Arnold Myint
Arnold Myint has been a celebrity chef (Season 7 of Top Chef and Season 11 of Food Network Star), a professional ice skater, an internet influencer, a restaurant owner, a drag queen (Suzy Wong) and a James Beard Award semifinalist (2024 Best Chef: Southeast). Surprisingly, he hasn’t been an author. Until now.
His first book, Family Thai: Bringing the Flavors of Thailand Home, publishes Oct. 7 and is full of the thoughtfulness, the attention to detail and the complexity that Nashvillians have come to expect from Myint and family.
With his sister Anna, Myint owns and runs International Market, a Thai restaurant across the street from where their parents, Patti and Win Myint, opened a restaurant by the same name 50 years ago. (As it happens, they’ll host a 50th anniversary dinner at International Market on Nov. 9.) At the new International Market, the lunch menu is reminiscent of dishes old-time Nashvillians may remember from Patti Myint; at night, there are more modern interpretations of Thai cuisine.
Family Thai walks a similar line, including family recipes and lore, as well as new takes on traditional flavors. In the book, Myint — with co-author Kat Thompson — explores what it means to be “authentic,” offering an end product that is part riotously colorful coffee table book (thanks to photos by Linda Xiao), part memoir (both his own and that of his late mother) and part cookbook. While the book will be extra special for Nashvillians who have a soft spot for International Market and Patti’s recipes, with Thompson, Myint has written a book that reaches further than Belmont Boulevard; it’s both personal and universal in its appeal.
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“My mother is the true star of this book,” Myint tells the Scene. “She just couldn’t do [a book like this] because of the language barrier. She just didn’t have the language and the opportunity that I have been given to express it and to celebrate it.”
Many celebrity chefs use ghostwriters, keeping the writing assistance under wraps. But Myint thought of working with a co-author the same way he thinks of his performances: “You’re only as strong as your cast; the chorus is only as strong as the headliner.” When Myint was introduced to Thompson, he was thrilled with her culinary writing skills, and also thrilled that she spoke Thai and that they had similar cultural experiences growing up in the United States with Thai parents.
Thompson, who lives in Los Angeles, will attend some of the book tour events with Myint, including in Nashville. This is an unusual move for a celebrity chef, demonstrating how Myint views Thompson as a co-author rather than a ghostwriter.
Thompson notes that Myint, like many chefs, is a high-energy person. “[Chefs are] so creative,” she says. “Kitchens are such fast-paced places, and working on a book, we were talking about many things at once.” While the book is all Myint’s stories and his mother’s stories, Thompson says she helped him “channel everything he was thinking and get the words on the page.”
Both Myint and Thompson went through big life changes while working on the book. Myint became a first-time father. Thompson’s father passed away, and she evacuated from her home in Altadena, Calif., during the Eaton Fire in early 2025.
“We fell into this relationship of cheering each other and holding each other up,” Myint says. “What really bonded us was the connection through food and being able to write something that was so close to our heritage and our heart in the same breath.”
Together they created a book with an extensive Thai pantry section, which includes suggestions on what to keep in your house, what to substitute when you can’t find what you need, and what brand of instant ramen to buy. (Spoiler alert: it’s Mama.) They provide recipes for basics, with easy pointers (e.g., never refrigerate sticky rice, and cut limes lengthwise rather than horizontally), and even teach you how to make your own sriracha. There’s a Pad Brussels Sprouts Fai Dang recipe that shows you how to substitute Brussels for harder-to-find morning glory greens.
“The dishes that I feel really embody the book are the dishes that are like the perfect combination of Nashville and Thai food, like the Bacon Pad Krapao, for example,” says Thompson. “Pad Krapao is a Thai dish that is the dish that you order when you don’t know what you want to eat. It’s an undisputed Thai favorite because it’s always going to be good. It’s spicy, garlicky, and there’s basil. Arnold’s just really clever in using local ingredients but making something still feel very authentic.”
The memoir and personal essays are interspersed throughout the recipes, from Myint remembering his mother calculating the cost of anything he asked for as a child in the number of egg rolls she would have to sell, to stories of Nashvillians being supported by Patti in myriad ways. She is woven into the book, even in ways that are not obvious to the naked eye: The cover features a Thai picnic — Myint thought a picnic with fried chicken and watermelon chili crumble with cucumber salad was a way to demonstrate that Thai-Nashville connection — and the dishes sit atop a quilt that was made from many of Patti’s silk clothes after she died.
“I always felt pretty special in Nashville, both good and bad,” Myint says of being a gay Asian man growing up in the South. “My visibility was unique in the landscape of Nashville. What I want from this book is for people to see my upbringing in Tennessee and my family as [evidence of] people like us in small towns too, not just New York or San Francisco. I hope that this is a nice little beacon for those who are still trying to find their way.”
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Knowing what it’s like to run a small business, Myint is encouraging readers to shop local when they buy the book, with a link to independent bookstores on his website. In Nashville, signed copies are available from Parnassus Books. “I really wanted to make this a community-supported celebration of my mother,” he says. “When I do a chef collaboration in certain cities, the audience will also get a book with their reservation from that local bookstore.”
In Nashville on Oct. 12, Myint will host a big book launch potluck at Curry Boys BBQ in Inglewood, with Thai music and food from Sarabha’s Creamery, S.S. Gai and others.
“I never had a bar mitzvah — I never had a quinceañera,” Myint laughs. “So let’s make this one my party. This is it. This is my coming-out.”
The potluck, he says, will celebrate Nashville’s varied and growing Asian community.
“Finally, I have some friends to play with Asian food in Nashville, and I want to celebrate all of that. It’ll also be nice to show what Nashville is outside of hot chicken and white boots on Broadway.”
