By Morgen White | FāVS News Reporter
SEATTLE — Thai Siam, located in Crown Hill, has been giving back to the local community since opening the doors in February 1987.
Their annual free Christmas dinner for those in need will start between noon and 2 p.m. where folks who may not have anywhere else to go on the holiday can come to the restaurant (8305 15th Ave. NW) in Seattle and sit down for a meal — or take it to go.
The dinner includes turkey — possibly with an option for ham — mashed potatoes, veggies and dressing.
It originally started as a free meal on Thanksgiving. The event then shifted over to Christmas in 1988.
Restaurant owner, Vhanthip “Nancy” Bhokayasupatt’s Christian faith inspires her to give back.
“Christmas is both a very happy and very sad time for people,” Bhokayasupatt said.
That’s why in marketing the event she included Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with them that weep,” on the post-card advertising the free holiday meal.
Bhokayasupatt said there are usually about 300-350 people who come for a sit down meal and estimates they served around 600-700 meals last year.
Over the years, Bhokayasupatt has seen a change in the people who come through the doors. She said she’s seen more people struggling with drug addiction, mental illness and a rise in veterans who are homeless.
“They went to protect this country. When they come back, people need to help them,” Bhokayasupatt said.
The origins of Thai Siam
“Before this was Thai Siam, this was a turkey house. Turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey everything. Once a year, we become a turkey house,” Bhokayasupatt said.
Bhokayasupatt came to the University of Washington to study as a foreign student. At that time she said nobody knew about Thai food. She started cooking for her friends. They said she should start a restaurant. She didn’t take it seriously until after graduating.
She chose the building where the restaurant is located today near the border between Ballard and Crown Hill neighborhoods.
Friends asked, “Why would you open there,” Bhokayasupatt said. At the time, Scandinavians and Norwegians were known for living in Ballard. “People kept coming in while we were fixing up the restaurant asking what Thai food is.”
Holidays weren’t the same in the United States for Bhokayasupatt. Most of her family members were back home in Thailand.
“I’m from a foreign country. We don’t have family here like you do. I started thinking about people who don’t have family for Christmas,” Bhokayasupatt said.
Now, Bhokayasupatt, works alongside younger generations of family members, including her granddaughter and nephew.
Charles Srisartayasunton, Bhokayasupatt’s nephew, has grown up with the restaurant, working there in high school and college.
“This is a family business, so I’ve been here ever since I was like a little kid. I would go to school in this area and then come after school. My mom would work here, and then I would run around greeting all the customers,” he said.
Srisartayasunton has also helped with events Thai Siam has organized to give back to the community, bringing friends to volunteer. His cousin typically handles cooking the 30 to 40 turkeys — a process that starts a week in advance since they can only cook four to five at a time.
Thai Siam set to close
This year’s free Christmas dinner holds a special note of resilience after Thai Siam almost closed its doors permanently in April. The property owners said they planned to sell the lot for $2.5 million, which was too much for her to consider.
“The initial intention was to close because the original cost of the property was too high,” Srisartayasunton said.
The property owners asked Thai Siam to prepare to leave by the end of April. Bhokayasupatt told her employees they were welcome to start looking for other jobs. They shut their doors on April 30.
“One of the customers was a realtor who’s mother came all the time,” Bhokayasupatt said, and he called her. “He said the property was for sale at $1.3 million. I said this couldn’t be.”
The customer forwarded the flyers. Bhokayasupatt consulted a lawyer. Under the old lease a right of first refusal was written in.
This gave Bhokayasupatt the chance to purchase the property by matching an offer at $1.4 million.
“Things happened so fast from thinking of having to close, then OK we want the place, we tried to get the loan. All of this happened in a month,” Bhokayasupatt said.
After two anxious weeks for devoted Thai Siam customers, they reopened their doors May 14.
Community restaurant in action
Thai Siam has become a community staple for the neighborhood with many philanthropic events hosted with many volunteers, including customers’ children or friends of the family.
Bhokayasupatt said events like this one “can train new generations to be kind to others.”
“Nancy’s been one of the most generous people I’ve known since we’ve been friends. She’s got a very deep Christian faith, and I think she just feels like it’s her way of giving back to the community,” Lisa Archide said.
Archide, an occupational therapist, estimates she’s known Bhokayasupatt for 30 to 35 years and started volunteering for the Christmas dinner at Thai Siam soon after.
“I’ve been doing it almost every year since when she feeds the homeless for Christmas. Usually the night before, my family and I go down and we help, usually just peeling potatoes — 450 to 500 pounds of potatoes,” Archide said.
Then they go back around 7 a.m. on Christmas day to make turkey sandwiches and bag up cookies and pies.
“Through the years, I’ve recruited my sister and her husband, and my sister has recruited her longtime friends from junior high and high school, and we’re all in our 60s, you know, they’ve come in and they brought their family to help out as well,” Archide said.
Archide usually leaves before they open the doors to the public, but that’s around the time her brother Louis Egashira and his wife Kathy come in to help.
Louis Egashira has been volunteering for about 25 years now, with Kathy Egashira coming aboard around the time they married, 20 years ago.
“I was a coordinator at my previous church for an ethnic festival, Heritage Festival, and Nancy was kind enough to donate a couple of trays of Pad Thai for us. She did that for a few years. My sister would tell me about the Christmas dinner, and I thought, ‘Oh, I can give it back this way.’ And that’s how we started,” Louis Egashira said.
Kathy Egashira said it’s not just serving them food but making a connection with the people that come in.
“They may not get that warmth and that connection from people outside. Sometimes you see the same people year after year, and you make that connection with them. There were a couple of years where there was a deaf family that came in, or at least the mother, I think was deaf. I know sign language. And so it was really a blessing for me to be there and to be able to communicate with her, and I loved it,” she said.
Making connections with the community is what Bhokayasupatt has done since the beginnings of Thai Siam.
“I’m a Christian, I think the Bible taught us to love one another and give without expecting anything,” Bhokayasupatt said.
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