Thai Garden Restaurant.

THAI GARDEN RESTAURANT
800 Wellman Avenue
Corner of Andrew Jackson Way in Five Points
Huntsville, AL 35810
(256) 534-0122

NEWS

A taste of THAILAND Huntsville provides a small-city setting for a mother to raise her sons and a loyal fan base for the dishes of her homeland. By KATTIE BYERS The Huntsville Times, January 15, 2003
When Marjorie Hongsdusit starts her first curry of the day, there are no measuring cups, teaspons or recipes to consult. She cooks by intuition. She combines ingredients - first the curry paste, the chopped chicken, the coconut milk. She seems calm and focused amid the hurly-burly of the kitchen staff as it gears for a lunch crowd. In this dish, as with most of her specialities at Thai Garden, owner Hongsdusit finds the right harmony of Thai flavors - hot, sour, sweet and salty - by tasting, and more tasting. Next, she adds fish sauce, tamarind, a splash of lemon juice and some sugar. It's time for a taste. After a spoonful of this batch of gaeng musmun, she and another chef concur. A little more sugar is needed to cut the curry's heat. "When you are cooking every day, all day long," she explains over the clatter and sizzle of steaming woks, "you don't have to measure. You have to taste it all the time to make sure it comes out right." This month, her Five Points restaurant marks its 12th anniversary. And juding by the lack of free tables on a recent weekday, Hongsdusit has found a loyal following in a business where longevity is the exception. Especiallly those introducing a new cuisine. Thai Garden was the first Thai restaurant in Huntsville when she opened at Moores Mill and Winchester roads in 1991. She recalls the challenges of educating people about Thai food. "With some it is easy," says Hongsdusit, 54. "With others it's so hard. They are scared to try. A lot of people think we have very spicy food, but you can order it the way you want. We try to get something they will like." Now, with two other Thai restaurants in town - Siam Thai on University Drive and Surin of Thailand on Airport Road - Thai food is, well, trendy. At least by Huntsville standards. The competition, says Hongsdusit's son Kelvin Wang, hasn't put a damper on the business. "All the Thai restaurants are busy," says Wang, 21, who helps in the kitchen at Thai Garden. These days, most customers are familiar with Thai food, how to order (by the numbers) and what those little stars on the menu mean. (One for mild, four for "native Thai," or, if you have to ask, it's probably too hot.) Mostly, the menu stays the same, save for weekend specials. Otherwise, Hongsdusit worries customers would get	lost. Most dinner entrees range from $7.95 to $9.25; lunch specials are $6.25. Popular dishes include the curries (one to two stars), her signature finger-size spring rolls (no stars), Pad Thai (one star), and chicken with cashews (one star). Pad Thai, the traditional Thai noodle dish , is so popular that one of her five cooks, Phone Buthichan, devotes his entire day to preparing it. Aside from Hongsdusit's authentic recipes, it's the low-key atmosphere that keeps many customers coming back. Another son, Arthur Wang, 20 waits tables and knows a majority of the customers by name. Many times, he spots a fmiliar face and jots down the order without having to hand them a menu. The customer simply finds a seat and starts reading a newspaper. And Wang is always happy to guide a novice or accommodate special requests. "Many of our regular customers, the reason they come back - and I hear this a lot is this feels like home," says Kelvin Wang. "That's how we like it to be. It's more of a casual atmosphere." Hongsdusit's description of her role is a portrait of understatement. "I make sure everything comes out good," she says. That means anything from preparing curries to handwrapping spring rolls and wontons to continually checking supplies. She typically works 13-hour days, mostly back in the restaurant's cramped kitchen, behind the swinging door with a painted sign: "God bless this kitchen." The kitchen consists of two narrow aisles connected at a right angle, so anyone who doesn't belong there is in the way - blocking a fridge, in front of the deep fryers, too close to the leaping flames of the woks. Thai is the language the kitchen staff speaks over the clatter of woks as stir-fries are rattled back and forth over the gas burners. Hongsdusit usually dons her red apron and paper cap around 9 a.m. - an hour before the rest of the kitchen staff - to start prepping for lunch. When the restaurant closes at 2 p.m., she runs errands - trips to the bank, or to the market to get needed supplies. At 4.p.m., she's cooking again, until the restaurant closes at 9 p.m. She finally makes it out the door by 10 p.m. Even on her days off, she stops in to check supplies or fix a batch of curry if needed. Kelvin Wang describes his mother as a perfectionist. "She's a tough woman," he says. "It has to be done her way. She tells us when we're not moving fast enough. But it's a	positive thing. She likes to maintain consistency. It gets us where we need to be." She also cooks Thai at home and concedes she's so picky that she prefers her own cooking to eating out. (When she does go out, she prefers Cafe Berlin.) Her English is heavily accented, and her sons occasionally jump into conversation to clarify a visitor's questions. A native of Thailand, Hongsdusit moved to California in 1972. She managed a jewelry store in a Los Angeles suburb but enjoyed helping out and learning the business in her brother's Thai restaurant. Her first trip to Huntsville was to visit a friend. "I fell in love with it," she says. "The traffic is not crazy. The people are really nice." As the mother of three young boys, she was anxious to raise them in a small town away from the threat of earthquakes and big-city crime. With the help of her brother she opened Thai Garden Oriental Restaurant and Barbecue. Two years later, she moved the restaurant to Fvie Points, where many of her customers live and work. Here, business has more than tripled from its early years. Two years ago, she added a banquet room for special events. Frequently, customers - many of whom travel from Florence, Decatur and southern Tennessee - ask her to consider opening a second location. But she fears another venture wouldn's meet her standards. "When I open, I like to be there and do it myself." She says. "If you have too many places, it's not good, because you can't be there all the time." Instead, she looks forward, one day, to an end to long days on her feet. Once her sons have finished college and are on their own, she'll consider passing the business to a trusted, longtime employee, Orathai Krisnapuckdi. At one time, Hongsdusit, who is divorced, hoped to give Thai Garden to her sons. "But then, I thought, this is too tough," she says. Her oldest son, Derek Wang, 25, works at the restaurant on occasion but is employed full time as an outreach coordinator for ASRI in Huntsville. Kelvin and Arthur Wang, who are studying nursing and business, respectively, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, concour with their mother's succession plan. Says Kelvin: "We see all the hard work she goes through."

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