Moving Mountains

Khanom jiin naam yaa plaa is a mountain trout curry distinguished by a velvety, golden sauce melding coconut milk with pounded fish. Kanlaya Supachana, 56, serves it the way her father did, the local trout plated alongside rice noodles and presented with an array of bright accompaniments: a soft-boiled egg, bean sprouts, pickled mustard greens, green beans, and lemon basil. 

This northern Thai dish has traveled a long way to become a staple menu item at Supachana’s Sylva, North Carolina, restaurant, Dalaya.  

Mountain trout curry isn’t traditional North Carolina cuisine, but the dish reveals surprising commonalities between the small mountain town where Supachana now lives and her native landscape. 

“In my hometown, Chiang Mai, we have mountains and creeks,” said Supachana, better known as Chef Gun, a nickname she adopted because Americans who had trouble pronouncing “Kan” understood her two-fingered pistol pantomime. “Morning is cool, and like this, we have the sun all day long. Nighttime, it cools down again. The trout love it.” 

When she immigrated to the U.S. in 1998, Supachana spent several years in New York City, where she opened Kao Soy, a successful restaurant in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood that often had a two-hour wait. After leaving Kao Soy, she briefly ran a pop-up called Chiang Mai.   

She was looking for another restaurant space in New York City when her friend David Weeks, who had moved to Sylva, suggested she come visit him. As Weeks drove her from the Asheville airport into the mountains, Supachana was struck with nostalgia. “I said, ‘Oh, it looks like my hometown!’” she remembers. “I loved it.”  

On that same visit, Supachana saw the tiny building that would become Dalaya in 2019. Weeks became her partner in the venture, and the two decided on a name that combines their first names, David and Kanlaya.

One side of Dalaya is a wall of windows overlooking Scott Creek, a stream designated as a Mountain Heritage Trout Water through a program administered by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. It’s popular for fly fishing. The trout “jump out of the creek,” said Supachana.  

One of Dalaya’s most devoted customers, Preston Easley, is a local fly-fishing guide with Brookings Anglers, a fly shop with locations in Cashiers and Highlands, North Carolina. He and his friends often fish the creek after ordering at Dalaya. 

“We actually caught a huge fish one time while we were waiting,” Easley said. “It would be super cool if we could find a way to provide her fresh, wild trout, but unfortunately, in North Carolina, it’s illegal,” under a state statute that prohibits restaurants from serving recreationally caught fish to the general public. 

While the fish leaping out of the creek aren’t exactly the ones she puts into her curry, she does source the trout for Dalaya from local aquacultural operation Sunburst Trout Farms. Still, the dish transplants beautifully from Chiang Mai to Sylva—not only because of the similar landscape and climate, but also because of the loving and thoughtful approach taken to preparation in both places. 

To help guests better appreciate the ingredients and technique, Supachana offers a few tips. 

“Don’t put all the noodles in the curry, because it gets soaked and doesn’t look nice,” she explained. “The Thai style is you put some curry with the noodles and eat some with the vegetables … a bite at a time.” 

Each mouthful becomes its own small dish: a spoonful of thick, creamy curry drizzled over rice noodles, brightened with the zip of pickled mustard greens, the crunchy freshness of diced cucumber, bean sprouts, and green beans, and the herbal sweetness of lemon basil. Once you swallow, the heat of the curry’s chilies sets in slowly, easily quieted by a bite of boiled egg. The experience seems like magic, but it’s not; it’s the careful execution.  

Making the naam yaa curry paste is laborious, requiring at least an hour of grinding ingredients by hand with a mortar and pestle. Dried Thai chili peppers, garlic, shallot, lemongrass, coriander, palm sugar, shrimp paste, galangal (a stronger, more herbaceous relative of ginger), and Makrut lime leaves plucked directly from Supachana’s potted lime tree in the corner of the dining room all go into the mix, along with turmeric for the golden color. 

Meanwhile, the trout is boiled just briefly in water with Makrut lime leaves and lemongrass to loosen it from the skin and bones. It finishes cooking in the mixture of curry paste and coconut milk. 

Yelp reviews show the consistency of the dish surprises many diners. The pieces of trout sink to the bottom of the bowl of curry, making it appear as though you’ve just been served a thick broth.  

Dalaya regular Patricia Hembree, who belongs to a local group of self-described “foodies,” researched all the dishes on Supachana’s menu before her first visit so she knew what to expect. “If you didn’t already look it up, you wouldn’t know that it was completely minced,” she said. “You would go, ‘Where’s my fish?’”  

Supachana has heard this many times. “A lot of people call back when they get takeout and say, ‘I cannot find my fish!’” Supachana said with a laugh. 

Preparation of trout in the American South is varied—fried and grilled are perhaps the most common methods—but boiled and minced in a soup is not one most Southern diners know. In the case of khanom jiin naam yaa plaa, the minced fish is crucial to the flavor and consistency of the curry, which is sometimes likened to Bolognese sauce in Italian cooking.  

“When you taste the curry, you’re going to feel the fish meat,” Supachana said. The curry, in turn, flavors the fish, creating a rich and textured broth. 

Supachana doesn’t lean away from the spice, either. “I make it like I eat it in my hometown: spicy.”  

The concentrated herbs and spices are good for your health, she said. “Yaa means medicine and naam means water. So, it’s called medicine water.” 

The coconut milk completes the dish. Supachana uses a specific brand, Aroy-D, which is packaged in a carton; she says canned coconut milk has an off-putting, metallic smell. 

A complex dish means more room for error. Yet I’ve had the trout curry at Dalaya three times now, once as takeout, and it’s been delicious every time.  

“I’m sure you’ve been in restaurants where you order the dish and you think, ‘Oh this is great,’ and then you go back and get the same thing and it’s like, ‘What happened?’” Hembree says. “That doesn’t happen with Gun.”

The mountain trout curry isn’t the most popular dish at Dalaya. That’s Supachana’s khao soy, a chicken curry that was her New York restaurant’s namesake. She’ll proudly tell you that she’s sold more than 20,000 bowls of it since Dalaya opened.  

But after a long career of praise and success, the trout curry represents something more than popularity for her: a settling, a memory, and a new home. “It reminds me of when I was young.”  

Eaten beside the creek at Dalaya, two seemingly disparate places are brought closer together. It’s a new creek, the same trout, and a transporting experience for both chef and diner.  

Emma Castleberry is a freelance writer and reporter living in Asheville. Her favorite day is one spent outdoors followed by lots and lots of food.