Inside The Many Lives of Charlotte’s First Thai Restaurant

“Authenticity” is an overused word in restaurants, but it still can make the difference between a food experience that excels and one that falls flat. Here’s what authenticity looks like at Thai Taste: The walls are adorned with gongs and paintings from a Thai flea market that shimmer with golden paint. Ruby-colored umbrellas hang from the ceilings. Beneath them, in heels, scurries Chiengthong Kongkham, who’s owned the restaurant on East Boulevard in Dilworth since 1988. 

Customers call Chiengthong “Wonder Woman” because she seems to be in constant motion. Her response: “Yes, I am.” Regulars ask if her feet are on fire. “Yes, they are.” 

This summer, for the first time in 37 years, Chiengthong’s feet will take her a few steps away from Thai Taste. She’ll still own the business. But her 37-year-old son, Roger, who has worked the register since he was a young boy, will take over operations. Chiengthong plans to travel, draw, and maybe teach a class at Johnson & Wales University, whose students regularly ask Chiengthong for her recipes.

Thai Taste makes its dumplings, spring rolls, and other dishes from scratch, Chiengthong explains as the three of us speak at a table. The chefs chop fresh herbs daily—lemongrass, curry leaves, and ginger. Chiengthong recommends the pad thai, red curry, and mango sticky rice, a traditional dish from her home country of Laos.

Chiengthong recommends the pad thai (above), red curry (right), and mango sticky rice (below), a traditional dish from her home country of Laos.

Some first-time customers are “afraid of spicy,” she says. So she created a simple mild-to-hot rating system of stars from one to five. Many of those spice-fearing customers tack on another star with each visit—especially when they have colds, Chiengthong says. “We don’t order frozen food,” Chiengthong adds. “Everybody else, they order from manufacturing and stuff like that.”

Her reputation comes from the restaurant’s longevity and status as—the Kongkhams believe—the first Thai restaurant in Charlotte. They’ve witnessed milestones: engagements, breakups, reconciliations. They’ve served local celebrities like Luke Kuechly, Ric Flair, and Hugh McColl. Unofficial dedications to these loyal customers dot the walls. Over there’s a collection of digital photos of Kuechly. Near it hangs a plaque that recognizes The Friday Lunch Group, a group that’s met at the back right table since 1997.

Photos of local celebrities and friends—including that of The Friday Lunch Group (below), which has met at the back right table since 1997—adorn the walls near the cash register.

Chiengthong has never advertised. She credits the restaurant’s longevity to word of mouth. “We really just kind of presented ourselves as ourselves,” Roger says, “not even trying to pretend to be anyone else.” Even with the switch, he says Thai Taste’s core identity won’t change: “I never want to take away from the history of the building or the history of the business. I want to pay homage to that.” 

By the time Chiengthong and a business partner founded Thai Taste, she’d already experienced a life of constant movement. She was born in Laos, but she and her parents had to flee in 1975 after the country’s takeover by the communist Pathet Lao. They swam across the Mekong River into neighboring Thailand and, like thousands of other refugees from Laos and Cambodia, spent years in refugee camps in Thailand. Finally, in 1980, they acquired U.S. immigration sponsorship from a church in Washington state, thanks largely to her father’s service in the pro-Western Laotian royal military.

Chiengthong learned English at Sunday school, lugging three dictionaries—French, Lao, and English—and translating among them. By 1983, she had married, and she moved to Charlotte when her husband landed a job at Coca-Cola. Chiengthong opened Thai Taste with a business partner she later married after she and her first husband split. The partner later returned to Thailand.

“It’s her baby,” Roger says. “My mother is very proud of the restaurant.”

Thai Taste on East Blvd.

She had two boys with her first husband, and Thai Taste became their day care. Some days, their delivery driver would pick Roger up from school and drive him back to the restaurant. On other days, as Roger fondly recalls, the driver would let him navigate during deliveries. “As soon as I could start seeing over the countertops,” he says, “I was working here.” Customers would tell Chiengthong to put Roger on America’s Got Talent for his speed and precision at the 10-key, pre-POS system.

Decades later, Roger works behind the same counter. But now it’s the bar, and he’s transformed the humble wine menu into an inventive cocktail program. The cocktails incorporate “molecular-level” bartending techniques and reflect Thai cuisine with tamarind, tea, and lemongrass. Roger’s a self-declared “industry lifer,” having honed his mixology skills at Dot Dot Dot, Supperland, and his own now-closed restaurant, Hibiscus.

“We’re an old-school mom-and-pop Thai restaurant, but we can still make really cool drinks,” he says. Chiengthong smiles. “It has been a lot of crazy,” she says. “A lot of history and good memories.”