True Thai

Rating:

Unlike many local Thai restaurants, True Thai actually has a Thai owner, Anna Prasomphol Fieser, and a Thai chef, who goes by only one name, Nong. (Serious devotees of Thai food might remember Nong from her brief stint at Dara Thai in St. Paul.)

For Fieser, who still works by day as a public health nurse for St. Paul-Ramsey County, the restaurant is clearly a labor of love. While husband and co-owner Chuck Whitney manages and runs the cash register, Fieser circulates from table to table greeting customers with an infectious enthusiasm -- and a lot of pride.

Hers is the only Thai restaurant, she claims, that makes its own Thai curries from scratch, and she goes to great lengths to get the highest quality ingredients: The little round Thai eggplants are flown in from California, and the kaffir lime leaves come all the way from Thailand. Sticky rice with mango is on the menu, but she steers customers away from it; the mangos are OK, but they won't really be at their peak until late spring.

Fieser, a native of Chantaburi province in Thailand, started to bring friends along on her trips back home. The trips evolved into culinary tours, she says, and her friends started urging her to open a restaurant. On her most recent trip home, she returned with many of the crafts and works of art that decorate the dining room, as well as the serving dishes on which some of the house specialties are presented.

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