Our Featured Restaurant Owner is Andie, founder of Thai Kitchen – offering four locations across the St. Louis region.
ST LOUIS, MO (StLouisRestaurantReview) Finding interesting restaurant owners is not difficult. Most are creative, friendly, and exciting people to be around. But sometimes the most attractive and worldly are hidden in the kitchen, not looking for fame or fortune, but more concerned about making great food that people love, which helps support staff and family members.
But what defines “interesting?” Have unique ideas about decorating their restaurant or hiring people to cook the food they sell to the public when they can’t cook it themselves? Is that interesting? Not to us!
It seems interesting to me that she might be a restaurant owner who moved to America, knows very little English, has three kids, and has opened 15 restaurants since 1997. Her first restaurant was in Bangkok, Thailand, where she operated for five years before moving to the USA.
The founder moved to the USA in 1995 with the encouragement and support of her sizeable Thai family. 1997, she opened her first US-based restaurant in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. She sold it and then opened her first Thai Kitchen in 1999. She humbly recognizes that she could not have accomplished her overwhelming achievement without the family’s support.
Since opening her first restaurant in the US, she has opened multiple restaurants that have since closed or been sold.
Today, Andie is operating three restaurants known as “Thai Kitchen,” located in the following communities:
- Florissant – Started April 2018 (Owned by Andies’ brother and sister-in-law)
- Maryland Heights – Opening in March 2024 with the new name of Thai Mama
- O’Fallon – Started January 2013
- St. Charles – Started January 2019
- St. Louis – Started August 2023
- Wentzville – Started November 2020
The hidden gem behind Thai Kitchen is Sasimonthon Ongartsutthikul, aka Andie.
This hidden gem is Sasimonthon Ongartsutthikul, but she goes by “Andie.” Andie loved to cook from an early age as her parents, with seven kids, divided the household chores, and she was chosen to cook. She loved it then and still loves it today. We visit her at a different Thai Kitchen restaurant each day, and she is always in the kitchen, cooking, teaching, or monitoring the cooking of her Thai family recipes, which are made using authentic ingredients from Thailand. The results are a dedicated customer base that loves her food and is not afraid to praise her Thai cuisines with highly rated online reviews on all platforms.
Most of the staff are family members, including Andie’s mother, Kularb, a.k.a. Rose, who is 76 years old. She stands by her family, working daily to make their family recipe Thai dishes for their customers.
Andie visits Thailand frequently to find new ideas to add to her menu.
Andie has the loving support of her three daughters, Katie, Nickie, and Pam.
We have not spent as much time with Andie as we want, but that will come in time. She is creative, dedicated, and not afraid to work. Her discipline, creativity, and desire to satisfy her customers will ensure that her restaurants attract award-winning online customer reviews, which, in today’s technological-driven society, is the secret to success in business.
Today, the Thai Kitchen chain has quickly become known and respected by Thai food lovers, and all locations are given high Google ratings.
CLICK to ORDER ONLINE from one of the Thai Kitchen locations.
Article Updated: March 8, 2024
Martin Smith is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of St. Louis Restaurant Review, STL.News, USPress.News, and STL.Directory. He is a member of the United States Press Agency (ID: 31659) and the US Press Agency.
