It sounds like a dream circumstance by any measure. Success in the food scene under their belt, they opened up one more little shop for one big reason: to serve the food they loved growing up.

Mark and Picha are two of the kindest people I’ve ever met. They own the bustling Thai Curry Simple in the International District of Seattle, an eatery known for great pricing and great flavor. Just a little over a year ago, they decided to turn to the University District for a brand new project.

This husband-and-wife power duo opened up a dessert store named Wann Yen serving Thai-style shaved ice, a true rarity, and it somehow flew under the radar. Just a few months later, they expanded their menu to serve all sorts of hot foods. The catch? You won’t find your usual Pad Thai or Pad See Ew anywhere on this menu. But take a flight to the homeland, walk into anybody’s kitchen, and this is the sort of Thai you’d find everybody’s grandma cooking.

The first time I walked in, I ordered the first thing I saw, Khao Mun Gai. I know, I’d never heard of it before, either! And all it did was grab my attention by the collar, then hold it captive, then slap it around a couple times, then reel me back in to Wann Yen to have another go. But, you know, in a good way. A perfectly poached chicken on ginger-rice, an intensely garlicky and tangy cup of sauce, and a refreshingly light cup of chicken broth soup. It was simple and stunning.

One step in the cooking process makes excellent use of a technique called poaching. To poach chicken, one immerses the meat in water that’s heated to just below boiling, cooking it oh-so slowly. This makes it easier to pull that chicken out right when it’s just cooked. The more you heat proteins past done, the more the muscle fibers tend to constrict and wring out—much like a wet towel you twist dry—losing their ability to hold moisture. No moisture means you get the dry, fibrous chicken breast found at just about every salad bar ever. No good. We also need to consider that our chicken will cook from the outside in. Too hot, and the outside will dry out before the inside even cooks. Poaching keeps the heat to a minimum to help avoid all of those problems.

The goal is meat that is tender and not overcooked. I have never, ever had poached chicken that had actually achieved that goal…until now. Moist, and tender, and when drowned in that complex, pungent garlic sauce? Well, let me put it this way: the scene from Ratatouille when Remy’s stuffing cheese and strawberries in his mouth while fireworks explode in his brain—that’s the moment Khao Mun Gai hit my taste buds. Kaboom.

Here’s the thing, though: with a rotating menu of new items that most people can’t even pronounce, much less recognize, this food shop shows no signs of holding back for the Americanized palate. (E.g., by the time I publish this, they may not even have Khao Mun Gai on their rotation anymore!) And you know what? It’s absolutely beautiful that way.

Wann Yen is chronically packed with Thai people. If that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. Many of my friends who’ve heard me rave about the place have gone in, glanced at the unfamiliar menu, and walked out. And a few haven’t. That’s all fine. Mark and Picha are making food that they love, and that doesn’t mean everybody else has to love it—though many do.

We like to call for “authentic” food, but do we recognize it when it hits us in the face? Or do we lumber back to our familiar old restaurants, ordering from the same little corner of the same page of the same menu each time? I believe it applies to our lives in a greater sense. Do we stick in the same little corner of the same spaces each day?

Familiar is comforting, but it’s not always about comfort. Familiar can be good, but plunging yourself into the unfamiliar can teach you so much. When you gain the ability to look at your way of life from the outside looking in, you gain valuable perspective. And you can only gain that perspective from experiences that take you outside of your way of life in the first place. Food is one easy, easy way to begin doing just that.

So there’s my little case for trying new foods. If you think I’ve overstated the value of food, I’d beg you to reconsider. It’s one of the few things that every single human on this planet takes part in, one of the things that has the potential to unify people and cultures who otherwise seem to have nothing in common. That’s why I find it so fascinating to pen thoughts about, and why I’ll continue to do so on this little corner of the web. Fascinating, a physical necessity that’s been lifted beyond just that. It’s art, it’s childhood, it’s memories. So keep an open mind, and an open palate. Because from what I’ve seen, and from what I’ve learned, the two often do go hand-in-hand.