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Hello and welcome to Business Daily Meets from the BBC World Service with me Gideon Long.

My guest today was this year named the Best Female Chef in the World by a panel of over a thousand gastronomists,

assembled by 50 Best, a food and drink sector brand. She's the first Asian woman ever to be given that award, and she's still only 36. Her name is Pichaya Suntorniana Kid, also known as chef Pam. Hello, Pam. Hi, welcome, Svaldi-Kha. Hi, very nice to meet you, Gidya, from the BBC.

Nice to meet you. Nice to me. Please come in. Welcome.

I met her at her Michelin-starred restaurant, Potong, in the heart of China Town, in the Thai capital Bangkok.

This is my place and my ground, and it's a very personal building for me because it belonged to my family.

Chef Pam is a woman on a mission. It's very important for me to represent Thailand and show what

Thai food is all about. But as an entrepreneur and restaurant owner, she also knows that being a

world-class chef isn't in itself enough. For me, I think there's so many great chefs around the world that cook fabulous food.

But not our chef can run a successful and positive restaurant, and that's the hard part.

That's Pichaya Suntorn Yannikid.

Chef Pam, here on Business Daily from the BBC.

So let's start by talking about your upbringing.

Your Thai, you were born in Thailand, but you have Chinese heritage as well.

Tell me about your upbringing.

My mom is 100% Chinese by blood, but she's the second generation, and she's Thai now.

And my father, he's half Chinese and half Australian, but grew up in Thailand.

So even though they are both Thai, they have the culture of Chinese and a little bit of Western as well.

So I grew up in a family that my mom cooks and she cooks Thai Chinese cuisine.

I learned cooking from my mom because once she has my brother, older brother and myself,

she quit her job as a broker and became a housewife.

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