From the land of Thai blue waters...

I love this tank top my cousin Beth sent me from Thailand. But I have to admit that this is kind of a phony picture.

I don't drink. I have eaten everything on True Thai's menu, but I've never had any of our beers or wine. Never.

I tried to drink once at my 25th birthday party but it turned out I'm allergic to alcohol, just like my dad was.

He never drank at all but on his 60th birthday he accepted a glass of Singha and discovered he was allergic to alcohol by breaking out in hives.

I think it is just as well. I've heard of many bad things happening because of drinking, but I've never heard of anything good happening because someone was drunk.

Sometimes when I see a table that's had one too many it's hard not to notice how much fun everyone is having. Then I feel a bit left out, but only a little. When that happens, I usually take a break and go over to the Los Campeones gym to work out with Carla.

So no, I cannot tell you from personal experience that I know Singha is a great beer, but I do know that everyone in Thailand thinks so.

That and they gave us some great free table umbrellas!

Singing to King Rama IX at 9:09 pm on 9-9-09

I tried to call home at 9 this morning but my sister said, "NO! Can't talk now, we all have to sing to the King!"

Thailand is exactly 12 hours ahead of Minneapolis, and at 9:09 p.m. Thailand time the entire nation sang the national anthem to King Rama IX to commemorate this being the ninth day of the ninth month of 2009. Already there is a video on YouTube of everyone singing to the King.

UPDATE: You can read about the sing-a-long at The Bangkok Post.

You like us, you really like us!

Thank you all so much for voting for True Thai Restaurant again! This is Minnesota Monthly Magazine's 2009 Reader's Choice Award for Best Thai Restaurant and it will proudly go on our Awards Wall!

This is our second best of award in 2009, having earlier won City Page's 2009 Reader's Choice Award for Best Thai Restaurant.

Your votes gave us our 17th 23rd major award since opening in late 2002. Fifteen awards have been from Twin Cities magazines, five from online restaurant ratings services (City Search and Zagat), and three are from Thailand.

Each one is very special to us, whether it was awarded by a restaurant critic or from "foodies." Everyone at True Thai from our servers to our kitchen staff are very proud when their hard work is recognized with a new award.

If you haven't seen our Awards Wall, it's in the new part of the restaurant. Or you can see it on our Flickr page.

Again, thank you to Minnesota Monthly, and thank you to all our fans for again voting us Best Thai Restaurant in the Twin Cities!

Labor Day

As you may know, I am a full-time Public Health Nurse (P.H.N.) for the Ramsey County Department of Public Health. The career counseling service that prepared my resume told me I was the fastest hire they'd ever worked with. They mailed my cover letter and resume on a Monday night at the main post office and first thing on Tuesday morning the Dept. of Public Health called me in for an interview. At the end of the interview they offered me the job.

You must be thinking, wow, Anna must be a really great nurse! No, Anna speaks Hmong, and in 1994 I was the only R.N. in Minnesota who spoke Hmong! Tens of thousands of Hmong were immigrating to Minnesota, but no one at Ramsey County spoke Hmong. They put me to work immediately.

I like being a nurse because I like helping people. In addition to my work for the County, I worked as a volunteer instructor for the Baby Steps/Baby Ready program and the Face to Face Clinic. I also served on the Adolescent Health Work Team, and the Frogtown area Planning Committee for Children's Initiatives.

I spend the rest of my time at True Thai, but before we opened the restaurant in 2002, I moonlighted as an R.N. for several different home healthcare agencies, not unlike police officers who do security work in their off time. People need nurses and there never seem to be enough to go around.

While I was taking nursing classes at the University of Minnesota, I worked as a secretary for the Physics Department. Before that I was an accounts assistant for the University of Minnesota Foundation. Before I moved to Minnesota, I worked as an accounting clerk for Purdue University, and as a Statistics & Budget Clerk for Berea College's Labor and Student Life Department.

By now you must be thinking, Anna really likes working for universities! That is true, but there is a very good reason for that. My first job in the United States was working as a Lab Assistant in the Soil Science Department at the University of Kentucky. I arrived at the airport in Lexington at midnight, and went to work the next morning at 8 a.m.!


My sister was working on her Ph.D. there and got me a job working for her advisor. All day long Anna would look at dirt under a microscope.

I am posting this on Sunday because on Monday the restaurant is closed and Anna is going to catch up on her sleep!

