Near the airport, a Thai pad

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, June 11, 2009

Originally published Thursday,May 3, 2007

What if I told you that seven miles east of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Texas 71 is an authentic Thai restaurant that serves up dishes such as Pot Ka Na and Yom Nua as if chefs Surin and Malee are back home in Lot Latyao, Thailand, cooking for their families?

What if you heard that the owner of this quirky place, with chickens running around outside, offers to prepare a living will while you dine and also has wind chimes, turkey jerky and farm fresh eggs for sale?

What if I told you that it has a lounge in the back modeled after the makeshift clubs soldiers build for themselves in combat zones and where the bartender makes Hungarian goulash from a recipe he found in a 1936 cookbook?

Is Little Thailand something you might be interested in?

You won't see signs for Dick and Surin Simcoe's cozy, idiosyncratic 32-capacity joint from the highway. They don't want a family of five popping in for a quick meal on the way to wherever, then driving on because there are no chicken tenders on the menu for the kids. Little Thailand is not an en route place. It's a special destination. This is where, once every two or three months, you gather up 10 or more friends and eat "family style" for $15 a head. Or, you just have Thai curry or spicy warm beef salad on the brain, so you take a long lunch a whole 'nother world away. You'll get lost the first time you trek to Little Thailand, but never again.

Folks who know about the restaurant, which opened in 1981 near Bergstrom Air Force Base and moved to its current location in 1995, know that you just keep driving from Austin until you come to the Garfield water tower, then turn left. From afar, L.T. looks like a massage parlor or a place that repairs TVs. But inside it feels like you're in the Simcoes' living room. It's not unusual to see customers go back to the kitchen to give their compliments directly to Surin, who calls everyone "honey" but leaves most of the customer chattering to Dick and her sister, Malee Pierce.

Little Thailand has always shunned protocol. When it was a mile from the back gate at Bergstrom, the base commander would look the other way when servicemen in their fatigues, forbidden to leave the base dressed that way, would slip out to grab lunch or one of Dick's famous Bloody Marys. Owned by Vietnam veteran Simcoe, the joint was spiritually part of the base.

"Come on in, kids," Dick Simcoe says as a couple in their 30s peek around the corner at the end of the hallway where Little Thailand becomes Dick's Lounge. It's a funky joint, also serving as the restaurant's de facto storage area, but on nights when it's alive, Dick's is a cool place where there are always a couple of hot chicks, quite literally. While the vintage jukebox plays Dean Martin singing "Little Ole Wine Drinker Me," newly hatched poultry wobble and chirp under a heat lamp. Now that's something you won't see at the Belmont.

"This place reminds me of the 'hootch bars' we used to have in Vietnam," says regular customer Chuck Throop, who served during the Tet Offensive of 1968. "There was no place to relax and hang out, so we'd build our own bar, with whatever material was available." Decor was usually a mix of military artifacts and an Asian motif, just like at Dick's. "It was a place where you could have a beer with your buddies and feel like you're back home for a couple hours."

Throop, who has known the Simcoes for 20 years, takes all his meals at the bar. Dick places a bib under the plate so the black woolen bumper doesn't get soiled.

To younger customers, such as Steve Dean, who owns the Oaks live music venue near Manor, a big draw is the 1960s Rock-ola jukebox, which Dick bought for $500 in 1990 when everyone was updating to CD jukeboxes. He also bought a box of old 45s from the jukebox operator and had his customers each pick out three or four favorites. Those are the records still getting play 17 years later.

"It is the only place anywhere where you can hear rare 45 records by Ray Price, Al Green, Merle Haggard and Dave Brubeck all for free," Dean says. "Then there's my favorite there, 'Jimmie's Road' by Willie Nelson. You couldn't find that one on any jukebox in the country."

Other regulars at Dick's include musicians Ian McLagan and Calvin Russell and noted bootmaker Noel Escobar.

"You never know what's going to happen here," Throop says. "There could be seven strangers early in the evening and then by nine o'clock it turns into a full-on party and you're all best friends." The circular bar, which Simcoe bought from the Bergstrom NCO Club for $100, allows customers to see each other's faces and the music's not too loud to drown out conversations across the bar.

"The style of the bar makes this place so comfortable," Throop says, "but so does the style of the host. This is Dick's living room; he treats everyone like they're a guest at his home."

Hang around long enough and you'll hear Dick's story. He's an Air Force brat whose father retired in Austin. Dick joined the Air Force in 1951 and worked as a navigator until retiring in the Philippines in 1976. For awhile, he ran chartered planes from the Philippines to Thailand, where he met his first Thai wife and brought her back to the States. "I needed to find something for her to do, so I opened Little Thailand," Simcoe says. "All Thai women can cook."

The first location, in a converted mobile home a mile from the Bergstrom AFB gate, became a favorite of GIs who had been stationed in Asia and missed the cuisine. "We're the oldest Thai restaurant in Central Texas," Simcoe says, proudly. "A lot of people think it's Thai Kitchen, but in true Thai tradition, Toy and Amele (Thai Kitchen's owners) came to me to ask permission to open their first place."

Little Thailand was also big with transplanted Thais like Surin, who had married a G.I. and moved to La Grange. Just as Dick's marriage was faltering, so was Surin's. The two began dating and married in 1987.

"We don't have any cultural clash," Dick says of Surin and her sister, who lives on the L.T. compound, while the Simcoes live about five miles away. "The secret? I give those two girls whatever they want."

That includes a month every year back in Thailand. During that time Dick takes over the kitchen and the menu undergoes a dramatic change. "I serve three main dishes: ghoulash, Irish stew and Frito pie," Dick says. Imagine driving all the way out there for Khao Pot, a delicious dish of stir-fried chicken, peas, onions, carrots and rice topped with a sliced omelet, and having to settle for Irish stew.

"At the bottom of the menu, I put, 'Can't wait til the girls come back' and someone wrote, in big letters, 'Me, too!," says Dick, a natural-born greeter, who displays a dry sense of humor. With the lunchtime "rush," which was four people on a recent Tuesday, dying down he's back at the bar where Throop is starting the afternoon with a Miller Lite and a pack of cigarettes.

The thing about 'hootch bars,' " Throop says, "is that they were entirely your own creation, built from scratch. They weren't just bars that you popped in to. They were there because if they weren't, there wouldn't be anything." He lights another cigarette. "I get the same feeling from Dick's. It's an oasis, a place to get away from all that," he says, flicking his hand west.

When you're at Little Thailand, a place seemingly without rules, regulations and the stress of civilian life in a town growing fast, Austin seems hundreds of miles away.

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652