Been to battle and need some sustenance? Well, wander on over to the Salsa Kitchen and have a couple of burritos and a margarita or three as you refuel for the fight ahead.

We’ll be open for Songkran from 11 am to 11 pm on the 12th, 13th and 14th, closing only on the 15th, for one day of staff fun. We will also be out front with lots of water and anyone wanting a place to play is more than welcome to get down with us and our little (and big) water warriors.

At the Salsa Kitchen we are interested in:

1. Finding the best local meats and produce we can
2. Supporting small farmers who farm without using harmful chemicals
3. Supporting small farmers who raise their animals humanely

While we are a long way from where we’d like to be, we are proud to have taken some solid initial steps over the past year, namely:

• Becoming a member of Chiang Mai’s first Community Supported Agriculture project, the Mae Ta CSA. Through this we receive a weekly delivery of totally organic fruits and vegetables and we help to support a group of young farmers who are endeavoring to make a go of it through organic agriculture.
• Developing relationships with uplands farmers for organic pork. With the tremendous assistance of the people at Fair Earth Farm and The Uplands Holistic Development Project (UHDP), we’ve been able to make a contract with small uplands farmers near Fang to buy whole pigs, which we butcher on site at the restaurant. These pigs are fed on banana stalks and other organic foods and raised as backyard animals, in pens behind houses – free from the confines, stresses and abuses that plague the factory farmed animal. While this organic pork takes about twice as long to grow to maturity (minus the hormones and frankenfood) we think this just makes for tastier meat. The pigs are a cross between Meishan and Duroc breeds, are fed no antibiotics or commercial feed and live their lives in small family groupings, in covered pens, outside.

Because we buy whole animals, we do sometimes need to supplement with market bought pork (there are only so many ribs on any given pig!) but the majority of the pork we serve these days is organic and supports small and marginal farmers.

Please feel free to get in touch anytime if you’d like to hear more about what we’re doing.