Corn, but not on the cob or on a stick

Mmmm, fried corn cakes (khao pod tod)! Simple to make (corn, rice flour, seasonings) but so delicious to eat. True Thai Restaurant serves corn cakes with a tart and spicy dipping sauce as an appetizer. Along with satay, True Thai Restaurant serves this street vendor food because when the State Fair is not in town, Minnesota has a chronic shortage of street vendors!

Thailand is no stranger to corn, with almost 2.5 million acres of cornfields. That sounds like a lot, at least until you learn that the state of Minnesota has almost 7.2 million acres of corn.

While Thailand cannot match Minnesota for overall corn production, Thailand is the world's #1 exporter of baby corn. Many people think that baby corn is not corn at all, but it is in fact baby corn. Shortly after corn came to China, someone (I'm guessing a hungry farmer) discovered that baby corn can be eaten.

Most of the corn grown in Thailand is harvested early as baby corn. This permits a third more corn plants to be grown in each field, and more crops each year. The Thai have evolved their own varieties of corn which yield more ears of corn per stalk.

If you like baby corn you will also love True Thai's Wok-fried Crunchy Baby Corn & Snow Peas Supreme. Just tonight Joy, one of our staff, told me, "Anna, I just love American baby corn. In Thailand, it is too hard!"

Because that is very true I did some research. At first I thought it was because Thailand generously exported all our very best baby corn, but then I realized that we what we export is mostly canned baby corn. The baby corn we eat in Thailand is fresh, and has not been soaking in water for weeks or even months before being cooked.

Regular ear corn is also very popular, not just for corn cakes but in many different desserts, including ice cream. My mom used make roasted corn for us. Little Anna's job was to start the fire and make charcoal on which to roast the corn. My mom would remove the corn silk and then wrap the corn back up in its husk, roast it, and then serve it to us with a special salty sauce, there being very little butter in Thailand.

When I moved to the United States I saw many fields of corn in Kentucky where I was going to college. I was so shocked that I called my mom in Thailand to tell her about it!

500 followers!

Omigosh, True Thai Restaurant now has over 500 followers on Twitter!

We started our Twitter page on May 1st, and Ann-Marie Wagener was our very first follower. John B from Florida was #500.

Almost two months ago the Geek Girls Guide wrote about how True Thai does social media right. That must be true if they say so, but I must admit that I do not understand "social media" as well as they think. For example, I do not understand why people who've never been to Minnesota would want to follow True Thai Restaurant. Or why so few people go to Flickr to look at our pictures. Posing for new pictures for Anna's True Thai News is my favorite part of blogging!

I think I am beginning to understand blogging a little better. I now know that blogging about Thai food and posting pictures of Anna gets me about 40 readers a day, but if I mention squid, I will get 300 readers a day! Expect to read many, many stories about little Anna fighting off giant cephalopods on the beaches of Chanthaburi!

OK, maybe little Anna never fought with a giant squid on the beach, but big Anna has fought with other shoppers to get the biggest, best squid on a stick in the market place!

Squid are very popular in Thailand. I bet American children never get to play on a slide that looks like this!



We also have many different kinds of squid toys,

and squid fashion!



Hmm, that last picture makes me wonder if it would not be best to combine fashion with a squid toy.


I think there is more than one way to catch a link from a professor of squid!

Just teasing. Thank you Dr. Myers for your link. If you ever visit True Thai we will make a special squid dish just for you. Or you can order off the menu. We have over 20 items that can come with squid. Sorry, no squid eggs — you can't buy them in Minnesota for some reason I do not entirely understand, but I am working on it!

Squid Eggs on a Stick!

It's State Fair time here in Minnesota! Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the "the great Minnesota get-together":

The Minnesota State Fair...may be the largest state fair in the United States in terms of average daily attendance....Residents of the state and region come to the fair to be entertained, exhibit their best livestock, show off their abilities in a variety of fields including art and cooking, learn about new products and services, and enjoy many different types of food—often on a stick.

All I know is that satay is the original food on a stick, and that it was invented by the Javanese in the early 19th Century, well before there was a Minnesota State Fair. I do not know the exact year, but I do know that the year after the Javanese invented satay, the Thai were serving satay and our satay was better because we served it with peanut sauce! Also ours was made with pork and chicken, unlike the Javanese who used mutton. Mutton on a stick tastes as bad as it sounds. You could dip it in chocolate and wrap it in bacon but you still could not sell it on the Midway except maybe to tourists from Iowa or Wisconsin.

