Smoky Mountain Thai Smoky Mountain Thai

“It’s little spice, not big spice,” says a mom, encouraging her young son as he takes a tentative taste of jasmine rice and purple yams soaked in a Thai yellow curry infused with cumin, cinnamon and turmeric. Eyes widen, and he’s sold, grabbing a forkful of the rice noodles, too, laced with ribbons of pickled mustard greens. He begs for more bites from his mom’s bowl, then looks to his fellow diners and announces, “We should all eat here every day!”

“Here” is Dalaya, the Thai restaurant that chef Kanlaya Supachana opened in the mountain town of Sylva, North Carolina in 2019. As a server delivers dishes to other diners on the creekside patio, they follow the kid’s lead, chatting up their neighbors. A young couple asks a work-weary construction crew, “What’d you get?” A group of golden girls chime in: “Is it good?” They keep talking — “You from here?” “Where’d y’all hike today?” The food makes friends from strangers. 

It’s a packed house—the tiny dining room is full too—which keeps Supachana in the kitchen, but if she saw the connections forming outside, she’d likely smile. Echoing her native northern Thailand, Sylva’s green peaks and greener valleys pulled her from a successful restaurant in Brooklyn. Dalaya is her homage to the togetherness of her family and her roots in the Thai highlands. The tribute is evident in a menu devoid of often-Americanized standbys like pad thai and fried rice, packed instead with her parents’ home cooking: fish-sauce-marinated chicken wings slicked with a sweet-spicy sriracha glaze and silky egg noodles in a coconut curry with shallots, soy sauce and chili oil.

Diners relish Supachana's culinary recollections. They also earned her a recent “Best Chef Southeast” James Beard Award nomination. Her personal favorite, sai ua, a grilled pork sausage, is a labor of love she often makes on her day off and learned how to make from her father while growing up. "It makes me think of him," Supachana says. “This food is me, my memories,”