Cafe Review: An Intimate Pop-Up Explores Thailand’s Regional Deep Cuts

Each week since late October, husband-and-wife team Alex and Yotaka Martin have spent Wednesday through Friday cooking just a few meals available for Friday takeout. They aim, Alex says, to “show people another side of the cultures of Thailand and their cuisine.”

They’re succeeding. Their pop-up, Lom Wong, provides stunning glimpses of Thailand’s roads less traveled.

Lom Wong prepares micro-regional dishes, often specific to an individual person or village, and from people and villages across Thailand. If the Martins can make a paste or egg noodles from scratch, they do. They pound nam prik for hours. They coax milk from coconuts. They dry and fry pork cracklings. Alex says they make one typical ingredient, minced pork, using “a machete and swinging for a long time.”

When preparing food, the Martins channel the wisdom of Thai villagers, farmers, and the Moklen, a seafaring…