Karla Knowles opens Thai restaurant Pam in Farringdon
Her first permanent restaurant lands on Charterhouse Street on 3 November, pairing Thai flavours with British produce, with a second site already booked for 2027.
Karla Knowles, the former head chef at Kiln, opens her first restaurant, Pam, in Farringdon on 3 November, serving Thai-inspired dishes built on British seasonal produce.
Pam takes 61 Charterhouse Street, a 45-cover room near Smithfield Market, and marks Knowles's move from guest-chef supper clubs, which she has run through the summer and autumn, to a permanent address. The restaurant is a partnership with Romain and Edouard Bourrillon, who run Maisons Vivantes, a London group that also includes Jusu Brothers, Cocotte and Casa Felicia.
Knowles spent close to a decade in London kitchens before Pam, working at Tramshed, Petersham Nurseries and Wolf before four years as head chef at Kiln, Ben Chapman's skewer-and-wok restaurant in Soho, where she ran the pass through its busiest post-pandemic years.
Farringdon gets a Thai menu built on British seasonal produce, not a theme.
Pam Farringdon's Thai menu
The opening menu draws on Thai flavours filtered through British seasonal ingredients: miang kham, the betel-leaf wraps usually built around dried shrimp and peanuts, reworked with UK produce; khao soi noi, the turmeric-spiced noodle soup from northern Thailand; and a roast duck served with frites and a curry sauce that splits the difference between London and Bangkok.
Beyond the kitchen, Pam is built around quarterly exhibitions and events pairing chefs, artists, winemakers and DJs, continuing the collaborative format Knowles used for her supper clubs, where diners ate alongside gallery shows and DJ sets rather than a fixed seating plan. It arrives in a London kitchen scene reshuffling fast this year, from Nomad London's new head chefs to Andrew Wong's menu built around Chinese food textures.
A second restaurant already in the works
Knowles is not stopping at Farringdon. In early 2027 she plans to open Aree, a fire-led, Thai-inspired restaurant on Blenheim Crescent in Notting Hill, in the former e&o site, again with the Bourrillon brothers.
Two restaurants in under six months is a fast build for a first-time owner, even one with a decade of London service behind her. Pam will be the test of whether the format travels beyond a supper-club crowd.
