While Pim Techamuanvivit grills oysters in a pit overlooking California’s Tomales Bay, Pim Techamuanvivit can take it easy and come up with new ideas.
My husband and I live on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, not far from my two restaurants, Nari and Kin Khao, but we have a special place we go when we need a breather from the city. It’s a weekend house about an hour north, in a quiet town called Marshall, with windows all around overlooking Tomales Bay. The house used to be a shop – people pulled back their boats to buy coal for their fireplaces and fodder for their farm animals.
Today, Tomales is famous for its oyster farms, and the house is three doors down from the Hog Island Oyster Co. If you look out the window early in the morning, you can see the oysters in their overalls pulling up to the boat and heading out to harvest.
On the side of the house is a square fire pit where we grill the oysters. We are still in the Bay Area, so even in the summer it is quite cool and in the evenings we like to make a fire. The friend we rent the house from has a mill that uses reclaimed wood from all over the West Coast, so we always have plenty. During the first year of the pandemic, we didn’t get together indoors, so the fire pit became a great gathering place.
Cooking with fire is ritual. You can’t turn it up and down; there’s a rhythm to it. If you build one it’s very hot in the beginning, and then you have to wait for it to drop to a certain temperature – or you have to build the pit differently, so you have some parts that are quite hot and others that are cold . As a cook you become more attentive as a result. It slows you down. It’s like any creative activity: parameters and constraints force you to think about how to solve a problem.
Once we’ve made the fire, we peel the oysters and open some champagne or chablis. We get several varieties of oysters, including the special Sweetwater from Hog Island. Some we eat raw. Others we cook over the flames with a spoonful of chorizo on top – when the juices mix with the oyster it’s just so delicious. I could eat dozens of them.
I think carefully when I’m by the fire. I usually don’t come up with new ideas or solve problems when I am to attempt to do it. But when I make a fire and cook with my hands, my mind becomes more open. Then I get ideas. For me, it’s about creating a space where I feel happy and at ease – and then things I thought about just crystallize out.
This interview has been edited and abridged.