Siwat Thitiwatana was slurping noodles in a Bangkok cafe when he realized he had missed his calling.
"I was visiting relatives in Thailand as I do every every year and was eating noodles, and they were just so good. And I said, 'Why can't we have this in New York?'" said Thitiwatana, a surgical assistant at Mount Sinai Hospital who lives with his wife on Pacific Street near Vanderbilt Avenue.
Thitiwatana came back to New York and began training at Wondee Siam in Hell's Kitchen on his days off. He bought a truck, launched a kickstarter to gather the final $11,000 needed to get things going, and opened Mamu Thai Noodle last week, spending one day in Prospect Heights and a second in Park Slope.
Today (Monday, Feb. 25), they're at the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and Park Place until 7 p.m. (or until they run out of food).
Thitiwatana runs the truck with his sister, Alissa Thitiwatana, a nursing student. The recipes come from the pair's uncle, who owns three noodle shops in Bangkok.
Currently the menu is simple: Pad Thai or the wide-noodle Pad Siew with chicken for $8 or shrimp for $9, or a beef noodle soup for $8 which is similar to the Rota Det Thitiwatana had that inspired the whole shebang.
The name comes from Thitiwatana's mother, Mamu is her nickname.
If you want to know where the truck will pop up next, you can follow the operation on Facebook or twitter. But Thitiwatana says Prospect Heights will be a frequent destination for him.
"Our first day, I just thought, I want to keep it near my house," he said. "But everyone was so positive and so nice to us. The response was just great."
Has anyone tried the food? Let us know how it is in the comments.
