Anajak Thai Embraces the Future
The road from art director to chef leads Justin Pichetrungsi right back onto a creative path
In the new Anajak Thai kitchen, the first major renovation since the restaurant originally opened, Justin Pichetrungsi had many things on his wish list, including one non-negotiable: the placement of his father’s wok station would not move. It is a sacred space, the heartbeat of the restaurant that his parents Ricky and Rattikorn Pichetrungsi opened in 1981. Then in 2019 when Ricky suffered a stroke, Justin stepped up to his father’s wok station and began to tackle the challenges of keeping the family restaurant open.
Pichetrungsi found himself taking over the stress of running a restaurant, navigating the Covid pandemic, creating a popular weekly happening affectionately called TTT (Thai Taco Tuesday), creating omakase tasting menus and cooking for exclusive events. Adding to the original staff and family members, he built a team including front of house, kitchen and award-winning sommeliers.
Now with a growing list of accolades, Pichetrungsi’s stature in the global culinary world is rising. He has been named James Beard Best Chef California in 2023, Food & Wine Best New Chef 2022, LA Times Restaurant of the Year 2022 and recently was a featured speaker at Rene Redzepi’s MAD Conference in Copenhagen.
With all this hoopla, it may come as a surprise to know that being a chef is his second career. A trained artist and successful art director at Disney, Pichetrungsi’s path to the kitchen started when his parents opened Anajak Thai in the LA suburb Sherman Oaks. In their small family restaurant, he was known to ‘host’ the kids who wanted to hang out in the office while their parents’ finished dinner.
“I think it’s funny to dream of working at your parents’ restaurant,” Pichetrungsi. “Everyone’s trying to get into the industry. Why would you leave your job and go back to the one that you could have done without going to college?” Yet as his art career took off and work as an art director at Disney and professor at Art Center thrived, he found himself drawn back to the family restaurant, making friends in the culinary world and getting interested in the world of wine. “I have been cooking with dad since I was in high school, and he would show me recipes. I lived there basically. And so, I developed a love for restaurants pretty early on.”
Pichetrungsi’s path from visual artist to culinary creation started early. He remembers spending evenings as a kid in the Anajak office drawing. By 13, one of his paintings was hanging on the wall of the restaurant’s dining room. He also illustrated a seasonal specials menu during the very early stages of starting Anajak’s now award-winning wine program. He now creates handwritten menus for his omakase dinner series and popular TTT nights.
“At Art Center I learned the design process,” explains Pichetrungsi. “In film class I learned how to tell stories. When I was in the industry, I realized that you’re combining those two things. And I feel in some ways at the restaurant, you do both. Cooking is halfway in between the scientific method and the design process. Being a chef is somewhere in between being a storyteller and being a creative leader.”
After 10 years at Disney Imagineering, Pichetrungsi faced a crisis. His father Ricky suffered a debilitating stroke. He was at a crossroads. Save the family business or put his head down into his art directing work and take on whatever that entailed for his parents. “My first goal was to break them out of jail,” says Pichetrungsi. “There’s art in cooking and in running a business. And I had to learn that really the most difficult way possible, which felt like diving headfirst into a cement pool.”
After jumping in, the journey has been filled with challenges and triumphs, garnering fans, accolades and responsibilities for his growing team. While the infrastructure continued to crumble around them, he was cooking some of the most celebrated dishes in the vibrant LA culinary scene. The feeling of a classic family Thai restaurant always maintained its charm, but the practicality of maintaining the breakneck pace of serving food to an always-full reservation list was taking its toll.
In early summer 2025, Pichetrungsi announced that Anajak would close for two months for a renovation. “To preserve something, you have to change it. Mainly, we’re renovating the kitchen. It’s a micro kitchen. There are some taco trucks with larger kitchens than ours,” he says. Improvements to the 44-year-old restaurant extend well beyond the kitchen, however. Even the uneven concrete in the alley has been repaved. Wine glasses will no longer slide down the sloping tables on the festive Tuesday nights. TTT has evolved from a pandemic project into a thriving Thai street food scene frequented by creatives, food adventurers, entertainment leaders, and world-renowned chefs. “TTT is looser in terms of the way that we run it and the way that we serve. There’s indoor and outdoor cooking,” says Pichetrungsi. “It’s a good amount of fun for me. It’s a street party.”
When thinking about bridging the story between the original restaurant his parents opened to the Anajak of today, Pichetrungsi says, “The lesson that it’s taught me is you don’t need a lot. What’s old can teach you something. The spirit of the place has stories and lessons to be told. My hope is that we get a rejuvenated spirit and culturally speaking, evolve into this butterfly of space.”
On the road to Anajak coming out of its summer cocoon, 2025 has been another big year for Pichetrungsi personally. In May he spoke at the MAD symposium in Copenhagen. “I didn’t realize how people would find our story relevant, inspiring or motivating,” he says. When Rene Redzepi ate at Anajak, he sprung the idea on Pichetrungsi to speak on the theme ‘Build to Last.’ “And I think I blacked out. Everything turned into squiggles in my head. I was really excited, because I spent years watching the MAD symposium talks.”
During the MAD weekend Pichetrungsi shared stories about his father, the history of Anajak and how he sees the future of the restaurant. The Noma team made lunch for 700 people with Anajak recipes. “We served lab moo, radish, cucumber salad, panang with beef and a hiramasa crudo. They made all the sauces that took about four and a half days to prepare.”
In June Pichetrungsi flew to Colorado for the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. Watching his glowing smile during his cooking demo and hilarious appearance at a Chefs versus Somms competition seminar, the comraderie among the chefs is warm and lively. “I love this iconic festival in this gorgeous, stunning mountain town,” he says. “But the reason why it’s significant to me is they’re the ones who have curated the Food & Wine Best New Chef (BNC) class since 1988. If you look at the list of BNCs through the decades, you’ll see some great names like Wiley Dufresne and Danielle Boloud, Thomas Keller and Silverton, Roy Choi and Dave Chang.” He points to how The Food & Wine Classic in Aspen welcomes the new BNC class. “You continue the legacy of the award, and also you get to be connected to the future and the next generation.”
Back at Anjak, whole fish are being grilled and the now infamous Southern Thai fried chicken sizzles in the kitchen. While the playlist pumps out an eclectic mix of hip hop, country, Hawaiian songs and R&B, Pichetrungsi will be looking back and moving forward. The back house behind Anajak has now been turned into a creative space and a private dining room. “And so I’m curious to see where the intersection of music, art, entertainment and cooking is going to go,” he says.
Anjak Thai, based in Sherman Oaks, California, offers an à la carte menu, Thai Taco Tuesdays, private events and more.
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