Jackie Kaewlamduan, owner of Ka Thai Midtown, serves authentic Thai cuisine inspired by family recipes

Jackie Kaewlamduan spent her entire childhood eating traditional seafood dishes in Chonburi, Thailand. Watching her mother, Jintana, cook dozens of dishes from memory fascinated Kaewlamduan.

Today, Kaewlamduan owns three locations of Ka Thai, including the Midtown location tucked into the back corner of The Hill shopping center. At Ka Thai Midtown, every guest is greeted by the portrait of Jintana at the entrance.

In 2018, Ka Thai first appeared in the restaurant industry on Knox/Henderson. Only a 2,000-square-foot space, Kaewlamduan remembers the determination she put into her very first restaurant.

“Before I opened (Ka Thai) I went back to Thailand to learn from my mom and get all of her recipes,” she says. “I trained in Thailand for three months because I wanted to make sure that I knew everything, so I could do everything.”

After her three-month journey where she standardized her mother’s recipes to fit commercial kitchens, Kaewlamduan returned to the United States. Having only just gone through a divorce while raising a 7-year-old daughter at the time, she began to feel the pressures of owning a restaurant with little financial support.

“Nobody knew about us, and I didn’t have a lot of money to advertise or anything like that,” Kaewlamduan says. “I told myself if I don’t make this, I might not be able to see my daughter.”

Choosing the restaurant’s name also took time. Kaewlamduan wanted something easy for Americans to pronounce and also represent her real name, Kanokporn, along with her last name and daughter’s name, Kayleigh.

Spending seven days a week in the kitchen, she would inspect every dish that came out to ensure there were no spills on the edges of plates, the food was cooked properly and that guests remained content. But in 2020, Ka Thai almost came to a standstill.

“COVID hit, and I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna die,’ but to be honest, because I stayed open, a lot of people kept ordering from us,” she says.

She attributes staying open during the pandemic as one of the main reasons her restaurant became so successful. Her 2,000-square-foot restaurant could not handle the influx of customers, and Kaewlamduan decided to close her Knox/Henderson location and open up on McKinney Avenue instead. The Arapaho Road location opened in March 2024.

The Lake Highlands version, which opened in 2023, has a different environment than the other two restaurants. It’s more personal.

“I felt like I needed to change the concept just a little bit so it’s more like (Jintana’s) style,” she says.

Unlike her other two restaurants, which feature a breezy, beach-inspired design, Ka Thai Midtown reflects Jintana’s elegant style.

At Midtown, family-style black booths with burnt orange cushions line the back wall of the restaurant while the other side is home to Ka Thai’s sophisticated bar that is adorned with low-hanging black lamps and accent lights that illuminate the rusty brown hue of the bar wall.

The menu also reflects the meals Kaewlamduan grew up eating, from fragrant curries to spicy stir-fries.

“Growing up, I would wake up and smell curry in the whole house, and it’s a memory for me,” she says.

Ka Thai Midtown offers a variety of  Thai dishes like pad thai with chicken and shrimp ($19.95), red curry served with bamboo shoots, eggplant, basil and bell pepper ($17.95) and tom-kha udon soup with coconut milk, mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, onions and scallions ($16.95). But for Kaewlamduan, her favorite dish isn’t one that is often sought after by customers.

“For me, it’s very simple. The basil stir fry is good and spicy,” she says. “It’s like a burger for an American. It’s easy when you don’t know what to eat.”

Although many customers come for the pad thai — a dish Kaewlamduan says isn’t commonly eaten in Thailand — she still enjoys watching guests order it. She even reduced the sweetness of the restaurant’s pad thai sauce to better reflect her own tastes while appealing to American diners.

With the success of Kaewlamduan’s restaurants shaping her life, she has decided to wait to open more locations even though she says she would like to open more Ka Thai locations outside of Dallas. However, for now, Kaewlamduan is focusing on spending time with her daughter.

“The most important thing is to take it easy for myself,” she says. “I want to spend more time with my daughter, and then if the time is right and we have good people, then I will open more locations.”

Ka Thai Midtown, 8185 Walnut Hill Lane, 469.291.7995