Sonya Ela keeps her pad thai recipe close to her chest. So close, in fact, that she hasn’t taught her chefs at Baan Thai how to make it yet—and probably never will.
Ela comes in an hour before everyone else does to make the special sauce. Her restaurant off South Broadway in Santa Maria has been open since Jan. 3, and the pad thai was one of the dishes she served from the start. The difference between her pad thai and what you can find at other Thai restaurants in town, she said, is that it’s made from scratch and it’s authentic. Complete with tamarind paste—which you know if you’ve ever tried to make it, is the main ingredient.
Other spots, she said, “try to make it more Americanized and it loses flavor,” whereas Baan Thai serves up dishes just how they would cook and sell them in Thailand.
We didn’t get the pad thai when my coworker and I stopped by for lunch on Friday, Feb. 14, but I did order another noodle dish: pad kee mao. It was spicy, salty, sweet, and delicious. Wide noodles, fresh cherry tomatoes, tender chicken, and Thai basil mingled with a blend of chilis, onion, and garlic. Talk about good.
Ela said she orders the noodles and special veggies from Los Angeles, and they’re delivered every Saturday for the week ahead. Thai flavors are complex, she said, and she learned to work with them from her mom. Her family moved to Santa Maria when Ela was 7 years old, from Chiang Mai, Thailand, a city northwest of Bangkok.
The family goes back to Thailand every other year, and the food Ela is serving at Baan Thai is a mix of everything that she loves, from Thai street food to fancy restaurants. From high end to hole-in-the-wall, Ela has tried to take what she could from each of those places and bring them into her restaurant.
“Thai food is all about salty, spicy, and sweet combined,” Ela said. “Our food, you have to combine everything.”
And the food at Baan Thai comes out “just how I like to eat it,” Ela said.
Salty and tingling with herbs, such as the dry-rubbed, deep fried chicken wings served with a chili lime sauce. It’s Ela’s version of Thai street food. Crunchy, a little salty sweet, and spicy good.
After attending Santa Maria High School, Ela left for Los Angeles, London, and Germany. She traveled a lot. Like so many others who’ve taken a similar path, she said she was just trying to find herself and what she wanted out of life. Eventually, she settled in New York, but as her parents hit retirement age, she decided it was time to come back to California.
“My true passion is to cook and eat,” Ela said. “So I decided to move back to my roots, find a place I could afford, and open up a restaurant. … I’ve traveled the world. I’ve seen a lot, and California really is the best place to live.”
Baan Thai isn’t Ela’s first restaurant. When she lived in New York, she attended the Fashion Institute of Technology for interior design, worked in real estate (she still has luxury apartments in New York that she rents out), and eventually opened a restaurant with three of her friends. Her menu and the way she runs her restaurant are reflective of that experience.
“Four people … too many ideas, too much going on … where there are too many ideas, you can never agree on anything,” Ela said. “But I learned a lot. I learned I could do it on my own.”
From that experience, she said, she learned what sells, which is why her menu doesn’t have a ton of dishes on it. It’s simple: soup, noodles, rice, and curry with a handful of appetizers.
Her restaurant is small, with limited seating. It gets busy during the rush hour—as it did on Feb. 14. By 12:30 p.m., it was packed. The seats were full and people were waiting in line at the cash register to get their food to go. And that’s on purpose, she said.
Sometimes restaurants can feel empty, she said. There are so many tables and the seats are vacant. That’s not the feeling she wants customers to have when they walk in the front door.
“I’d rather have nice furniture, nice seating, but intimate and compact,” Ela said. “Hopefully my idea of outside-the-box thinking isn’t going to offend anybody.”
Unfortunately, if Yelp is any indication, there are some complainers out there in the world who were pissed off that they had to wait for a table. In another person’s mind, that could be a sign that you were in the right place. So don’t take a Yelp reviewer’s angry words for it.
“Come and try it and let the food speak for itself,” Ela said.
Editor Camillia Lanham is salivating for more Baan Thai, because it’s good. Send favorite foods to clanham@santamariasun.com.
Nibbles & Bites
• Have you ever wanted to learn the secrets of sourdough? Are you looking for a yeasty challenge? Well, the pros at Grandma Ingrid’s kitchen have a class for you. The Central Coast cooking and baking mentor will teach locals to create delicious sourdough bread that’s crunchy on the outside yet soft and light inside. This is Feb. 29 class is the advanced course, which will build on the information learned at Grandma Ingrid’s other sourdough bread class—but it’s not required to take that class first. Come hungry, because they’ll be serving breakfast at the start of class, and there will be soups for lunch after the class, plus lots of delicious Grandma Ingrid’s goodies in between. The class costs $50 per person and runs from 9 a.m. to noon at Grandma Ingrid’s, 234 Norwood St., Arroyo Grande. Find the event on Facebook or Eventbrite for more information.
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• In honor of International Women’s Day, Santa Ynez is hosting its annual Women Winemakers Celebration on March 8. More than 20 women winemakers will pour their wines in a pre-brunch reception at Roblar Farm in Santa Ynez, starting at 11 a.m., and there will also be a four-course brunch prepared by some of the area’s top female chefs and food crafters, including chef Brooke Stockwell (executive chef, Gleason Family Vineyards); baker Amy Dixon (The Baker’s Table, Santa Ynez); chef Cynthia Miranda and Alicia Valencia (The Lucky Hen Larder, Santa Ynez); chef Golzar Barrera of the Santa Ynez Valley’s All Purpose Flower; Theo Stephan (Los Olivos’ Global Gardens); the ladies from Sass Catering and Pattibakes (Buellton); Joy and Taylor, owners of Solvang Spice Merchant; Leyla Williams and the team at Solvang’s Good Seed Coffee Boutique; Missy Morales of Lompoc’s Sweet Baking Co.; and chef Robin Reynolds of the Dunn School, in Los Olivos. A VIP ticket for this year’s event will include both the tasting reception and the seated brunch, where guests will be treated to wine pairings by and conversation with a selection of some of Santa Barbara County’s female winemakers, including Karen Lane Tanner, Lumen Wines; Jessica Gasca, Story of Soil; Angela Osborne, A Tribute To Grace Wine Company; Samra Morris, Alma Rosa Winery; Clarissa Nagy, C. Nagy Wines (pictured, standing at left, during the 2017 event); and Anna Clifford, Jill DelaRiva Russell, and Denise Shurtleff, Cambria Winery. Tickets start at $50. For more information and a complete list of participating winemakers, find the event on Eventbrite.
• Tickets are already on sale for the 38th annual Santa Barbara Vintners Festival. A host of festivities are scheduled for Thursday, April 30, through Monday, May 4, throughout the Santa Maria area. The main event—the grand tasting—will be at Rancho Sisquoc on May 2, featuring wines from more than 70 wineries and food from dozens of regional restaurants. Tickets cost $75, $60 for locals. The festival’s Vintners Visa, which costs $50 per person, gives ticket holders access to free tastings at a dozen county tasting rooms over the festival’s five days. For details, visit sbvintnersweekend.com.
Associate Editor Andrea Rooks is crazy about fresh sourdough bread. Send starters to arooks@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 20-27, 2020.