13 NOVEMBER 28-DECEMBER 4, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Noodling Around COLFAX FAVORITE LUCKY NOODLES IS FEELING THE SQUEEZE OF RISING COSTS. BY HELEN XU “You have a dream that’s good, and then you go get it, you achieve it — the moment that you feel like ‘Wow, it’s real.’ So it’s all worth it to me, but the costs add up and it kind of hurts,” says Kamolrat “Ploy” Limpapath, owner of Lucky Noodles. The cozy neighborhood restaurant tucked away on the corner of East Colfax Avenue and Marion Street serves home- style Thai food reminiscent of the dishes Limpapath grew up eating in her hometown of Bangkok. Limpapath arrived in Colorado in 2005 as part of a student exchange program with a host family who lived in Littleton, but it wasn’t long before she felt homesick for the food she grew up with in Thailand; her family has long sold food at a market there (the business just celebrated its 53rd anniversary) and specializes in Thai curry, which Limpapath craved. The fi rst Thai dish she made in America was tom yum soup, which has become the most popular dish at Lucky Noodles. She went back to Thailand at the end of the exchange program but returned to Colorado within a year on a student visa. She enrolled in an ESL program in Denver, and to support herself, she worked as a server at various Thai restaurants during the day and a hibachi restaurant at night. Limpapath never cooked pro- fessionally, but it was a dream of hers to open her own restaurant. “I always keep an eye looking, but back then, ten years ago...I don’t have much income and everything is expensive,” she remembers. But her petite frame holds a de- termined optimism that at times borders on Buddhist spiritualism. “When the time is right, when the universe feels it’s right, when it has to happen, it’s going to happen for you. You have to be positive for that one day,” she says. In late 2019, it happened. Limpapath found the Lucky Noodles space through a Craigslist ad. She instantly got good vibes from the location and persuaded the owner to choose her as the tenant. Then COVID hit. For a few months in early 2020, she had to put her plans on pause as the world and the hospitality industry struggled to adjust. But the neighborhood rallied around her. A Colfax Avenue non- profi t provided her with educa- tion and guidance, and neighbors knocked on the door asking to help. “One lady, she lives across the street, and she asked if I needed help with the menu. She saw I had wrong spelling and wrong things so she emailed me and said, ‘Okay, let me help you,’” Limpapath recalls. Another neighbor who worked in construction brought high chairs, booster seats and a homemade door stop for the restaurant. It took all of Limpapath’s life sav- ings, but in July 2020, Lucky Noodles offi cially opened. From the begin- ning, Limpapath says, she wanted the restaurant to feel like home — not like Bangkok, though. “Like home, like I invited you over to my family to eat,” she explains with a smile. And it is a true family affair. Lim- papath’s grandmother and aunt both came from Thailand to help her run the restaurant. Her cousin is the fourth and fi nal employee and is the one who painted the dog mural behind the bar. The eatery has a healthy smattering of plants, homey furniture and three ceramic fi gurines of bulldogs in the raised-paw-lucky-cat posi- tion — Limpapath has affectionately named them Biggie, Tupac and 2 Chainz. It’s a cozy, light-fi lled, intimate space that seats sixteen people maximum; typically, half of the seats are fi lled by regulars whom Limpapath greets by name. One recom- mends ordering either the tom yum or the khao soi, noting that Limpapath’s dishes taste of high-quality, fresh ingredients with complex fl avors they fi nd lacking at other Thai restaurants. That’s high praise for a chef who had never cooked professionally before opening her own restaurant — but Limpapath defi - nitely put in the work. “I cooked for myself but never did it at scale, so I needed to learn. I needed to play and I needed to practice. I just kept making it,” she says, noting that she experimented with over ten versions of tom yum before nailing it down. She used her family’s recipes as a foun- dation but had to fi gure out how to adapt the ingredients based on what’s available in Colorado. For example, with no access to fresh coconut milk, Limpapath and her grandmother experimented with mixing different brands and ratios of canned coconut milk. The solu- tion is a combination of creamy Chaokoh and the more watery Aroy-D brand. The restaurant also grows a fair amount of its own pep- pers on site and imports hard-to- replicate ingredients, such as palm sugar, directly from Thailand. “All the ingredients, they have beauty by themselves. [Then I had to] learn how to put it to- gether, little by little,” Limpa- path explains. “Some seasons, an ingredient can be off with the fl avor, so we have to practice more: Okay, if it’s missing this fl avor, what will we use to put that fl avor back? We hand-pick ingredients, and I use all my love and my experience, imagination, to put it together.” Her tom yum soup broth simmers for four to fi ve hours with a combination of black pepper, white pepper, cilantro root, rock sugar and radish. For the khao soi, Limpapath tasted fi ve versions of the dish per day when she was back visiting Thailand to nail the fl avor. Both hit that perfect balance of hot, sweet, sour and spicy that Thai food is known for. While the standard version is mild, Limpapath says with a laugh, “if you want spicy, I’m not holding back. If you ask for it, you can get it.” While Lucky Noodles has been a hit in the neighborhood, like so many local res- taurants, it has taken some fi nancial hits. “Since the minimum wage went up, all the cost, everything [food, energy, repairs] went up a bit more and more,” Limpapath notes. She estimates that increased import and delivery costs have made the ingredients she gets from Thailand 25 percent more expensive. “When I make the food, I’m not holding back any ingredients. I give you more than what I got — I want to make sure that every dish that comes out, it’s happy. It tastes good. And you will dream about it and think about my food again and again. But it costs,” she says. Musing about alternatives, Limpapath envisions a plant-fi lled, smaller-scale shop serving tea, mocktails and simple food. “But no dishes like this,” she says, pointing to the khao soi. “Not a full restaurant like this. It’s too scary — it’s scary expensive.” But for now, she has no immediate plans to change Lucky Noodles. “I want the cus- tomers to know I’m grateful for them,” she concludes. “And I’d love to make you good food and continue to do good food as long as I’m able to do it — so stop by.” Lucky Noodles is located at 1201 East Colfax Avenue and is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 3:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and noon to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Learn more at luckynoodlesthaidenver.com. CAFE FIND MORE FOOD & DRINK COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/RESTAURANTS Owner Kamolrat “Ploy” Limpapath’s cousin painted the dog mural behind the bar. HELEN XU Kamolrat “Ploy” Limpapath with her lucky bulldog 2 Chainz. HELEN XU
