Lazy Panda hitting right notes

[reader]

From South China Morning Post

Hongkongers’ son brings American-style Chinese food to Bangkok

James Au of the Lazy Panda restaurant in Bangkok. Photo: Vincent Vichit-Vadakan

James Au used to tell his parents he would never work in the catering industry. But now the 31-year-old son of first-generation Hong Kong emigrants to the US
operates an American-style Chinese restaurant in Bangkok.

His journey to the Thai capital began in Minneapolis, where his family had worked its way up to owning a chain of seven Chinese-American restaurants.

Au, however, got his start in software. Before turning 20, he had already sold his first start-up – an online community for video-game betting – for US$100,000, which he invested in buying, renovating and flipping properties following the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, after which he turned his attention to rental properties.

By the time he was 25, he had a small portfolio of rental properties and was looking to try something different. A short stint of consulting work in Hong Kong set Au’s sights on

Asia– though he opted to move to Bangkok rather than stay in the city of his parents after visiting the Thai capital in 2017 and finding it to be “way more chill”.

For a while, he worked in digital marketing, but the “crazy drama” he experienced at the company – combined with a visit from his mother Lorna – would soon see him change career paths. By this time, Au’s parents had already sold their restaurant business to enjoy a well-deserved retirement. Noting the absence of American-style Chinese food in Bangkok, mother and son discussed the possibility of filling the gap in the market.

“I didn’t know if it would really work,” Au says, adding that his feasibility study consisted of a few social media posts, such as on the “Bangkok Foodies” Facebook page, “to feel out the market”. In the end, he decided to follow his intuition and heeded the advice tattooed on his left arm: “Trust yourself”.

 

Obtaining the necessary permits and overcoming obstacles such as hiring builders, drawing up contracts and navigating Thailand’s bureaucracy proved a challenge, but in July last year Au and his mother finally opened their new restaurant called Lazy Panda.

The menu borrows heavily from his parents, whose Ah Sa Wan restaurants in Minneapolis’ elevated Skyway System proved very popular with the US city’s hungry office workers.

Some of the recipes can even be traced back to Au’s maternal grandfather, such as the batter used for the sweet and sour chicken.

Chatty and opinionated, Au has an engagingly geeky eye for detail. His preferred thickener for sauces is potato starch, he says, because it has “a longer protein chain so it’s thicker and more viscous and it holds together better on the heat”.

The hybrid comfort food that Lazy Panda serves has proved a hit with both foreign and Thai customers, leaving Au to focus his attention on fine-tuning the website and finalising new menu items to be introduced in the coming months, such as his grandfather’s recipes for roast pork.

Thoughts of expansion have been tempered somewhat by the coronavirus pandemic, although Au notes that his restaurant has “definitely not been hurt as much” as those places that are more heavily reliant on tourists.

In fact, interest in Lazy Panda’s delivery-friendly menu surged during the weeks when eat-in dining was banned – “we lucked out”, he said.

Not bad for someone who, by his own admission, was “horrible in school, never paid attention [and] always did my own thing”.

Lazy Panda is located at 245/6 Soi Sukhumvit 31, Khlong Toei Nuea, Watthana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand

 

 

[vinapu]

I don't know about  food  there but he seem to be an eye-candy owner, that's for sure

[TotallyOz]

I have been using them weekly for a year. I have also visited the shop (not big) as mostly take away or delivery. It is clean and well-run. Their food is excellent. Every American friend I know orders from them.

[williewillie]

I’m pretty sure I saw  a Lazy Panda restaurant in Pattaya on soi Lenkee off soi Boikow.  It’s next door to the Australian steak

house and in the spot formally occupied by Lone Star BBQ.  There’s even a Bronx Pizza on same soi.

[kokopelli]

I believe that was the Hungry Panda, not Lazy Panda.

[williewillie]

Kokopelli is correct.  It’s Hungry Panda and American-Chinese style.  What a coincidence!