Siliya Rothert, the chef owner of iconic Berlin Thai restaurant “Thai Art” on Kantstrasse was found brutally murdered in Schöneberg on Friday night. Details are yet to surface, but police reports state that on Friday morning at 00:50 she was discovered in the alleyway to a backyard on Fuggerstrasse in Schöneberg and that the murderer is still at large.   

We are speechless and utterly shocked, and our thoughts go out to her family and friends. Siliya was a cornerstone of the original Thai Park with her Tom Yum soup, a dish so famous people would line up for 30+ mins for a bowl. Siliya moved to Berlin from the Northern region of Sukhothai in 2000 to help out her brother with his struggling restaurant. Before that she was working with her mother selling curries at the family street food stand in Sukothai. Rothert started serving her Northern style version of the traditional dish Tom Yum at the Thai Park in 2008. When she wasn’t in the park, she was cooking out of her apartment, mainly for insiders from the Thai community and other people who had her number. After a decade of cooking around the clock, she finally managed to fulfil her dream in 2019: her very own restaurant.

The first restaurant was just a couple of blocks away from the Thai Park, but in 2019 she moved Thai Art to the Western end of Kantstrasse. Her Tom Yum noodle soup was still the number one reason to people visited, a sweet, sour and salty flavour bomb that featured a staggering amount of ingredients, but where the glorious pork trifecta of mince, skin crackling and thin slices of Chinese style roast makes the difference. Rothert’s Chinese father taught her that Char Siu technique of roasting pork. 

Thai Art is being kept open by her son and the restaurant has become a gathering point of mourning. We’ll keep you up to date on the developments with the restaurant.