Nooror Somany Steppe

In Their Words Thai cooking, as Nooror Somany Steppe frames it, starts with ingredients that can carry the cuisine on their own terms. Her view is direct: you cannot make good Thai food without good Thai ingredients. That position places sourcing at the center of the work, not as garnish but as the base layer of the dish. The training path behind Blue Elephant runs through Belgium, where Nooror Somany Steppe went to study French and learn French cooking while her brother was there. Family business shaped the decision to work in food, and the craft memory reaches back to age 9, when Nooror Somany Steppe was pounding curry paste. That early task sits close to the core of Thai kitchen work: repetition, force, and an understanding that flavor is built by hand before it reaches the pan.