Few people go to sleep expecting their life to change in the morning. Yet that’s precisely what happened to Zack Wannawong. When he woke with excruciating pain in his right foot on April 8, 2024, he immediately went to the hospital for a suspected blood clot, but what the doctors found was far worse.
Surgeons opened his right foot to find a rare infection called necrotizing fasciitis that was advancing rapidly. Wannawong was put into a coma for three weeks and, when he awoke, his right leg had been amputated to the hip to save his life from the disease.
At 37, Wannawong believed he had decades ahead of him in the kitchen to pursue his craft and passion. Instead, that dream had seemingly been stolen from him in the blink of an eye. The man who had advanced so quickly through the ranks and worked at prestigious institutions up and down the East Coast (and whose work had been featured on the front cover of Main Line Today) seemed bound for life in a wheelchair.
Wannawong, though, has never been one to let a diagnosis, or the odds, defeat him.
As a child growing up in Thailand, Wannawong worked in his grandmother’s restaurant, where he fell in love with cooking. He prepared food for customers and then for his family, who always assumed the dish had their matriarch’s special touch when, truthfully, their youngest was adding his own flair to the food.
Wannawong studied cooking for six months in Thailand before he was shipped off to Pensacola, Florida at age 16 to live with his aunt for high school in the U.S.A. She owned a Thai and Chinese buffet there, and Wannawong believed it might be his chance to strike it big in an American kitchen.
“[My] first day, I didn’t even go travel. I went straight up to the kitchen. I wanted to learn how the restaurant works,” he says. “And they were like, ‘Oh, can you help with the dishes?'”
Wannawong was offended after spending years in Thailand working above his age level. He thought America would offer him more opportunities to showcase his skills, and he hadn’t expected to be viewed as a beginner.
Even so, he slogged away until one fateful day when one of the cooks quit. He took up the position and, at 16 years old, began working 10-hour shifts, six days a week, making just $30 a day.
Unaccustomed to American labor laws or adequate pay, he put up with the gig for six months before running away. With the help of one of his aunt’s Thai customers, who took pity on him, he made his way to Washington D.C.
“When I went to D.C. to start my first job, I got offered $120 a day,” he says. “I was so happy, I think I was 17 by that time, and I worked there for about three years for a Thai restaurant.”
After building up a savings, Wannawong took a pay cut to try preparing Japanese cuisine, which taught him strict discipline. He hated it at first, and it took three years before he was allowed to make anything but rice. Even though it was tedious beyond belief, Wannawong learned under the tutelage of a master and eventually advanced to cutting the day’s freshest fish.
It was then that Wannawong moved to the Main Line to work as a sous chef and chef at a slew of restaurants from Teikoku and Azie to The Olde Bar and even Richmond, VA’s The Boathouse (one of the East Coast’s finest seafood restaurants).
His final stop was Conshohocken’s Hotel West and Main, where he developed the program for Hook & Ladder. During that time, he estimates the restaurant was serving 500 people a day. His work was so prolific that one of his creations, a $99 burger, was featured on the cover of Main Line Today‘s July 2023 Best of the Main Line & Western Suburbs edition.
It was less than a year after that crowning achievement that Wannawong fell ill with the disease that claimed his leg. When he awoke from the medically induced coma after the amputation, he broke down crying. He spent one day grieving the loss.
Then he told himself, “‘Hey you need to get the f*ck up. You need to get up. You need to smile. You need to accept what you’re going through right now.'”
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Wannawong hasn’t yet reclaimed his spot in the kitchen. There are few leg amputee role models for him to look up to, so he wants to be the one to inspire others. In the meanwhile, he’s planning on starting a YouTube channel to document his progress through rehab and share his love of food through recipes and exploring the culture behind different cuisines. He’s also dreaming of playing table tennis at the 2028 Summer Paralympics in Los Angeles. But, first and foremost, he aims to regain his agency in the kitchen.
Amputations, rehab and surgeries are expensive, so he’s created a GoFundMe to help offset medical costs. There’s still much healing, both mental and physical, in Wannawong’s future, but with mighty goals, steely determination and raw perseverance, nothing is off limits for the man who survived the disease that almost claimed his life.
“I want to show them that I’m the young buck and I still can do this,” he shares. “I’m only 37. I still have a long career ahead of me.”
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