Crash puts brakes on restaurant
Sometimes in life, two minutes matters.
In this case, it was just the right amount of time for Taste of Asia owners Kim Ratamavong and Ken Sisuorasack to walk to the kitchen of their Ontario Street restaurant.
And that’s where they were standing, about to start prepping food for a 1 p.m. opening, when a burgundy minivan crashed through the front window of their restaurant, smashing through a row of tables and chairs, until it came to a stop at the rear cash counter.
Two minutes before, a little after the noon-hour, the couple was sitting with friends at one of those tables.
“We were so lucky,” said Ratamavong. “It never happened to me like this.”
In the kitchen, they heard the loudest bang they’d ever heard. Ever. It sounded like a bomb exploding, said Ratamavong, 60.
She grabbed her husband’s hand and wanted to run out the back door.
Instead, her 64-year-old husband looked out into the restaurant. He saw their entire front window had been smashed, fragments of glass strewn everywhere. Then he looked back and saw the van.
They had been sitting at a front table with Gabrielle Allati, their next door neighbour who owns Allati Photography.
As the couple walked towards the back of their restaurant, he left out the front door with a friend. The close call has left him shaken.
“It happened. It’s just not my time,” Allati said.
The couple, originally from Laos, has owned the restaurant for nearly five years. They had saved their money from years of working to open the restaurant, known for its pad thai and curry chicken with cashew. Sisuorasack worked for 28 years as an operating room attendant in Guelph. They have been married for 10 years.
“It’s my dream,” said Sisuorasack. “My last job in my own life.”
The restaurant is insured, but they’re not certain if or when they will be able to open again. Ratamavong left a message on their voice mail simply explaining they are closed because of an accident.
They had recently changed the restaurant’s opening time to 1 p.m. from noon.
“If we were open at noon, customers would have died,” she said.
The driver of the van is a 72-year-old woman, say Niagara Regional Police. No other details
are available.
Friday night, Ratamavong’s horoscope suggested she should wear blue and brown Saturday for luck. She did. And in her estimation, it worked.