Chicken and pork are not the only Thai foods you can buy on a stick, although they are the only ones you can buy at True Thai. In Thailand, food I have eaten on a stick includes squid, squid tentacles, insects, jellyfish, quail eggs, and every part of a water buffalo including spleen, kidney and testicles.

I have also had chicken eggs on a stick and they are very tasty. Maybe someday we will add them to True Thai's menu. Thai Food & Travel Blog has a picture of many other kinds of Thai food on a stick, none of which have been dipped in chocolate or molested by bacon. But who needs chocolate when you can have your pick of hot dogs, fish balls, sausage, pork wontons or squid eggs on a stick!

Mmmm, squid eggs on a stick — I am getting hungry just thinking about them.

I was happy to discover that Minnesotans approve of food on a stick. When Anna was little, her mom got her to try new foods by putting them on a stick. If it was on a stick, little Anna would eat it. Little Anna was a very active child and as any Fair goer can tell you, food on a stick is the very best food for when you are eating and moving at the same time.

As good as Thai food on a stick is, it is considered to be street vendor food and not restaurant food, and that is why True Thai sells only chicken and pork satay on a stick (#6 on our menu).


Delicious with peanut or cucumber sauce.

The Land of 10,000 Smiles!

Did you know that Hubert Humphrey visited Thailand? This picture is based on a famous photo of Hubert Humphrey when he visited a refugee camp not far from my home. Well, maybe more famous in Thailand than it is here in Minnesota.

Famous people eat at True Thai but you will never see their pictures on our walls or in this blog. Thai hospitality is based on the belief that every customer should be treated like a V.I.P. We also believe that truly famous people deserve respect, and should be allowed to enjoy their meal in peace and privacy.

Thanks to the internet anyone can be a restaurant critic and I try to read every comment and online review written about True Thai. Most of you are very complimentary and I thank you for that (ขอบคุณ)! But sometimes you don't like the food and I immediately try to figure out what went wrong, if maybe one of the cooks is not making a dish the correct way, or a wait person is not taking orders accurately. Criticism is very important to a restaurant because even True Thai is not perfect and we are always trying to do better.

But sometimes I read that someone came to True Thai and received bad service. When I read that I just want to die. Rude or bad service is unforgivable to Thai people. We take great pride in our hospitality and believe that no meal is satisfactory if the service is anything less than excellent.

Please do not hesitate to tell me personally if you receive poor service. I am as loyal to my employees as I am to my customers, but in Thailand customers always come first!

Hubert Humphrey was famous for smiling. Had he not been a world famous statesman I think he could have been a great Thai waiter!

Happy National Lemonade Day!

What could possibly taste better on a hot muggy day than a tall glass of cold lemonade? No wonder August 20th has been designated National Lemonade Day. I am excited to promote this day of recognition because little Anna's first money making enterprise was — you guessed it! — a lemonade stand!

OK, technically it was a limeade stand, there being no lemonade stands in Thailand. But, like in America, Thailand has churches, and churches have youth retreats, and Thai moms tell their kids that they have to earn their own money if they want to go to camp. Ten-year-old Anna wanted very much to go on retreat and was determined to earn the money to do so.

To this day my cousin Vanna is one of my favorite people in the whole world because it was she who suggested a "lemonade" stand to me. More important, she gave me the recipe for great limeade (limes, water, sugar, ice and a special secret ingredient). Cousin Vanna told me to wear my cutest outfits and to smile at all the passers-by, especially the ones who looked hot and thirsty. That proved to be a very good marketing strategy.

Little Anna was not the only Thai kid with a limeade stand but mine was closest to the Cathedral and there was a lot of foot traffic on our street. In no time at all little Anna was selling fifty to one hundred glasses of limeade a day. My sister the nun was very impressed and told me I was making as much money as a school teacher. That made me very proud and even more determined to sell even more limeade.

Everything else was just like it was here in America. Mom let me put an old table and a chair in our front yard and I made a big big sign that said LIMEADE ONLY 20 BAHT. Our neighborhood was sort of like a big marketplace already so it was always full of shoppers and people passing through.

Each morning I would go to our fruit farm and I would pick one hundred limes for that day's limeade. My mom taught me how to pick the very best limes because the best limeade is made from the best limes. I was learning to make money but like all little kids my limeade stand was subsidized by my mom who let me use one of her pitchers, some glasses and sugar from the family sugar canister. It also didn't hurt that she did not charge me for the limes!

One difference from an American lemonade stand was that back then Thai people did not make ice cubes in their refrigerators like Americans do. We had an icebox and bought blocks of ice from the ice vendors who came by every morning. A big block of ice was cheaper and lasted longer. One big block would be enough ice for an entire day's limeade sales. All day long little Anna would hit the block of ice with her ice hammer — tap, tap, tap — breaking off ice to put in the glasses of limeade.

Little Anna ran her limeade stand for every day for two weeks and sold over 1,000 glasses of limeade, making enough money to go on retreat with my classmates. As with most things you eat or drink, the secret ingredient cousin Vanna shared with me was . . . salt.

But the most important thing was that my mom and my cousin Vanna loved me and taught me that you could make money selling people what they want. On a hot humid day in Thailand people are thirsty and little Anna sold them what they wanted: a big glass of limeade served by a little kid with a big smile.

We can do it!

Some time ago I wrote about True Thai and frugal dining. As a public health nurse working with lower income clients, I appreciate that times are very hard for some, and not easy for hardly anyone. Increasingly, eating out is a luxury and not just a treat.

But True Thai keeps doing good business. Why? I think you already know why. True Thai is very affordable. Yet our costs are the same as those of other Thai restaurants, and in some cases even higher because of our insistence on authentic ingredients. So how does True Thai stay in business?

We stay in business because of you, our customers. Because of your loyalty we don't have to spend money on marketing or advertising. Instead of running ads in City Pages, I post to this blog. Instead of 4-color ads in glossy magazines, I tweet. Instead of trying to sell you an extra beer or upgrade you from a glass to a bottle of wine, we encourage you to economize so you can visit us more often.

Whether you knew it or not, you're part of the True Thai family, and being part of a family means you have privileges. You can order your food the way you like it, not the way some restaurant critic insisted was correct. We don't have any ketchup on hand, but if you bring in your own, we won't stop you from using it.

True Thai is your restaurant and my refuge. When I go to True Thai each night, it's like going home to Thailand. As a Thai American, I thank you for sharing my dream of introducing Minnesota to quality Thai food. And, as a public health nurse, I thank you for making the decision to eat healthy food prepared in the Thai style.

Together we can beat this recession!

New Queen of All Curries!

How do you like the new Queen of All Curries photo? Sonali at Rich Photos has taken some wonderful photos of me in the most beautiful costumes. This dress is from the Tang Dynasty and it was even more gorgeous in person than it is in this photo.

If you know your Asian history, you know that the Tang Dynasty was the most famous of all Chinese dynasties and lasted almost three hundred years. During that time the Chinese invented gunpowder and printing but they did not invent curry so maybe it is a little silly that I am using this for my new Queen of All Curries picture but this dress is so fabulous that I cannot resist.

If you are a faithful reader of Anna's True Thai News, you may remember that I wrote about the Queen of all Curries last May, but if you are new to this blog you may not know that I am speaking about Green Curry. How good is True Thai Green Curry? It's one of our most popular dishes. Some of our customers find it so addictive they order nothing else.

Does it make sense to wear a Chinese dress while talking about Thai curry? Why not? This is America and these things happen. And here in Minnesota you can do things you would not or could not do in Thailand. You could eat at every restaurant in Thailand from Phuket to Chiang Mai and you would not find anyone who serves Wok-fried Green Chilis & Fresh Sweet Basil with Walleye. (#38 on our menu).

True Thai tongue-twisters

Most people who understand the restaurant business know that it is not an easy way to make a living, but I don't think they appreciate how much harder it is to run True Thai than it is your average restaurant.

At True Thai our staff have conspired to have very confusing names. Over the years our employees have been named Na, Nok and Nuk; Pupe, Paul, Por, Ped, Phet, Phut and Pum; Leanne, Annaliese, Anna and Annie; Vanna and Vanny; Manuel, Mel, Mim, Map, Muk, Myamon, Mayu, Maya and Maria; Anousone, Sone, Sonh, Saw and Somo; Tien, Tun, Tui, Toi, Goi and Joy!

Try to repeat that payroll list three times quickly!



As True Thai continues to grow, I'm sure we'll hire some more employees with names that rhyme (Yada, Golf and Third all need to get rhymed), but sadly I doubt we will find any rhymes or alliterations (สัมผัสอักษร) for Szavio, Chaniga, Boutsady, Souksavanh, Rungravee, or Pollop!