{"id":60,"date":"2026-09-27T23:16:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T23:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging-welcome-121a408.netsolhost.com\/?page_id=60"},"modified":"2026-09-27T23:29:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T23:29:56","slug":"maothai-fight-for-thai-cooks","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/?page_id=60","title":{"rendered":"Introduction \u00b7 Fight for Thai cooks against German bureaucracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"skip\" href=\"#content\">Skip to content<\/a><\/p>\n<header class=\"hero \" style=\"--cover:url('assets\/fd4a76718225bb.jpg')\">\n<div class=\"top\">\n<div class=\"heading\">\n<h1>Introduction \u00b7 Fight for Thai cooks against German bureaucracy<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"identity\">\n<p class=\"brand-story\">The Story of a Group of Thai Restaurants in Berlin and Palma<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"brand\" href=\"index.html\">THAI FOOD MAGIC<br \/>MAOTHAI<\/a><\/p>\n<nav class=\"language-switch\" aria-label=\"Language\"><a href=\"fight-for-thai-cooks-de.html\" hreflang=\"de\" lang=\"de\">DE<\/a><a href=\"fight-for-thai-cooks.html\" hreflang=\"en\" lang=\"en\" aria-current=\"true\">ENG<\/a><a href=\"fight-for-thai-cooks-es.html\" hreflang=\"es\" lang=\"es\">ES<\/a><a href=\"fight-for-thai-cooks-th.html\" hreflang=\"th\" lang=\"th\">THAI<\/a><a href=\"fight-for-thai-cooks-ja.html\" hreflang=\"ja\" lang=\"ja\">JAP<\/a><\/nav>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"intro\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"hero-bottom\">\n<nav aria-label=\"Main navigation\"><a href=\"story.html\">STORY<\/a><a href=\"restaurants.html\">THE RESTAURANTS<\/a><a href=\"thai-food.html\">THAI FOOD<\/a><a href=\"people.html\">PEOPLE<\/a><a href=\"press.html\">PRESS COVERAGE<\/a><a href=\"establishing.html\" aria-current=\"page\">ESTABLISHING THAI AS INTERNATIONAL CUISINE<\/a><a href=\"videos.html\">VIDEOS<\/a><a href=\"print-shop.html\">PRINT SHOP<\/a><a href=\"contact.html\">NEWS &amp; CONTACT<\/a><\/nav>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<p><main id=\"content\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"breadcrumb\"><a href=\"index.html\">PROLOG<\/a><span>\/<\/span><a href=\"establishing.html\">ESTABLISHING THAI CUISINE AS INTERNATIONAL CUISINE IN BERLIN<\/a><span>\/<\/span><span>Introduction \u00b7 Fight for Thai cooks against German bureaucracy<\/span><\/div>\n<p class=\"archive-language-note\">Historical scans and videos remain in their original languages. Available article translations are linked below.<\/p>\n<article class=\"prose\">\n<h2>Bureaucracy and Work Visas for Thai Chefs<\/h2>\n<p>German bureaucracy proved to be one of the greatest obstacles. While footballers could be brought into the country without difficulty, it was extremely hard to obtain work visas for Thai chefs.<\/p>\n<p>In 1994, a petition campaign was launched at the flagship and at Kamala, demanding work permits for Thai chefs. The campaign received broad support and even made it onto the front page of the International Herald Tribune.<\/p>\n<p>Particularly difficult was working with the Bonn-based &#8220;Zentrale f\u00fcr Ausland- und Fachvermittlung&#8221; (the central office for overseas and specialist placement), which failed to fulfil its actual purpose. An official there became the most tenacious adversary in the battle for visas for new chefs. He demanded, as a condition for granting work permits, verified minimum turnovers of 100,000 euros per restaurant, language tests, proof of formal training, and limited approvals to a maximum of two Thai chefs per restaurant. At that time, there was barely any formal culinary training in Thailand. Most chefs had acquired their knowledge through practical work \u2014 learning by doing. In 1998, he reclassified Thai chefs as sous-chefs, which created total costs of nearly 6,000 Deutschmarks per chef \u2014 a burden many small restaurants could not bear. The number of Thai chefs entering Germany by this route fell dramatically.<\/p>\n<h2>The &#8220;Young Thai Professional Exchange Program&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p>In 2000, I attempted to establish a training and exchange programme with the support of the German Development Service. The Thai Deputy Minister of Education even travelled to Berlin for this purpose. But the concept had been leaked to the representative of the Royal Thai Capital Fund, who at the time held shares in the Hotel Adlon and wished to exploit it for his own purposes. He failed quickly in this, as the children of Thailand&#8217;s upper class who arrived in Germany by this route had never made a bed themselves, let alone cleaned a room \u2014 least of all in the grand Adlon.<\/p>\n<p>The struggle for work permits attracted media interest. Press reports about the high quality of the Maothai kitchen did the rest, and made the restaurants widely known.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<section class=\"documents\">\n<h2>From the archive<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"assets\/4b186cbd3615cb.pdf#page=3\" target=\"_blank\">Introduction \u00b7 The battle for Thai chefs \u00b7 ENG \u00b7 PDF \u2197<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"document-languages\"><span>Available document languages: <\/span><a href=\"assets\/4b186cbd3615cb.pdf#page=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" hreflang=\"de\">DE<\/a><a href=\"assets\/4b186cbd3615cb.pdf#page=3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" hreflang=\"en\">ENG<\/a><a href=\"assets\/4b186cbd3615cb.pdf#page=5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" hreflang=\"es\">ES<\/a><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<details class=\"section-menu\">\n<summary>More in this chapter<\/summary>\n<div class=\"chapter-index\"><a href=\"documents.html\"><span>7.2<\/span><strong>Fight for Thai cooks in documents<\/strong><\/a><a href=\"fruit-carving.html\"><span>7.3<\/span><strong>Fruit Carving contest 1996<\/strong><\/a><a href=\"scholarship.html\"><span>7.4<\/span><strong>YTSPS \u00b7 Young Thai Professional Scholarship Program<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/details>\n<div class=\"sequence\"><a href=\"establishing.html\">\u2190 ESTABLISHING THAI CUISINE AS INTERNATIONAL CUISINE IN BERLIN<\/a><a href=\"documents.html\">Fight for Thai cooks in documents \u2192<\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/main><\/p>\n<footer><a href=\"index.html\">THAI FOOD MAGIC \u00b7 MAOTHAI<\/a><span>Berlin &amp; Palma \u00b7 A personal archive<\/span><a href=\"#\">Back to top \u2191<\/a><\/footer>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Skip to content Introduction \u00b7 Fight for Thai cooks against German bureaucracy The Story of a Group of Thai Restaurants in Berlin and Palma THAI FOOD MAGICMAOTHAI DEENGESTHAIJAP STORYTHE RESTAURANTSTHAI FOODPEOPLEPRESS COVERAGEESTABLISHING THAI AS INTERNATIONAL CUISINEVIDEOSPRINT SHOPNEWS &amp; CONTACT PROLOG\/ESTABLISHING THAI CUISINE AS INTERNATIONAL CUISINE IN BERLIN\/Introduction \u00b7 Fight for Thai cooks against German bureaucracy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-60","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maothai.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}