Yotaka Martin

The Recognition The 2025 Best New Chef honor from Food & Wine is the defining accolade in Martin’s public career to date. It gives national weight to a restaurant built around specific dishes rather than broad claims: green mango salad, scallop crudo, charcoal-grilled sai ua, and langoustine crudo all form part of the work associated with her Phoenix kitchen. That recognition also clarifies her place as an owner-chef. Martin is chef and owner of Lom Wong, and she also serves as chef and owner of Mr. Baan’s Bar and Mookata, also in Phoenix. The two roles place her name directly on the cooking and on the hospitality decisions behind it.

The Work

Behind It Martin is from Thailand, and the food tied to her name carries that origin through ingredients, memory, and technique. One of the clearest examples is a green mango salad with shrimp, coconut cream, and lime juice, showered with crispy shallot, toasted coconut, and peanuts. The recipe was handed down from her grandmother, giving the dish a family line as well as a restaurant life. Seafood appears in a more cut-glass register. A scallop crudo is served with nam pla from the Moklen, chiles, and tart lime juice, making fish sauce, heat, and citrus the structure of the plate. Langoustine crudo follows a related line with lime, chili, and fish sauce; Condé Nast Traveler described it as having eye-opening freshness. Smoke and pork sit on the other side of the table. The charcoal-grilled sai ua persisted from the pop-up days, a detail that gives the dish continuity beyond the current restaurant setting. It has been described as packing enough flavor to make diners rethink what is possible in a pork sausage, a plain-spoken description that suits a dish defined by force and clarity.

The Road The biography begins in Thailand, the origin Martin carries into her cooking in the United States. Rather than presenting Thai food as a single shorthand, her dishes point to particular textures and decisions: coconut cream against lime juice, crispy shallot against green mango, nam pla against raw scallop, charcoal against sai ua. Her career now centers on Phoenix, where she owns and leads two named venues. At Lom Wong, the cooking that drew Food & Wine’s 2025 attention is built around dishes with personal and regional specificity. At Mr. Baan’s Bar and Mookata, her role extends that ownership and kitchen leadership within the same city. The weight of the accolade comes from how concrete the work is. A grandmother’s salad, Moklen nam pla, seafood cut raw and bright, sausage held over charcoal from the pop-up period into the restaurant era: these are not abstract markers of style. They are the evidence of a chef making Thai food in Phoenix with memory, discipline, and a sharp sense of what each dish must do.