Why True Thai does not accept coupons

I see in the newspaper that Groupon is the biggest thing out there right now. Good for them but we do not participate in Groupon's coupon program. They asked, we declined.

In 2011 True Thai will be entering its sixth consecutive year without any menu price increases, even though the price of our ingredients keeps going up. If we started accepting coupons, we would have to raise our menu prices.

As for me personally, sometimes I use coupons for grocery items, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'll use a coupon to try a new product but mostly I use them to get discounts on products I do use. But True Thai is not a grocery store, and we have no trouble getting customers to try new dishes. Salt & Pepper Mussels with two kinds of sauce (plum and hot sauce), for example. It's not on the menu yet but everyone who's tried them has liked them.

Deep-frying mellows the taste of mussels, making them taste more like oysters except maybe with just a little more "oomph."

No, there won't be a coupon for True Thai's Salt & Pepper Mussels appetizer, but that doesn't mean you can't order them.

Think beyond the coupon.

Much to be thankful for

Some people see only negatives. They would look at this last year and say, 'Oh Anna, you are too busy, you have too many jobs and are always running around. And you got mugged — how horrible!' I prefer to be thankful that I am busy, and even more thankful that I survived a mugging.

There is always, always, always something to be thankful for. I am thankful that True Thai is doing well but more than anything else, I am thankful to all of you who sent me a get well card after my mugging. Your cards came at a time when I needed reassurance, and nothing is more reassuring than to learn that you are loved by others.

Six months ago I was writing notes to myself about this year's Thanksgiving post, but they were all about thanking my trainers for the new body they helped me to find locked up inside my old body. Thanks to Carla and others I'm more fit than I was when I came to this country years and years ago.

I cannot say that a mugging is no big deal, but being fit helped me to survive and recover from being beaten by a much larger person. There is more to surviving than just living through bad events, though. I was very depressed immediately after the mugging. Depressed that I had lost so much money, depressed that my fitness didn't make me a match for a mugger, depressed that I was a victim.

Then you started coming in and asking how I was feeling. Many of you left cards for me. More cards came in the mail and then still more cards. A TV station came to the restaurant. More people started reading this blog to get progress reports on my recovery. Altogether I received over 600 get well cards and more bouquets of flowers than I had gotten in my entire life before getting mugged.

Yes, this year Anna has much to be thankful for, but mostly I am thankful to all of you for your support and your love of Thai food. And somewhere I believe that my Mom and Great Grandmother Mai are looking down on all of us and smiling.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. I think this is the best holiday of the year, even if it is one I had never heard of before moving to America.

Aaiiieeee!!!

No, not another mugging. I told you about Stitch, the dog who came to visit me. Well, in addition to Stitch, I was also visited by a zombie. This confused former person thinks he is a vampire and is trying to bite my neck!

There is no dress code at True Thai and you can come in wearing anything you like, but whether you are a dog or a zombie or a vampire — you are not allowed to bite the owner!

Anna's new best friend

This is my new best friend Stitch. He comes to see me every week and loves to hang out at the restaurant. His owner swears it's not because we give him free #16 (Bangkok Crispy Sweet Beef) which I think is true because Stitch also likes Thai fortune rolls.

I've been told Stitch gets excited whenever he's driven past True Thai. I like Stitch because he likes me. I'm really glad he likes me. I'm glad because he weighs more than I do!

Green Papayas

We have not been buying many green papayas lately and that makes me suspicious. Thai women eat papaya salad like Americans eat potato salad. Whenever there is a get together one or two people bring the papaya salad, and it's always the same people. Others who volunteer are discouraged from doing so in the future. Papaya salad is serious business!

There are as many ways of making papaya salad as there are ways of making potato salad. There are even more ways of making it wrong. Wrong papaya salad, like bad potato salad, is something to be avoided at all costs.

The correct way of making papaya salad is, of course, the way your mother made it. If your mother did not teach you how to make papaya salad you should probably stick with take out. Papaya salad is not easy to make. In fact, it is the hardest dish to make on True Thai's menu. Which is why I am suspicious.

I am suspicious that maybe our wait staff is not mentioning papaya salad when customers ask for suggestions. They do this as a favor for the kitchen staff who would rather make spring rolls instead of papaya salad.

