Culture

Chef Andy Ricker Has a Weird/Adorable Thing for Stray Cats

Think you love YOUR cat? Andy Ricker loves ALL cats
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As we eagerly await the opening of Andy Ricker's first full-on New York restaurant (coming in...."Spring?" he says), we caught wind of a fun fact about one of our favorite Portland chefs

Ricker getting his scratch on at a roadside restaurant in the hills outside of Chiang Mai after a meal ofnahm phrik...

Ricker getting his scratch on at a roadside restaurant in the hills outside of Chiang Mai after a meal ofnahm phrik ongwith boiled vegetables and crunchy pork skin (left) and stir-fried local vegetables (center)

Andy Ricker is a gentle giant. The six-foot-tall founder of the Pok Pok mini empire (three restaurants in Portland, OR, and soon two New York City outlets, Pok Pok Wing on the Lower East Side and the forthcoming Pok Pok Ny in Brooklyn) has spent the last two decades learning to replicate the revelatory grub he's found on the streets of Bangkok, markets in Lampang, and homes in Chiang Mai. But on a trip with him to Thailand last spring, I found that his passion for Thai food and culture is eclipsed only by his irrepressible love of stray cats. Why the love for cats? "Because they love me," Ricker says. "Well kinda. They're cats, after all."

Wherever we went, the courageous chef braved fleas, filth, and scratch marks to scoop up these fly-by-night felines and scratch them under their scrawny front legs. "All cats love this, they just don't know it," the chef explained. "Thai cats seem particularly amenable."

Strange? Yes. Endearing? Well, no, not really. Just strange. --JJ Goode

Ricker and friend at Chiang Mai's SP Chicken where he first had the lemongrassstuffed rotisserie chicken on which he...

Ricker and friend at Chiang Mai's SP Chicken, where he first had the lemongrass-stuffed rotisserie chicken on which he modeled Pok Pok's version

Ricker and an especially skinny varmint at Pa Daeng Jin Tup. From a dusty patch about five miles northeast of Chiang Mai...

Ricker and an especially skinny varmint at Pa Daeng Jin Tup. From a dusty patch about five miles northeast of Chiang Mai, it serves Thai drinking food, like bitter bile-spiked soup (left) and the grilled pig teat (right)

Photographs by JJ Goode

JJ Goode is the coauthor of a bunch of cookbooks, including Truly Mexican with Roberto Santibanez, A Girl and Her Pig with April Bloomfield, and Andy Ricker's first cookbook, which comes out in 2913 [sic]