An interactive dining ritual inspired by Thai fortune telling, bringing together food, art, technology, and play around the table.
Try your luck at Sala Thai during Tom Yum Week 2026!
What is Charm?
ชาม (chaam) means bowl in Thai. In English, a charm can be an object associated with luck.
Charm brings these two meanings together through a contemporary dining ritual exploring our relationship with food, luck, and prosperity.
Guests draw a fortune, discover what luck has in store, and share the experience with the people around them.
Where it began
Charm began with three things that seem to follow people everywhere: food, luck, and the hope for prosperity.
In Thailand, food is rarely just about eating. It is something we gather around, order for the table, pass between one another, and share. Alongside it exists an equally playful relationship with luck — lucky numbers, colors, dates, amulets, fortune telling, and small rituals for inviting good things into our lives.
Charm brings these worlds to the same table.
The experience takes inspiration from เซียมซี (siam si), a form of fortune telling found at Thai temples. Traditionally, a container of numbered sticks is shaken until one falls out. The number corresponds to a fortune slip, revealing what may lie ahead.
Charm reimagines that familiar ritual for a contemporary dining setting. The physical sticks become a digital interaction; the fortune slip becomes something that can live on a phone; and the food on the table becomes part of the reading itself.
But the fortune isn’t really the end of the experience.
Fortune telling has a funny way of making people talk.
Sneaking Thai food, luck and art onto the same plate.