The truth is papaya salad requires so much time to make I am not sure we really make any money from it, but money is not always the point. Serving good papaya salad is a must for a Thai restaurant. If you do not make good papaya salad, tom yum or pad thai, why would anyone want to come to your restaurant?

The mystery of the curious customers

I am sorry. I know that I have not been posting very much stuff lately but I have a good excuse: I am very busy!

Lately it seems that everyone who visits the restaurant wants to meet the owner. At first it was because of the attention the media paid to my mugging (I am fully recovered and doing fine — thanks for asking). Then, two weeks later, WCCO ran their mugging story, and people starting coming in and asking to see my teeth. They were mostly dentists (I hope).

Now customers ask to see me because of this picture. It is a picture my Flickr fans have seen, but for some reason now that this bit of True Thai history is framed, everyone wants to see me!

No, I am not going to tell you anything else about the picture, but I will say that most of the customers who ask to see me are older. I do not know why that makes a difference, but it does.

The new picture is sitting in the hallway between the old dining room and the new addition in an alcove where a Buddha statue is protecting it. Next time you come to True Thai, be sure to take a look.

The Queen of Koh Tao!

I was visiting a friend and because she knew I had been thinking about becoming a rock climber (for about five minutes last spring), she had taped a TV show about rock climbing in Thailand for me to watch. But she did not tell me the name of the show so I was very surprised to see Koh Tao (Turtle Island) on the screen.

I have already told you the story of how my mother's family came to be known as the Suktukwans ("happiness every day"). King Rama V did not just reward my ancestor with a new family name, he also gave him an island, Koh Tao!

I did not mention this before because 1) Turtle Island is not much of an island, and 2) my ancestor immediately sold it for $500. Only five-hundred U.S. dollars? Well, it was 1910, but yeah, no matter how you calculate the inflation that's still only $11,000 in today's dollars.

The island does, however, look like a turtle.

It is the opposite side of the island that is featured in the show because that's where the rocky cliffs are, the ones that are so popular with rock climbers. You can see about a minute and a half of the show if you go to UCTV.

As a child we never actually visited Koh Tao, but I remember daydreaming about what it would have been like had I grown up to be the Queen of Turtle Island. As I recall, my imaginary Turtle Island was quite a bit larger and much more impressive. Still, I wish we had kept Koh Tao in the family as it is not everyone who gets to own an island.

A story about a missing purse

OK, this is kind of weird. Kelly, the driver who delivers our beer was downtown making a delivery. As she was unloading an order she thought she saw a wallet laying on the sidewalk across the street. She made her delivery and came back out and the wallet was still there, even though there was a lot of foot traffic on that side of the street.

Kelly ran across the street, picked up the wallet and found a $100 bill and a check for $1,000 in it. The check was from True Thai Restaurant, her next delivery stop!

Sort of a big deal, right? So when she made her next stop at True Thai she told us about it. It turned out that the member of our kitchen staff who lost her wallet didn't even know it was missing yet!

I think that is an amazing true story!

A final post about the mugging

Because WCCO made a big deal out of calling me a "victim," I decided to submit this post to the Star Tribune's Your Voices section. That was two weeks ago and despite a follow up email, they never acknowledged receiving my submission.

Here is what I sent them:

I was mugged, but I am not a victim!

Just before midnight on Friday night, August 20, I was mugged while walking from my restaurant to my parked car. It was a horrifying experience in which I was struck repeatedly on my head and back from behind. I suffered many bruises and spent nine hours in a dentist's chair having my teeth repaired.

I have blogged about my experience (All You Need Is Love and I Was Ambushed!), but because a local television station exploited my mugging, I feel obliged to speak to the greater community about what really happened.

I own and manage True Thai Restaurant, a successful business. Restaurant owners carry cash on them because many of our vendors do not accept checks or credit cards. Thieves know this, and I knew that they knew. But it is only a few feet from the back door of my restaurant to my car, and I thought I was safe. I was not.

That was my mistake. If I was victimized, it was by my own indifference to my safety. If you carry large sums of cash, whether it is in Minneapolis or Bangkok, you need to take precautions. Because I did not, countless neighbors in the Seward Neighborhood are now walking their dogs past my restaurant at closing time, and customers volunteer to walk me to my car each night.

