Siam Fine Thai Cuisine opened in mid-June, owner Heidi Tung confirmed Tuesday. The restaurant is not related to Siam Royal Authentic Cuisine in downtown Palo Alto, she said.
Tung did not know why Rice Thai closed, and owner Ricky Sudchaitham could not be reached, but a Barron Park neighbor wrote in a recent neighborhood-group email that Sudchaitham decided to take a break from the restaurant business and move back to his native Thailand. He opened the restaurant in 2008.
Tung, who studied engineering at Stanford University, said she wanted to open a restaurant in the city she called home for many years.
The Palo Alto menu is similar to the San Jose restaurant's, but with some new items like a Chilean sea bass green curry, Tung said. Photos of a menu posted on Yelp show traditional Thai dishes, from curries and noodles to seafood entrees.
"Everything is fresh," Tung said, from the tofu she buys on a daily basis from a tofu factory in San Jose to fresh rice noodles delivered from a noodle company in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Siam Fine Thai Cuisine is open for lunch, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and for dinner daily from 5-9 p.m.
