Rob Balon wonders in his latest blog entry, “why so many Austinites seem to be either indifferent toward or uncomfortable with Thai food“. As Dr. Balon frequently does, he suggests that Austinites are so used to barbecue and TexMex that “something relatively unfamiliar has a hard time breaking through”.
Dr. Balon’s essay is curious for a few reasons. First of all, he’s talking about Thai food, yet completely omits the longest lived (as far as I know) and single most successful group of Thai restaurants in Austin. We could argue about the merits of Thai Kitchen versus Madam Mam’s all day long, but just simply ignoring the metaphorical 800-pound elephant in the room is…curious, to say the least.
Dr. Balon does mention Madam Mam’s, but I find his comments kind of dismissive. He doesn’t even note that there are actually three locations; the third one is near the Alamo Drafthouse in the Village, and to my untrained eye appears to be doing well.
“And yet just a few miles south on W 6th st. fine restaurants like Lemongrass and Thai Tara have languished and ultimately closed.” I would have to go back to the archives and do some research, but my recollection is that the closing of Lemongrass was a lot more complicated than that. As for Thai Tara, it stayed open much longer than I would have expected; I’d suggest that it closed almost entirely due to a bad location, and especially due to parking issues downtown.
Dr. Balon mentions relatively new places such as Chon Som and Titaya, but I see even more Thai places that he doesn’t mention popping up on street corners all over town. (For example, Pad Thai on Guadalupe, and Thai Cuisine at Parmer and I-35.) Thai Village seems to be doing much better than the shopping center it’s in. Bangkok Cuisine has stayed in business for many years (how, I don’t exactly know). Compared to the Thai situation in, say, 2007, we’re living in a golden age.
Could some of these places (like Satay) use more customers? Dr. Balon seems to know more about this than I do. But let’s say that they could use more customers; is that because they serve Thai food, or is that because of the economy in general? If we compared Thai places to TexMex places, or barbecue joints, would we see a similar trend towards a smaller customer base?
Dr. Balon may have a point, but I don’t think he’s mustered the evidence to back it up.