Street Food & Markets covers the hawkers, night markets, and pavement kitchens that feed millions. Fine Dining tracks the chefs and restaurants redefining what Southeast Asian haute cuisine can be. And The Pantry dives deep into the ingredients — the fermented condiments, the chilli varieties, the herbs and spices — that form the foundation of flavour.
Who Writes This
Clair's Table is written by Mae Sangkham, a food writer based in Bangkok. Mae has spent over a decade eating her way through the region, from the night markets of Penang to the fine dining rooms of Singapore. She writes with the conviction that the best food writing treats its subject with the same rigour as any other form of cultural criticism — and that the grandmother making nam prik in Chiang Rai deserves the same attention as the chef with a Netflix special.