{"id":685319,"date":"2026-03-27T10:41:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/685319\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T10:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:41:14","slug":"curry-boys-roll-with-new-cookbook-acclaim-they-never-imagined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/685319\/","title":{"rendered":"Curry Boys roll with new cookbook, acclaim they never imagined\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Ho tried to put the past six years into perspective but struggled to find the words. Not long ago he was a struggling chef. Now he\u2019s a published author with a rising pile of accolades.<\/p>\n

Ho and fellow chefs Andrew Samia and Sean Wen released a new cookbook<\/a> on Tuesday called \u201cAsian Smoke: Thai and Southeast Asian Barbecue from the Curry Boys.\u201d And this follows the\u00a0launch of a new Curry Boys BBQ<\/a> location in Nashville, Tennessee in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since opening their first San Antonio joint out of a pink shipping container in 2020, the trio has earned two James Beard nominations, won multiple awards and achieved more success than they ever imagined.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a dream come true because we never dreamed of this,\u201d Ho said. \u201cIt\u2019s surreal. It\u2019s incredible. It\u2019s. \u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hard to believe?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good place to start. Ho studied corporate communications at the University of Texas at Austin. Wen majored in psychology. There they became teammates on a pickup basketball team in 2009 and began cooking together.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would throw big crawfish boils,\u201d Ho said. \u201cAnd folks were always like, \u2018Wow, this is the best we\u2019ve ever had. Y\u2019all should open something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea stuck but remained back-of-mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After graduating, they pursued different careers but stayed in touch. Four years later, they connected long distance \u2014 Ho in Vietnam, Wen in Baltimore \u2014 and discussed a Viet-Cajun seafood boil concept.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The discussion evolved into a yearlong plan. In 2016, they relocated to San Antonio, launched a pop-up and turned it into a brick-and-mortar. The Pinch Boil House drew crowds. The COVID-19 pandemic shut it down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ho and Wen reached out to Andrew Samia, a pitmaster who had closed South BBQ & Kitchen, and created a novel concept. They combined Southeast Asian curry with Texas barbecue, sold to-go meals and dropped off orders in the trunks of cars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Customers were wowed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Curry Boys BBQ was born.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are extremely proud of what we\u2019ve accomplished,\u201d Samia said. \u201cBut success wasn\u2019t something we ever set out to achieve. We\u2019re just doing what we love to do everyday.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Curry Boys never set out to write a book. A publisher called last spring and asked if they\u2019d be interested. The timing was poor. Ho\u2019s wife and Samia\u2019s wife were pregnant. The wife of their partner in Nashville was pregnant. And the Tennessee location was opening.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree babies were on the way and the publisher wanted a cookbook,\u201d Ho said. \u201cBut it was an opportunity we couldn\u2019t pass up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Curry Boys signed with Harvard Common Press<\/a>, gathered 100 recipes and wrote the book in three to four months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A book signing party will be held at noon, April 12 at the St. Mary\u2019s Strip location, 536 E. Courtland Place. The Curry Boys will feature dishes from the cookbook along with a crawfish boil.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Curry Boys\u2019 cookbook \u201cAsian Smoke: Thai and Southeast Asian Barbecue\u201d was released in digital and physical formats on Tuesday. Credit: Courtesy<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels very surreal to search my name on Amazon and now it pops up as \u2018author,\u2019\u201d Samia said. \u201cWe\u2019re just super grateful that the publisher reached out to us and showed so much interest in helping us tell our story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cookbook includes recipes for restaurant favorites, such as the brisket smoke show, good luck cluck, pulled pork nachos, curry creamed corn, cold chili garlic noodles and lemongrass barbecue pork spare ribs.<\/p>\n

Asian Smoke also includes salads, desserts and home favorites such as Thai-style BBQ shrimp with penang curry butter on toasted baguette and grilled Thai sriracha buffalo wings.<\/p>\n

Ho recently posted an Instagram video of himself walking into Barnes & Noble with his daughter. Ho carries her to a table that holds an upright copy of Asian Smoke. He picks up the book. His 1-year-old daughter opens it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a crazy time writing, cooking, and photographing this cookbook while amelia was 0 to 2 months old,\u201d Ho wrote, \u201cbut it was all worth it! mama and dada love you so much amelia girl (heart emoji)\u201d<\/p>\n

Asian Smoke is the latest serendipitous turn for three chefs enjoying a streak of good news. They weren\u2019t looking to expand out of state. But an opportunity opened in Nashville. They weren\u2019t chasing culinary recognition. But they received back-to-back James Beard nominations.<\/p>\n

Ho\u2019s wife sent him a screenshot of the first nomination in 2023. He thought the news might be a prank.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were in a 220 square-foot shack container thing,\u201d he said. \u201cJames Beard was never on our radar. We thought James Beard was more for fine dining and white tablecloth service. We were just blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ho\u2019s wife sent him a screenshot of a second James Beard nomination in 2024. He thought it might have been a mistake, a screenshot from 2023. It wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like lightning striking twice,\u201d Ho said.<\/p>\n

The cookbook offer arrived with another serendipitous stroke. The publisher did not intend to push Asian Smoke to a South Texas market. Harvard Common Press, owned by The Quarto Group, promised to market the cookbook across the U.S., the U.K., Australia and around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Quarto Group does tons of data and saw that backyard barbecue and Asian cooking trends are skyrocketing worldwide,\u201d Ho said. \u201cAnd then they did a deep dive into concepts all over the world and found us.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Call the Curry Boys stunned. So stunned they posted an all-caps message on Instagram beneath a photo of Asian Smoke:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOKAY SO THIS IS FREAKIN HAPPENING (SOMEHOW) AND WE CANT BELIEVE WE GET A CHANCE TO SHARE OUR WORLD OF ALL THINGS BBQ AND ASIAN FOOD WITH YOU. \u2026 LMAO TALK ABOUT IMPOSTER SYNDROME \u2013 SHEESH. NOT SURE WHY OR HOW THIS HAPPENED, BUT WE ARE BEYOND GRATEFUL AND HUMBLED!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Ho tried to put the past six years into perspective but struggled to find the words. Not…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":685320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,287731,287732,287733,50695,101551,287734,563,40469,287735,7202,7203,287736,358,7453,3187,7593,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,20705],"class_list":["post-685319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-america","tag-andrew-ho","tag-andrew-samia","tag-asian-smoke","tag-cookbook","tag-curry-boys-bbq","tag-harvard-common-press","tag-instagram","tag-james-beard","tag-pinch-boil-house","tag-san-antonio","tag-sanantonio","tag-sean-wen","tag-texas","tag-top-story","tag-tx","tag-typefeature","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-wc-750-1000"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}