If you know one thing about Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year festival celebrated each year from April 13 to 15, it’s likely the water fights. (They even made an...
If you know one thing about Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year festival celebrated each year from April 13 to 15, it’s likely the water fights. (They even made an appearance in season three of The White Lotus.) Marking the start of the solar calendar, it’s known for its anything-goes water festivities: Participants armed with water guns, buckets, and hoses splash each other in a symbolic cleansing of sins and washing away of misfortunes that allow a fresh start in the new year.
“The water fight is a real thing,” smiles Jenn Saesue, the New Jersey–born, Bangkok-raised cofounder of beloved downtown restaurant Fish Cheeks, known for seafood-forward, unapologetically spicy dishes that showcase Thai flavors and techniques rarely found in Manhattan before it opened in 2016. “People drive around with pickup trucks full of water, and you can dump it on anyone, even police, and they can’t get mad. It’s even welcome because it’s the hottest time of the year.”
Befitting the second largest Buddhist population in the world (after China), many also visit temples to make merit, a fundamental Buddhist concept to generate positive karma that can involve offering alms to monks, participating in traditional rituals, and pouring jasmine-scented water over Buddha statues to honor their spirituality. Respect for elders is likewise key to the celebration; trickling water over the hands of older family members is a gesture of reverence and a way to receive blessings for the upcoming year. Throughout the country, the festival is marked by colorful parades, traditional music and dance, family reunions, and a spirit of community and togetherness.
Celebrating Songkran now is similar to what we did growing up. We start at the temple in Elmhurst, Queens. Monks get up early, do their rounds in the neighborhood, and then return to the temple before noon. They depend on the community to feed them, so you do a food offering, and they do a prayer blessing. Most of the prayers are in Pali and Sanskrit, and you literally don’t know what you’re saying. But it’s about Buddhism, letting go, new beginnings, not holding on to things, bad karma, good karma, and making sure you’re a good person and not harming other people, just living a good life. During a portion of the chant, you pour water into a little bowl, and later you go to the biggest tree and pour that back into the earth, like a circle-of-life thing.
What I liked most about this season of The White Lotus were the scenes with the monks. People don’t realize that’s such a big thing in Thailand. How Thai people live and behave is very much tied to the religion—why Thai people are so nonconfrontational and why it’s called the land of smiles. You’re taught at a very young age to let things go; nothing is so important for you to be extremely sad or affected. It’s no big deal most of the time, so calm down, don’t be stressed, it’s just a part of life. That’s rooted in religion. I try to go to the temple every six months; I could go more. I’m a bad Buddhist.
My head chef Dustin Everett is giving a food offering to a monk. After we go through all the prayers and chanting for about an hour and 45 minutes, the monk invites everyone to share the food that they’ve brought. Dustin had never been to the temple before, so all the aunties were side-eyeing him at first. Then they tasted the food we brought from Fish Cheeks and asked him, “Are you single?”
He’d never been to Asia before, but we’ve sent him to Thailand three times in the past two years, so he’s solid in Thai cuisine’s foundation and basics. All the Thai kids at the restaurant tell Dustin, “You’re Thai now.” [Laughs.]
You bring dishes to the temple to show off your cooking skills. It’s a massive potluck. We brought Fish Cheeks’ coconut crab curry, crab fried rice, corn salad, and chicken wings. The temple has a full-size kitchen, and this lady was making her own curry there, and we were joking with her, like “Do you need help? These are chefs, we can all help.” She snapped back, “I don’t need it—I’m a chef too.” [Laughs.] Another lady brought a delicious home-cooked-style jungle curry that I hadn’t had in so long. I kept telling Dustin and Chat to taste it.
Gathering with family and friends is the best part of Songkran. I have a very big family in Thailand—my mom has seven siblings, and my dad has four, and they all have kids—so I miss that huge get-together. I usually celebrate it with my sister, aunt, and mom’s best friends who were such a blessing when we first arrived. They took us in and cared for us. That reminded me that I need to return to Jackson Heights in Queens more. We lived there from when I was 14 to 27, and there’s a big Thai community and an abundance of Thai food.
Now I have my restaurant family, and this year, we celebrated at Fish Cheeks’ private dining room at the end of the day. It’s a new beginning, especially when we’re opening Fish Cheeks Williamsburg. It felt like starting a new journey.
This was the first Songkran in a while that I got to spend with my mom. She and my dad moved back to Thailand about 15 years ago, and I typically spend a month with them there every year, but usually not at Songkran. My sister just had a baby, who’s sitting in my lap here next to my husband, Jesse Morav. That’s another new beginning, and we’re forcing ourselves to speak Thai to the baby so he can at least understand what we’re saying when he’s older.
We don’t usually have pad thai on the menu, but we’re making an exception for Songkran this year at the NoHo location. Long noodles symbolize longevity in Thai culture, so serving it is a way of wishing everyone a long and healthy life in the new year. We also had larb moo, a spicy mincemeat salad traditionally associated with good fortune; the word larb sounds like “luck” in Thai.
There are no Songkran-specific dishes, but we usually have khao chae, or jasmine rice soaked in chilled, floral-scented water, which is refreshing because it’s so hot there. It’s almost like a cold porridge eaten with savory dishes. We created a cocktail version for Fish Cheeks NoHo, available through April 18.
It feels very meaningful and full circle that we get to open Fish Cheeks again in Williamsburg—that we built something extremely special and we’re able to keep growing. Two new dishes will be exclusive to that location. The Mama Tom Yum is a take on the instant noodles brand every Thai person loves, but we’re using Sun Noodles. It’s rich, spicy, and packed with crispy pork belly and mixed seafood—layered with flavor but still deeply comforting. The marinated raw crab is bathed in fish sauce, garlic, chilis, cilantro, and lime juice and then chilled. It’s salty, spicy, and just a little sweet—the perfect dish for sharing at a festive table. It took us a long time to be brave enough to put that on the menu. We love it, but we were waiting for people to be okay with it, and this feels like the right time.