Editor’s note: Benchawan Jabthong Painter is a 2024 Houstonian of the Year finalist. Read about the winner and the other runners-up here.

When Benchawan Jabthong Painter was a young girl, she loved hanging out in her grandma’s restaurant in her home country of Thailand. She got to taste all the food while learning how to cook it along the way. Her grandma made it fun—it never felt like work or an obligation.

“She knew how to make me feel like I want to do this,” Jabthong Painter says. “I grew up with it, and I love to eat so much. But every time I see someone have a smile on their face when they try my food, it touches my happiness.”

Raised in the restaurant industry, she naturally followed in her grandma’s footsteps, a journey that would one day land her at the top of her game: the chef and co-owner of a highly acclaimed and award-winning Thai restaurant stateside, Street to Kitchen. Jabthong Painter, who’s now known around the kitchen as Chef G, loved being involved with the family business and worked at various restaurants and pastry shops in Bangkok, where she eventually met her husband, Graham Painter. In 2015, they made their way to Houston.

When she moved here, she continued to work in the restaurant industry at spots like the now-closed SaltAir Seafood Kitchen. Her culinary world really expanded under the direction of chef Justin Yu at Theodore Rex, where she learned about technique and the details that go into each step of the cooking process, which she says was a game changer. She also visited plenty of local Thai restaurants, but she noticed that none of them were as authentic as she would like—and she missed her home country’s cooking.

“American Thai food is different from where I came from,” Jabthong Painter says. “The ingredients aren’t the same because they adjust to cater to the people in the area.”

One day, she turned to her husband with an idea. If she opened her own restaurant, she could make authentic food, and maybe help Thai people who are also homesick. However, there was another reason: She wanted others to have a real understanding of Thai food and the country’s distinct regions—North, Northeastern, Central, Southern—which each have a unique culture and speak different languages. In the old days, Thailand’s royal kingdoms influenced the food their people were eating, creating another type of cuisine that’s become popular, Royal Thai.

Jabthong Painter began to pursue pop-ups at farmers markets around town, taking whatever ingredients were seasonal and fresh and turning them into Thai dishes. In August 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, she and her husband took a leap of faith and opened a brick-and-mortar in the East End.

The first iteration of Street to Kitchen was in a former Popeye’s, in a tiny gas station strip center, on a corner of Harrisburg Boulevard almost hidden by an overpass. Take-out only at first, it had just 10 tables and was BYOB. But the restaurant was an immediate hit. Jabthong Painter says people were driving from The Woodlands and Sugar Land to eat there.

The limited seating made it hard to accommodate everyone. Jabthong Painter knew it was just a matter of time until she would have to look for a larger space. They began searching in 2022—which turned out to be perfect timing because the next year, she won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Texas. A longtime customer of Street to Kitchen had spoken to her about the empty space he had in the Plant in Second Ward after Café Louie closed, which was three times bigger. They made the move in November 2023, and their customer was promoted to landlord.

With the expanded space, Street to Kitchen was able to make several changes, including adding a full-service bar, which is curated by Graham Painter (also a co-owner). The goal is to make guests feel like they’re leaving Houston and entering a restaurant in the couple’s favorite part of Bangkok: Thong Lor, an area of town frequented by a hip, creative crowd. This “travel” is executed through Thai decorations, vibrant colors, music, and an aroma that will make your mouth water.

The star of the show—the food—gives diners a glimpse into Jabthong Painter’s life in North Central Thailand, a border region with a melding of North and Central culinary traditions plus a few of its own, with dishes like red curry corn fritters, Grandma Pluentha’s eggplant fish curry, and betel leaf crab curry. If you were a fan of the restaurant at the former location, you probably remember that Jabthong Painter would surprise diners on weekends with special menu items. Now, Street to Kitchen offers specials every night, like a gaeng ran juang stew made with A5 Wagyu Black, a grass-fed Crying Tiger rib eye served with Lao-style som tum, and even coconut shallot caviar ice cream.

Fair warning: Street to Kitchen has earned a reputation for being very spicy, even by Texas standards. This is by design, as Jabthong Painter strives to serve food that’s authentic to Thailand, not a watered-down version. She also encourages diners to share their food, to enjoy all the different flavor profiles the dishes offer.

“This is the food I really want to share with my friends, my family, and all my customers,” she says. “Street to Kitchen is never going to be perfect, but I don’t believe in perfect.”

And, well, life isn’t perfect, either. Opening her restaurant in the middle of the pandemic wasn’t easy, and 2024 brought on other significant challenges. Street to Kitchen was hit hard by the derecho in May, losing power for five business days. Then came Hurricane Beryl in July. The restaurant’s outage only lasted two days, a relatively short time compared to others, but Street to Kitchen still lost a lot of business, as many people either assumed restaurants were not open or were too caught up with their own recovery to dine out. And between the May and July storms, the restaurant lost power randomly four more times—thanks, CenterPoint.

This didn’t stop Jabthong Painter from helping others during that time. Street to Kitchen distributed to-go meals on a pay-what-you-can basis. A wine dinner in early August to celebrate its four-year anniversary contributed just shy of $2,000 to the Southern Smoke Foundation.

When Street to Kitchen was one of the lucky places with power during the horrid 2021 freeze in Texas, Jabthong Painter did what she could to bring some warmth back into people’s lives, donating over 1,000 meals to people in the community.

The most important way Jabthong Painter likes to give back is through second chances. She gives opportunities to learn culinary skills to people who’ve come out of prison. As long as they’re disciplined and ready to work, that’s all that matters, she says.

Jabthong Painter still has plenty more up her sleeve. Street to Kitchen just won a Bib Gourmand from Michelin, for one. The couple is also expanding the restaurant after they acquired the business next door when it closed in December 2023. The goal is to have a tasting room where diners can indulge in exclusive dishes. When needed, it will also serve as an extra dining room to accommodate overflow of customers.

The chef has many other ideas she’d like to eventually bring to fruition, including four to five new concepts, and even a restaurant back in her home country that will create a fusion of Texas and Thai ingredients. Something people don’t know, she says: In Thailand, they love barbecue, too.