On June 30, Justin Pichetrungsi published news on his restaurant's Instagram account that attracted thousands of responses in shock, dismay and support: he would close his generational family business, Anajak Thai Cuisine, for almost two months.
What followed was a complete renovation that discovered family relics and reinvented the space that helped raise Pichetrungsi, and catapulted the chef and its Sherman Oaks restaurant to international fame.
“To preserve something,” he published, “you have to change it.”
The Thai restaurant of the neighborhood, founded 44 years ago by the team of husband and wife Ricky and Rattikorn Pichetrungsi, served the Sherman Oaks community for decades. But when his son, Justin, took over the restaurant several years ago, his own vision began to establish himself: new dishes, new formats to enjoy them, an expanded wine program and a new energy. His generational combination of Old and New Help It Garner praise, including the call of the La Times of the Year Restaurant in 2022. That same year, Justin Pichetrungsi received the title of Best Chef in California of the James Beard Foundation.
If everything goes as planned and Anajak reopens on Friday, it will present completely new teams, except that it is, for the original three -hole station of its father, which has been restored. His mother, still an accessory at the restaurant, will finally have his own work station dedicated to his famous sticky mango rice. Guests will find an additional dining room, a completely new and more open kitchen, a review of the original dining room space, the art of their grandfather, a repaviment of the Alfresco area (the place for its popular Tuesday of Taquandés Taco) and more.
Anajak's chef-propietary, Justin Pichetrungsi, in the street of the restaurant for Tai Taco on Tuesday in 2021.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
It all started with the plate well. Anajak crossed many dishes, cutlery and wine glasses by organizing 250 guests per night. Wash them all in a three compartments located together with the kitchen line, the Wok station and the grill finally was unsustainable.
Pichetrungsi asked him for the first time where he could move the sink, and everything was unraveled from there: he would have to place it where the bathrooms were. To offer new bathroom guests, you would have to renew and open the adjacent warehouse. And if a wall had to go down to renew, I could rebuild everything.
“The most difficult business part is the part of the organization, not innovation,” he told The Times. “Innovation is very funny: you dream of new dishes, new ways of talking to your customers and things like that. But with all things behind the scene, people never saw how broken the program was to continue.”
In January, the staff began in small phases, such as moving the content of the wine storage room to the office and the storage space in the alley. Then, on July 1, the construction began seriously.
The diners in the Alley of the Kitchen of Anajak Thai, Pre-Arrevaciones, on the left, overlooking the main dining room of the restaurant during the construction in July.
(Mariah Tauger and Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
The first day, the staff passed a sled between them, each giving a swing on a wall, including Ricky Pichetrungsi, who attacked him from his wheelchair.
“Everyone in the team has a hand when breaking that wall, which was a beautiful moment,” said Justin Pichetrungsi.
While they were renewed, they discovered Reliquias of Anajak: a box of old celebrities and shots in the head of those who have visited over the years, the original and coated fat cash register, old menus, brand combat houses and an entire mirror that his father built walls during his own renewals 30 years ago.
“I hoped to find money, but unfortunately …” Pichetrungsi laughed.
Pichetrungsi, a trained artist who previously worked at Disney Imagineering, wanted to make changes for a long time, more than he knew he wanted to become a chef or take care of the family restaurant.
Anajak Thai kitchen chef, Justin Pichetrungsi, shares pages of his sketchbook details the renewal of the 2025 restaurant.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
While checking his sketch notebooks from previous years, Pichetrungsi found a list. I was leafing through a book that I had not used in a decade and saw several notes of changes that would make Anajak.
“I realized that much of my decision -making in recent years has really been about how to get to this specific point,” he said. “A point where I can have a kitchen in which I was happy to work, it is not that I was not happy to work in my father's kitchen, but it was very uncomfortable, and it was not my discomfort. It was about developing a space that would feel in line with whom we wanted to be.”
The owners of the Kitchen of Anajak Thai Ricky, Rattikorn and Justin Pichetrungsi at the Los Angeles Times 101 list on December 3, 2024.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Pichetrungsi was still drawing and teaching when he began to help his parents keep his restaurant afloat after the economic crisis of 2008. But in 2019, after his father suffered a stroke, he left Disney and took over full -time Anajak, working with his mother, his aunt and occasionally his father. In an attempt to keep the family business alive, he turned during the pandemic, turning the vacancy of alleys to organize Thai Taco on Tuesdays, a very popular weekly event with lines around the block. Then, he pushed his limits even more with a Thai tasting menu constantly evolving.
When Pichetrungsi began to cook in the restaurant there were eight staff members, including him and his relatives. Now there are almost 60.
Near the center of the restaurant, the former Ricky Pichetrungsi office, which once served as a de facto nursery, but became storage for pots and pans, will house a new winery with climate control supervised by the director of wine director Ian Krupp.
The construction team works six days a week, starting at 5 am, with multiple overlapping crews. They have installed a new oven bell, a floating kitchen pass, new plumbing, new electrical systems and new sidewalks in the dining room.
The new dining room, which the staff calls the east wing, will offer two dozen seats and a hall to the new bathrooms. The oil paintings and the watercolors of the deceased grandfather of Pichetrungsi were flown from Thailand. The old carpet now Gone, as well as a tarnished section of “top print” of the wall, where during the years, the guests and the staff leaned while waiting for the bathrooms, they are also being framed.
“It's disgusting, but it's art made by millions of people,” said Pichetrungsi.
He alerted the restaurant staff throughout last year, giving time to make plans or find temporary employment for the month and a half of closed businesses. Many took vacations. Some staged in other restaurants. Some are working through construction, writing the first official training manuals of the restaurant.
Pichetrungsi refused to share the cost of Anajak's review, but said: “It will be many Thai.”
Outside the Kitchen of Anajak Thai in 2023. The new iteration of the restaurant has hand -painted windows signage.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Pichetrungsi's parents expressed concerns about renovations: think about cost. Does everything need everything? But they have come to appreciate the changes.
“They are not as nostalgic as me,” said Justin Pichetrungsi. “They have seen it so much, they are well letting him go. But I couldn't do it. I was here during the day of demonstration, and it was a difficult time for me.”
As different from the restaurant, much of it will remain the same. Kobe's basketball shirt will continue to hang on the dining room. On Taco Taco Tuesday will resume immediately, and the restaurant's Omakase will also return, although on a later date.
With much more cooking space, new dishes can also arise in Anajak.
Today, the Pichetrungsi notebooks are full of sketches of plant plans, the views from several tables, the new server station and the dishes that you would like to run in the new kitchen: the addition of a second deep fryer could someday mean whole fried fish. There could be enough space in the pass for shuck oysters and build seafood towers. Or maybe, he joked, these are the changes that the guests will see in another decade, when he decides to shake things again.
