New Thai restaurant set to open along 23rd Street; Chinese restaurant coming to once-popular Sixth Street spot

I normally wouldn’t recommend traveling to Thailand via a Topeka connection. But this may be the exception, and, no, it doesn’t involve an 82-hour layover and a crop duster from Forbes Field. A longtime Topeka restaurant duo is opening a new Thai restaurant in Lawrence that they promise will give you a real taste of the Far East cuisine.

Chira and K.C. Piyassaphan are keeping the name of their new Lawrence restaurant simple: Thai Diner. It will be located in the Louisiana Purchase shopping center at 23rd and Louisiana, in the spot that used to house DonDon, the Japanese noodle restaurant.

“It is not a franchise at all,” Chira said. “We’re a husband and wife team. It is not just a way to make money for us. It really is a way of life for us.”

The couple owned and operated Tuptim Thai Restaurant in Topeka for a dozen years, and Chira said she grew up in the restaurant business and has worked actively in it for at least 20 years. The family got out of the Topeka restaurant in May 2015, and began looking for an opportunity to move closer to their daughter, who is a now a med student at KU.

The restaurant likely is still a few weeks away from opening, but the sign for the establishment is up, and construction work is underway to renovate the relatively small space that DonDon occupied for a number of years before the owner of that restaurant retired this summer.

“I want people to feel like this is their little place that they can come to and be comfortable,” Chira said.

As for the food, Chira didn’t have a menu to share with me yet. That’s in part because a large part of the menu will be on a chalkboard that hangs in the dining room. Chira calls it the “Chef’s Selection” board, and it will change often as certain ingredients come in and out of season and as Chira’s creative mood changes.

But there also will be certain dishes that customers can count on seeing on a regular basis. Pad Thai, Panang curry, and pineapple fried rice are a few of the classic dishes that Chira said are expected to be part of the regular menu.

“But I really want to offer several dishes that are little more modern,” Chira said.

She said she hopes the restaurant will change some attitudes about what Thai cuisine is all about. The Americanized version of Thai food often is associated with a lot of spicy dishes.

“That’s really more of a myth,” she said. “Thai food doesn’t have to be spicy. It can be as mild as you want it to be. The real thing with Thai food is lots of fresh herbs and spices. We have a lot of grilled dishes. I tell people Thai food offers a lot more variety than Chinese food.”

• Those may be fighting words for a new Chinese restaurant that is set to open in Lawrence. (For some reason I envision a new Food Network show called Cuisine Cage Matches, and cannons filled with grains of fried rice. To be fair, though, most of my visions involve fried rice.) Regardless, I have a bit of of news to pass along about a new Chinese restaurant.

A restaurant called Szechuan House Chinese Cuisine is preparing to open along Sixth Street in the former home of Panda Garden, which closed after its owners retired earlier this year.

The sign is up for the new restaurant, but it is not yet open. I stopped by the site, 1500 W. Sixth, and talked to a construction worker, but I wasn’t able to connect with the owner or operator. Based on the amount of renovation work that was underway, it looked to me like the restaurant was still at least a couple of weeks away from opening.

As far as what the restaurant will be like, I don’t have much there. I typed “Szechuan House Chinese Restaurant” into Google, and the robots laughed at me and said “Dude, there are a thousand places named Szechuan House Chinese Restaurant.” But I’ll let you know if I hear more.