At Bayon Bistro in O’Fallon, Missouri, I succumbed to curiosity and ordered the dish I still hadn’t eaten after living in St. Louis for 21 years: Springfield cashew chicken. Credit Dara Thach, the chef and owner of Bayon Bistro, for finally inspiring me. Thach immigrated to Springfield, Missouri, from Cambodia in 1982. He grew up in Springfield, and his family has operated restaurants there. I was already going to recommend the Cambodian fare he prepares at Bayon Bistro. I figured I should try his Springfieldian cuisine, too.
Do I like Springfield cashew chicken? I’ll need to drive three hours southwest on Interstate 44 and conduct a thorough survey. I do like Thach’s version of the dish, tremendous chunks of juicy white-meat chicken that retain their deep-fried crispness in a thin brown sauce. The cashews scattered over the chicken give the dish more swagger than that sauce does. A garnish of chopped scallion snaps against chicken and cashews alike.
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Maybe Springfield cashew chicken entices you to visit Bayon Bistro, which opened last summer in a shopping plaza just off the Winghaven Boulevard exit from Interstate 64. Maybe the selection of sushi gets you in the door. The big, bright photographs of Cambodia decorating the dining-room walls will direct you to Bayon Bistro’s most appealing food, which would be worth the trip from outside the immediate area even if St. Louis didn’t lack other Cambodian restaurants.
A long, varied career in restaurants and hotels has led Thach to O’Fallon. He studied hospitality management at the Ohio State University and has worked in both the front of the house and the kitchen. A snowstorm early in his career, while he was a manager at the restaurant of a Marriott hotel in Boston, clarified his path. The restaurant’s chef was short-handed in the kitchen in this storm. Thach volunteered to trade his suit for an apron.
After that experience, he remembered telling himself, “I think I like cooking better.”
