Pioneering restaurateur Amy Chanta of Chat Thai restaurants dies

The pioneering restaurateur behind the popular Chat Thai restaurants across Sydney, Amy Chanta, has died.

Chanta lived with cancer for two years before passing away yesterday, her daughter, fellow restaurateur Palisa Anderson, announced on social media.

Chanta, who grew up in a Thai village, opened her first Chat Thai restaurant in Darlinghurst in 1989. She popularised Thai flavours with Australian diners, eventually employing hundreds in her many restaurants across the city, and in her family's Boon Cafe and Jarern Chai grocer in Haymarket.

Veteran restaurant critic Pat Nourse described Chanta as a champion of Thai culture in Australia.

"Her restaurants in Thaitown were some of the best and most impressive examples of Thai restaurants run by and for Thai diners you'll find outside Thailand," he said.

"[Chanta] and her daughter, Palisa Anderson, and son, Pat, brought as much care and skill to the look and feel of their restaurants and the design of their menus as they did the toasting of the rice for their benchmark larbs, or sourcing the acacia shoots for their kai jeow cha om [acacia leaf omelette].

"She made some concessions to Western palates earlier on in her career, but it was her fidelity to the food she grew up with, as well as the constant currency brought by visitors and staff constantly travelling between Thailand and Australia, that made Chat Thai's name."

Chanta's restaurants became mainstays for visiting international chefs, and were favourites with Noma's Rene Redzepi and Momofuku's David Chang, Nourse said.

"Endlessly self-deprecating, she nonetheless asserted the place of Thai women at a time when the banner for Thai food in Australia was often borne by white men."

Chanta might be best known for feeding Sydney well, but she'll be remembered for nourishing a community, work that her daughter has embraced with vigour, Nourse said.

National Good Food Guide editor, Myffy Rigby, described Chanta as a pioneer of the Sydney dining scene.

"A talented and generous chef, brilliant businesswoman and a huge champion of young talent, her mind, palate and spirit will be missed," Rigby said.

"Every time I bumped into her at Boon, I'd leave with armfuls of fresh produce, jars of things to try and a big smile on my face – Amy Chanta was always feeding people. She couldn't help it.

"Everyone who cares about Thai food in Sydney has a strong memory attached to Chat Thai – whether it was 2am beers and Isaan sausage or the lunchtime dash for boat noodles. Long may her legacy live on."

Anderson paid tribute to her mother's wisdom and discipline on social media.

"She leaves us with her light, her immense passion for living a full vibrant spiritual life, generously giving and loving to all those who had the fortune of existing in her orbit close and far away."