Chef Chuck Valla grew up in a restaurant family and was raised by his grandfather, a butcher, and his grandmother, who owned two restaurants in Northern Thailand—one focused on Thai curries served with rice and the other on Chinese-style Thai comfort dishes.When he was a boy, his grandmother first brought him into the kitchen by asking him to grind spices for her cooking. “I was seven years old. I thought I was playing,” he recalls. “I didn’t know she was putting me to work.” As a yo