The character arc of Bo Songvisava
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born in Bangkok to a Thai mother and a Taiwanese father who owned and ran a canning business, one of five children, cooking Thai Chinese food at home with her parents. Between then and now sit two years of a university course her parents urged on her, a transfer to a hotel management school in Australia, a master's in gastronomy, a first kitchen job in Bangkok where a visiting chef asked her about Thai food and she realised she knew very little, a post at a celebrated Thai restaurant in London from 2005, the opening of Bo.lan in a Bangkok bungalow in 2008, a Michelin star, a closure in 2021, and a full reopening in December 2023. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Bo Songvisava?
A stranger asked about Thai food. She could not answer.
Her mother is Thai and her father Taiwanese, and they owned and ran a canning business in Bangkok. She is one of five children, and grew up helping her parents cook Thai Chinese food at home. The family ate Western food too, but Thai was her favourite, and her parents are the reason she wanted to be a chef. They wanted her to take a traditional degree instead. She studied English and French for two years until it became unbearable.
Thailand had no culinary degrees at the time, so she transferred to a hotel management school in Australia and took a business degree in restaurant and catering management. She could not find a hotel job after graduating, so she went back to Australia again, studied at a university and a cookery school there, and came out with a master's in gastronomy.
Her first professional kitchen was a Mediterranean restaurant in Bangkok, where she started at the bottom. A visiting foreign chef asked her about Thai food, and she realised she knew very little about it. When she asked other local chefs, she found that very few of them did either. Thailand at that time had few restaurants cooking traditional Thai food, because most were cooking for tourists. In 2005 she took a post as chef de partie at a Thai restaurant in London that was then considered one of the best in the world, and one of the very few with a Michelin star. She met her future husband there, then a sous chef.
In 2008 the two of them moved to Thailand and opened Bo.lan in a former bungalow in Bangkok, on a slow food model, serving traditional Thai. The name is a portmanteau of their two first names, chosen because it sounds like the Thai word for classic. She got most of her ideas from old cookbooks and from talking to farmers. The restaurant ran solar panels, a vegetable garden and its own water filtration, recycled its waste, bought from local farmers and artisans, and listed emerging Thai wineries. It refused to demand organic certification, because the paperwork would drive small farms away. Her rule instead: she visits the farms, and if she trusts them, she buys.
She was named Asia's best female chef in 2013, the first year the award was given. Bo.lan took a Michelin star the first year there was a guide to Thailand. She and her husband opened a casual street food restaurant in 2015, ran pop ups in New York and Hong Kong, and she has taught at two Thai universities and hosted a television programme about food. In 2021, after thirteen years, Bo.lan closed during the pandemic, under semi lockdowns, reduced seating and a ban on alcohol sales. It came back for occasional dinners in March 2022 and fully reopened in December 2023.
The moments
Bo Songvisava's timeline.
The 2000s
London, and a real Thai kitchen
Milestone, and it changed everything. She went abroad to learn her own country's cooking.
Stay in London, or go home
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: go back and cook it there, taken, or build the London career. Bo.lan opened in Bangkok in 2008, she was named Asia's best female chef in 2013, and the restaurant took a Michelin star the first year there was a guide to Thailand.
Bo.lan opens in a bungalow
Milestone, and it changed everything. A house in Thong Lo, and the cooking nobody was doing.
The 2010s
She marries Dylan Jones
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The person she met in the London kitchen, four years into the restaurant.
Asia's best female chef
Milestone, and it changed everything. The first person ever given it, five years in.
A pop up in New York
Milestone. Carrying the cooking out to people who had not tasted it.
Err, the street food one
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The cheap one, so it was not only for the people who could afford Bo.lan.
A Michelin star for Bo.lan
Milestone, and it changed everything. The first Thai guide there had ever been, and they were in it.
A documentary season
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The restaurant in a Bangkok bungalow, on television everywhere.
Among the best in the world
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Eighteen restaurants in the world, and one of them is hers.
The 2020s
Bo.lan closes
Setback, and it changed everything. The whole thing, shut, and nothing she did caused it.
Ad hoc dining begins
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A few dinners a month, which is not nothing.
Fully open again
Milestone, and it changed everything. Back, properly, in the same house.
She could not answer a simple question about her own country's food, and rather than learn quietly she spent twenty years making the answer public. What she set moving is a Bangkok that cooks for itself again, and a kitchen whose supply chain is a list of farms she has actually walked around.
In her words
Quotes by Bo Songvisava
I visit the farms and if I trust that they're doing organic, I buy from them.
Your turn
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Hers is a degree she did not want, a question she could not answer, and a restaurant that closed and opened again. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Bo Songvisava: frequently asked questions
What people ask about her line.
What is Bo Songvisava's character arc?
What is Bo Songvisava's Bo.lan?
Did Bo Songvisava's restaurant close?
What awards has Bo Songvisava won?
How does Bo Songvisava buy her ingredients?
Where did Bo Songvisava train?
Where does this timeline of Bo Songvisava's life come from?
More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with her.
Sources
- Bo Songvisava, English Wikipedia biography.
- Asia's 50 Best Restaurants listings and the best female chef award record, 2013 to 2019.
- Michelin Guide Thailand, first edition, for Bo.lan's star.
- Chef's Table, season five, Netflix, 2018.
- Her birth year is not published, so none is given here.
- No Wikiquote page exists for her, so the one quotation below is taken from the record above.
- Songvisava, on why Bo.lan did not demand organic certification.