MONTICELLO -- The hot day at the 2011 Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival in Warren didn't start with much promise for Chaiporn "Paul" Phurisri and his Tiny Thai Trailer.
Several hours had passed without a sale, portending a day of business worse than even the worst of days at the trailer's usual spot in the parking lot of a Warren gas station. "Everybody passed me by for tacos or hamburgers," Phurisri told a recent visitor. "Nobody wanted Thai food."
Disappointed, Phurisri made himself an early dinner of what he calls Pad Kapow -- chicken smothered in bean sauce, carrots, tomatoes, onions and bell peppers, topped with a fried egg, and all that atop steamed jasmine rice -- and sat down to eat, and his fortune turned.
"A man -- he was Hispanic -- asked about the dish," said Phurisri, better known in the area as Thai Paul. "I explained, and he said, 'Make me one.' He ate and brought two friends by and, later, they brought friends."
In a matter of hours, by word of salivating mouth, sales went from zero to $550.
Seven years later, Phurisri, 49, is still challenging -- and changing -- taste buds across southeast Arkansas and beyond.
"White males didn't want to try it at first," Phurisri said. "They'd order steak. But their wives were more adventurous and would try other dishes. The men would take a bite off their wives' plates, and now they want it."
But first, Phurisri had to hit rock bottom and, when he did, nearly an entire community turned out to help him.
DOWN AND OUT
A native of Bangkok, Phurisri lived in Hawaii with his parents for a time and worked in their restaurant.
"So many errands to run," he said. "My mother taught me how to select the best spices, the freshest meat and fish, and how to smell vegetables for pesticides. I hated it."
Phurisri swore he'd never work in a restaurant again, and by 2004, he was at the University of Texas at Austin, studying radio, television and film. There, he met a girl, a native of Warren, and eventually followed her home.
With bills to pay, he shucked the promise he made to himself and was chef for a time at the Monticello Country Club, but he felt limited by the routine of steaks, burgers and chicken, most of it frozen, he said. He ventured into the food-truck business in 2010.
Things were going well enough -- until they weren't going well at all.
He and his girlfriend broke up in 2011. He lost everything, including the Tiny Thai Trailer, he said.
"I had nothing, just clothes on my back," Phurisri said.
Townspeople around Monticello and Warren, many of them customers at the food trailer or country club, heard of Phurisri's troubles and arrived to help.
Mike Nichols of Nichols Auction House in Warren offered him a deal on a building he owned on U.S. 278 just west of Monticello that had once housed a restaurant called Cowboy's.
Mark Mann of Mark Mann Logging in Warren helped by buying a gas burner, grill and deep fryer. "He helped me clean the building," Phurisri said. "I didn't have a car, so he let me use his wife's car."
Phurisri slept on a steel table in his restaurant-to-be for the better part of a week and survived largely on water. Once, while scavenging in a parking lot, he scrounged up enough change to buy an apple. "Best apple ever!" Phurisri said.
Other people dropped off gallons of paint for the interior and exterior of the building. "Some even helped paint," Phurisri said, still marveling. Others helped with developing his menus.
The Tiny Thai Place opened in March 2013. "It was very small, just a kitchen and a take-out window," Phurisri said. "Only to-go orders at first. I had no tables or chairs or anything else."
A framed $20 bill in the kitchen marks his first sale -- an order of Pad Thai and a steak.
At first, a night of 70 orders was considered busy. Now it's 200 orders for dinner, with a high of 260 and an ever-expanding menu that includes all three curries common to Thai food -- red, yellow and green -- and a popular kids' menu of pot stickers and egg rolls.
"Everybody eats curry now," he said, although fresh lobster and 3-pound, bone-in cowboy steaks are popular too.
With Phurisri the only cook, lines -- and waits -- can be long. Regulars know to call in their orders well ahead of arrival. "I cook to order, all things are fresh," he said. "Nothing sits under a heat lamp."
A mixed-drink permit from state Alcoholic Beverage Control in 2015 made Tiny Thai Place one of five private clubs in an otherwise dry county. But Phurisri stressed that his place is a restaurant, not a bar, and it caters to diners, not drinkers.
The recent purchase of a new Tiny Thai Trailer that's actually not tiny at all will change the operating hours of Tiny Thai Place. Phurisri said the trailer likely will be on the road every Tuesday and Wednesday for lunch, alternating among towns across southeast Arkansas, with the restaurant likely open Thursday through Saturday for lunch and Wednesday through Saturday for dinner.
COMMUNITY BUILT
Taylor Hargis, 22, is one of Phurisri's few employees. She also is his fiancee, and they have plans for a November wedding.
She arrived looking for a job in 2014 and got one washing dishes and waiting tables. Now she does the paperwork for the business but still helps at lunch time.
Her taste buds, too, changed over the years. "I like sushi now," she said.
The 27-year age gap bothers neither of them. "Thankfully, I have always had to work. I was taught to work," Phurisri said. "Nothing has been handed to either of us. She works hard. We never gave up, no matter how hard it was."
"I think the age thing works for us because of the way we were raised," Hargis said, recalling how she'd helped her then-stepfather in tomato-packing sheds in Warren. "We were never afraid of work."
Hargis, like Phurisri, credits people. "The community helped him build this, just like they've helped others through the years, like for storms, or fires and homelessness."
Arnell Rhinehart of Monticello, a probation officer in Pine Bluff, moved to southeast Arkansas from Detroit eight years ago. He first had Phurisri's food from the Tiny Thai Trailer.
"I've seen his business grow," Rhinehart said recently from one of the 10 tables in Tiny Thai Place. "He puts his heart into his food. Not a single meal of his goes unloved."
Phurisri earlier had pointed out Rhinehart as one of several loyal customers who pitch in to help on busy, understaffed nights. "I've helped, yeah," Rhinehart said, shrugging. "Bused tables, refilled sodas. I'm not the only one. We just want him to be successful."
Phurisri has dreams of a third chapter in Arkansas: Tiny Thai Farm, consisting of a homestead, a garden, even some chickens and organic eggs.
"I have wonderful people to help me, so I stay," he said. "They support me. But they might love my food more than me. It's a warm feeling."
SundayMonday Business on 05/20/2018