‘My personality, with my mother’s roots’: Daughter embraces Nan Thai legacy

Credit: Olivia Wakim

Credit: Olivia Wakim

In 2010, DeeDee opened Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft, a Thai street food restaurant in Brookwood Hills, and later Chai Yo in Buckhead. But last year, she rebranded Chai Yo to Nan Thai Buckhead with the goal of carrying on her mother’s name and the family legacy.

DeeDee is following in the tradition of her mother, but their story stretches back another generation to the streets of Bangkok.

Nan’s mother, Phayao, operated a street food cart in Bangkok. She would set up in front of the hospital, Nan said, and doctors and nurses would peel out of the building at lunchtime for a plate of her pad thai.

As a child, Nan’s job was to help harvest the coconut milk Phayao would use in her curries. She also made chile paste from scratch by grinding up lemongrass, chile peppers, onion and garlic in a mortar and pestle.

After school, Nan would have to run back home to prepare dinner for the family.

Nan said she began to realize a true passion for cooking at 12 years old when she received high marks in class for preparing the best rice. Nan immigrated to New York when she was about 19 to follow her husband, Charlie, who had moved there earlier to start making money for them.

At first, she worked several waitressing jobs in New York City while raising her two young children, and Phayao moved from Thailand to help.

Credit: Courtesy of Nan Thai

Credit: Courtesy of Nan Thai

But as Nan got older, and as her husband found success as a manager of a country club, they decided to open their own restaurant. When DeeDee was about 8, Nan and Charlie debuted Tamarind in Manhattan.

It was fun working in the restaurant as a child, DeeDee said, but that changed as she got older, especially when her parents moved them to Atlanta at 18. She didn’t want to leave behind her friends and the home where she grew up.

Nan and Charlie opened Tamarind Thai Cuisine on 14th Street in Midtown in 1998. They were some of the first to bring Thai food to Atlanta, Nan said. The restaurant relocated to Colony Square in 2005 and remained open until 2018.

As a teenager and young adult, DeeDee was reluctant to follow in her parents’ footsteps.

“I didn’t really want to go into this industry because they worked crazy hours,” she said.

“You have to have passion (to) enjoy it,” Nan said. “When my kitchen is open, I enjoy (it) very much. When I see the guests eat, and smiling, that makes me happy.”

DeeDee’s perspective changed when her father took her under his wing to show her the front-of-house ropes at Nan Thai Fine Dining, which debuted in 2003 on Spring Street in Midtown. Charlie showed her the joy in creating a good customer experience and a sense of community.

DeeDee focused on the front-of-house operations with her dad for several years as the Niyomkuls’ Thai fine dining took off in Atlanta.

When DeeDee was in her mid-20s, she began to take notice of her mother working in the restaurant’s kitchen. DeeDee knew how to cook at home, but she had never taken much of an interest outside of that.

“I wanted to learn what my grandmother, what my mom, everybody (knew) — I wanted to carry it on, and I eventually wanted to open my own restaurant,” DeeDee said.

She soon found herself in the kitchen under Nan’s tutelage.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

“You know how to cook, but you have to know what the real taste of Thai cuisine (is),” Nan said. “Everybody can cook, but (there are) some unique things, some little touches, details, how you put which (ingredient) first.”

Nan taught her daughter that whatever flavor she wants to taste first in the dish, she must start with that ingredient in the mortar and pestle.

And the technique for cooking at a restaurant is different from cooking at home, DeeDee said. For one thing, you’re constantly tasting what you’re making “because everybody has different palates, and they might make a certain type of curry a little different than how we would make it.”

At times, they would butt heads, but DeeDee loved learning. “These are things you can use and pass on to the next generation that if she never taught me, I would have never known,” she said.

DeeDee opened Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft in 2010. It was a rebellion from her parents’ restaurant with its casual street food menu and environment, but the recipes came from DeeDee’s grandmother.

Eight years later, she went on to open Chai Yo Modern Thai, which means “celebration” or “hooray” in Thai.

But things changed in 2021. Charlie Niyomkul died from complications of COVID-19 at 70. It was hard losing their husband and father, but it also brought Nan and DeeDee a lot closer, DeeDee said.

“It just gave me perspective,” she said. “That brought another level of us working together, because that was like my dad’s dream. He always wanted me and my mom to work together as a team.”

DeeDee decided it was time to stop rebelling, and she told Nan she wanted to rebrand Chai Yo to Nan Thai Buckhead and carry on the family name.

“I was so happy to hear you say that,” Nan recalled.

Last August, DeeDee officially made the switch.

Nan Thai Buckhead has Nan’s touch, with similar dishes and a fine dining feel, but it brings in elements of DeeDee, too. “My personality, with my mother’s roots,” she said.

As part of the restaurant’s design, DeeDee’s husband suggested they enlarge the photos of Nan and Charlie as a focal point in the restaurant, and they also hung up a golden tapestry that Nan brought from Thailand and displayed in their first restaurant in Manhattan almost 40 years ago.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Nan is a lot like her restaurant. Despite the years of hard work and long hours in the kitchen, she moves gracefully, her face quick to glow with a smile. She’s elegant, regal and well-decorated in sparkling bracelets and a stack of earrings.

Nan has no plans to fully retire from Nan Thai Fine Dining, and she probably never will, though DeeDee hopes to let her mother get to a point where she doesn’t need to be working in the kitchen.

DeeDee is often mistaken for her mother because of the hanging portrait, but she has an edgier side. It’s a difference that’s reflected in Nan Thai Buckhead, which she said has more “spice and edge, but still classy.”

Becoming a mother made DeeDee realize how much she needs her own mom, something Nan discovered herself decades ago.

“As a mother now, I want my child to be a better version of me. And that’s what she’s always pushing me to do,” DeeDee said.

“That’s why I’m so proud of her,” Nan said. “She keeps the family’s name.”

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