We’re loving the Thai dishes, including regional fare from Chiang Mai, coming out of the kitchen at Thai Street Market. We took time out to chat with Niw Anirut Rattanapamonsook, co-owner with wife Jamie Rattanapamonsook, to talk about the inspiration behind the restaurant and more.

What’s your first food memory or favorite childhood food memory? Papaya salad. When I grew up in Thailand, we would grow papaya in our yard. I remember if we didn’t have anything in the kitchen, we still had papaya trees. We could always pick papaya and have papaya salad.

What did you want to be when you grew up? I thought I would be a Thai movie actor. In the village where I grew up, we watched a lot of Thai dramas and that made me want to become an actor. As I got older, I thought this is not a good idea.

What was your first job in food? A server at a restaurant in California when I moved to the United States in 2007.

How did you wind up in the restaurant business for good? In 2008 or 2009, I was working in the kitchen at a Thai restaurant and thought having a restaurant would be a fun thing to do. I thought about it at the time, but I wasn’t sure. We moved to Minnesota in 2011. My wife is from Florida and I’m from Thailand. We were missionaries in Thailand and then we were living in Florida for a while. We moved to Minnesota in 2011 because my aunt worked at a Thai restaurant and invited me to come here and work with her boss, who has several restaurants in the Twin Cities. It wasn’t until 2016 that my wife and I started talking about it seriously and came up with a plan.

Thai Street Market recently hosted an event treating foster families to a free meal. Why is that important to you? We want to give something to others, and Jamie and I are really passionate about foster families. These are the people helping others who really need people to watch over them. We’re honored to support them because they are doing awesome things for the community. We plan on making this a yearly tradition.

What’s your favorite dish on your menu? Spicy King Crossing, which is also called Peking. At a lot of Thai restaurants in the United States, they add coconut milk. Where I grew up, we didn’t put coconut milk in it, and we don’t here at the restaurant, either. It’s not as much a curry dish as it is a stir-fry dish here. It’s very flavorful.

What’s the last thing you cooked at home? Ever since we opened the restaurant, my wife cooks at home most of the time. I spend a lot of time at the restaurant, so I don’t want to spend a lot of time cooking at home. If I have to cook at home, it will be Thai scrambled eggs. We put the egg in the bowl and mix it with fish sauce, peppers, green onions and cilantro and fry it. After that we’ll eat it with rice and ketchup. Our kids like it a lot.

If you had to eat or drink only five things for the rest of your life, what would they be? Thai iced tea. Thai meatball noodle soup. Papaya salad. Peanut chicken curry. And we have a lemongrass salad at the restaurant that’s really fresh, with vegetables, shrimp and cashew nuts. You eat it as a lettuce wrap.

What’s next? Sometime in January, we will start offering wine and beer. A lot of customers started to ask for beer and wine, so we’re adding that. Our long-term goal is to expand to more branches. But right now, we want to focus on continuing doing what we do and do it well.

THAI STREET MARKET