I am lucky to have so many friends and supporters. When the TV station news crew ambushed me on Saturday, September 4, I thought they wanted to do a story about the neighborhood and their support for me. No, they just wanted to show my face on the news with the word "victim" under it. No one knew how much money had been taken, but the police report categorized the theft as over $1,000 (it was $1,100, an unusually large amount for me to be carrying) and to my horror the TV station shared that number.

Now I do feel like a victim. This TV station just told tens of thousands of people that I carry large sums of cash on me late at night (in fact it is usually much less than that). They also acted like the crime had just happened when in fact their coverage ran over two weeks after the crime occurred.

Some people would say, "Anna, you need to protect yourself!" I work out but I only weigh 93 pounds so I think martial arts will not work for me. A customer gave me some pepper spray, but I am scared to carry it with me. I was attacked from behind and had no opportunity to grab anything from my purse to protect me. A gun would not have helped.

My best protection is to make sure we keep the back alley well lighted and that True Thai continues to work with Seward Redesign and other business and residential neighbors to make Seward a safer neighborhood.

Actually, Seward is a pretty safe neighborhood — contrary to what you hear on TV. Yes, we had a shooting last spring but the shooter is in prison and will stay there for a long time. The shootings at Seward Market and Halal Meats were much more terrifying to me than my own mugging was, but the courage of my Somali neighbors in keeping their business open impressed me. Shortly after they re-opened I stopped in to buy something to show my support. The market was empty except for five young Somali men behind the counter, one to wait on customers and four friends who were there to show their support.

In recent weeks I have learned how important support is. Better lights and more police presence are good deterrents to crime, but nothing beats the support of your friends and neighbors, all of whom have done so much to remind me that I am just one of many people in Seward, and that Seward watches out for its own. The cards and flowers and personal reassurances have made it clear to me that I am not a victim. Seward residents are not victims. No one is a victim unless they wish to be, no matter how hard TV stations may work to try to scare us.

Anna Prasomphol Fieser is a full-time Public Health Nurse for Ramsey County Public Health Department. She and her business partner Charles Whitney own and operate True Thai Restaurant on East Franklin Avenue in the Seward Neighborhood of Minneapolis.

I don't know why this didn't interest the Star Tribune, but maybe True Thai should start advertising with them. That does seem to be how things work.

Too tie!

Sorry for the lack of posts. You have been so wonderful and supportive that I've been too busy to write for my blog!

I do not have any news about True Thai but I do have some reading for you.

Angharad is an English woman who lives in the Twin Cities and who tweets and blogs as Eating4England. She recently visited one of my favorite places, the Hmong Marketplace at 217 Como. She was very fond of the red Thai bubble tea which is just one of the many very tasty beverages there.

You might also want to see "We Dare You Not to Laugh at 31 Foods With Misspelled Names." If you do much shopping for authentic Asian groceries, you probably have noticed that Asians do not always do a good job of translating what's in the box into English. Here is an example:


As you might have guessed, there are 30 more mislabeled pictures waiting for you at URLesque.com.

I was ambushed by WCCO-TV!

It is every restaurant owner's dream to be on television. We all want to be famous for our food. If I had known a TV crew was coming over today I would have had everyone cleaning and putting out extra flowers. I would have worn my best clothes and jewels and my hair and makeup would have been perfect.

But I did not know WCCO was coming over and they caught me coming out of the gym after an hour-long hot and sweaty workout. I looked terrible! How terrible? Watch WCCO News tonight at 10 pm to see how bad I look after working out.

Not only did I look bad, they didn't talk to me about True Thai's food. All they wanted to talk about was my mugging and the support the Seward neighborhood has shown me. I like to talk about how great my neighbors are but I am getting a little tired of talking about the mugging all the time.

I'm working tonight so I would be very grateful if someone had a way to record WCCO's clip of me and True Thai. It's the 10 o'clock news but I don't know when they'll show it, just that I will look sweaty when they do.

True Thai will be closed Labor Day

Yes, True Thai will be closed on Monday. That's the bad news. The good news is that we are open today (Saturday), tomorrow (Sunday), and will re-open on Tuesday, September 7.

How are you going to spend your Labor Day? I am pretty sure I will spend mine sleeping in and going to bed early. You can't catch up on sleep, but I like to try.

I will probably also do some housecleaning. I think I have just the outfit for cleaning the kitchen: