N.D.G.’S Pick Thai scrubbing away any COVID worries
Restaurateur puts at least as much focus on cleanliness as on her acclaimed cuisine
Vilay Douangpanya takes Thai cuisine to another level. But as fastidious as she is about purchasing and preparing ingredients for such divine dishes as her basil-accented pad kapao or chicken green curry, she is perhaps even more attentive to sanitary issues at her popular N.D.G. restaurant Pick Thai.
That’s no accident. Prior to opening Pick Thai seven years ago, Douangpanya worked as a recovery-room nurse at the Jewish General Hospital for 14 years.
As her husband, Victor Kudish, points out, the Pick Thai kitchen is almost as aseptic as an operating room. He should know: he’s an anesthesiologist, who met Douangpanya at the hospital.
“She’s obsessive about cleanliness, at the restaurant and at home,” Kudish says. “Her passion has always been for the food and cleanliness over profit.”
“The health and safety of my customers and co-workers will always come first, no matter the cost,” the masked Douangpanya shoots back, in the midst of assembling her addictive mango salad in the Pick Thai kitchen.
Douangpanya restarted her in-restaurant dining Tuesday, but had to cut back from 11 to four staffers to ensure physical distancing in the kitchen and service area. Two help her in the kitchen, one is a server on the floor and the fourth does cleanup only. He spends his shift sanitizing everything: kitchen, floors, door handles, washrooms, plasticized menus — wiped down after each customer has perused them.
“He’s even more of a clean freak than me,” she jokes. “He makes sure it’s always spic and span. And I make sure I handle most of the preparation and cooking, to cut down on the number of people in contact with the food.”
So, being a somewhat paranoid and picky eater, there was no question where I was going to partake in my first indoor restaurant experience in nearly four months.
Not surprisingly, there has been much reluctance about returning to indoor dining. In a recent Angus Reid survey, 52 per cent of Canadians questioned indicated they planned to avoid restaurants in the coming months for health reasons, while only 18 per cent were keen on returning as soon as possible.
Other surveys note that about 80 per cent of people are quite content to do takeout from their favourite eateries.
But few restos can survive on takeout alone.
To accommodate distancing, Pick Thai has had to reduce seating from 85 to 30 while dealing with increased costs of personal protective equipment. Although Douangpanya’s takeout trade has been bustling over the last two months, she still barely has been able to stay afloat, and that’s with her landlord cutting her rent in half.
“My landlord has been extremely supportive with the rent, but how long can that go on?” asks Douangpanya, who shut down her dining area in mid-march. “If the situation continues like this, I won’t be able to make it more than another three months.”
Douangpanya, who has lived here most of her life, was born in Laos, where her mother ran restaurants. “Laotian and Thai food have a lot in common, regarding ingredients, spices and cooking methods.”
Meanwhile, about 10 diners have shown up for supper on Tuesday. Most are 20-somethings, eager to get out for their first restaurant meal since March.
“I’ve been isolated with my parents for so long — three months without going out or seeing my friends,” architecture student Ellen Yung says, dining with nursing student Cami Otani-frigon. “I’ve been so looking forward to this moment. I’m not really nervous. I’m also feeling less stressed now, because it’s so clean here.”
Unlike the latter two customers, freelance journalist Martine Guérin has been a Pick Thai regular from the beginning. “I’ve been craving this food for the last three months,” she says. “I’m not at all apprehensive either, because I know how fussy (Douangpanya) is about sanitary issues.”
Douangpanya is all smiles as customers lavish praise on their meals.
“Everything has been so dramatic,” she says. “The day before we closed, we had two full services of customers. The next day, we had two people. Then we closed, even before we were ordered to. I won’t be taking anything for granted again.”