Why did you move to Santa Fe?
We came to visit friends and they convinced us to move here, to do the restaurant. Our friend made us like a tourist. He drove around and took us to this building and he said this is very charming and beautiful. And we came many times before we decided to move because we really fell in love with it.
What are your most popular dishes?
Well, you know, that would be the national dish, Pad Thai. And we are known for good curry. Green curry, yellow curry, mushroom, and panang curry.
Me and Mami come from Ayutthaya, the center of Thailand. Every different part of Thailand, the north, the south, all have different curry. We don’t speak the same language in every part of Thailand and we don’t eat the same food. But what we are doing is from the central part.
We don’t do curry like others, making the broth and doing the finishing. For us, curry needs to cook differently. Like Muslim curry needs to braise the chicken, beef, you know, for a certain time to be tender and then the broth is done differently. Mami has a lot of tricks.
Has labor been a problem?
Such a problem. We can’t create a big menu, you know. Right now in the front crew, I believe you need one local to explain the dishes for the customer because a new employee might not understand Thai food. For the kitchen crew, we use all Thai. And you know, we don’t have so many Thai in Santa Fe. No.
We haven’t had a good assortment of Asian food in Santa Fe.
You know, in Thailand, you have Thai-Chinese, not like Chinese-Chinese. From there, we have cauliflower chicken, and Mami knows all of those sauces. Of course, she’s 82. She knows how to cook.
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