Woman follows her dream to open Thai restaurant
With a small child at home, Taree Ledford thought that owning a restaurant was out of reach.
Her mother, Tanya Thuethong, had a different view: no better time than the present.
“It was my dream to have a restaurant,” said Ledford, a native of Thailand. “I never thought that I could do it. I just needed a little push, and my mom said, ‘Let’s do it.’”
In July, Ledford opened Bamboo Thai Kitchen in a strip center on busy Bethel Road.
“I was a little nervous in the beginning because it’s kind of hidden,” she said of the storefront, slightly obscured from the roadway by a McDonald’s store. “We changed the sign. I think that helped a little.”
Ledford wanted to customize the menu. For example, the pad thai with shrimp ($11 for lunch, $13 for dinner) is light, she said.
“I want it to feel light,” she said. “I want it to feel fresh. I want to it to feel clean.”
She said the restaurant is judicious with its use of oil and garlic.
“A lot of Thai dishes use garlic, and sometimes I feel like it’s overpowering,” Ledford said. “Our restaurant doesn’t use a lot of garlic in the food.”
Bamboo Thai Kitchen cooks its curries for hours to develop complexity of flavor, Ledford said. Red curry with chicken ($9 for lunch, $12 for dinner), a signature dish, uses coconut milk to smooth out the flavor and develop a