The Son of Sawasdee: A Main Street Institution Turns 40
On Main Street, restaurants come and go with the rhythm of the city. A new opening brings a burst of excitement. A beloved spot quietly disappears. The cycle repeats itself year after year. Yet every once in a while, a place endures long enough to become something else entirely. Not just a restaurant, but a marker of time.
For forty years, Sawasdee Thai Restaurant has been one of those markers.
Step inside and you are not just entering a dining room. You are stepping into a space layered with memories. Birthdays. First dates. Late dinners after work. Families that came as young couples now returning with children of their own. In a city that moves quickly, the restaurant has quietly become a place where time overlaps.
At the center of it all is Natapon Poonpoem. Everyone calls him Nat.
Today he runs Sawasdee, continuing the work his parents began decades earlier. But long before he became the owner, the restaurant was already shaping his life.
Nat’s parents, Nikom and Busaba, immigrated from Thailand to Vancouver in the mid-1980s. In 1986 they joined the kitchen of a Thai restaurant that had just opened on Main Street. For the next twenty years they worked tirelessly behind the scenes, cooking and building relationships with guests who returned again and again.
Eventually the original owners decided to retire. In 2006, Nikom and Busaba took over the restaurant themselves.
For Nat, the transition felt almost inevitable. He had grown up inside those walls.
Back when babysitters were hard to find, the restaurant doubled as childcare. Nat remembers falling asleep on sacks of rice stacked in the back of the kitchen while his parents worked through dinner service. Staff members kept an eye on him between orders. The sounds of woks, laughter, and clattering dishes formed the background noise of his childhood.
“I grew up in this restaurant,” he says. “A lot of memories here.”
Those memories came with lessons.
His parents didn’t just teach him recipes. They taught him how a restaurant works from top to bottom. Cooking. Serving. Cleaning. The small details that keep the whole machine running.
“I can dishwash. I can do everything,” Nat says with a laugh. “As it should be.”
The first dish his mother taught him to cook was pad thai. It is one of the most recognizable Thai dishes in the world, but for Nat it carries a deeper meaning. His mother believed that a good Thai restaurant begins with mastering the basics.
“To have a good restaurant,” she told him, “you need a good pad thai.”
Four decades after Sawasdee first opened, pad thai remains the most ordered dish on the menu. The green curry follows close behind, with its aromatic coconut broth and gentle heat. Another favorite is the crying tiger beef, a grilled steak served with a sharp, tangy dipping sauce.
But Nat has his own personal favorite.
For him it is kor moo yang, a dish of charcoal grilled pork jowl. The meat carries a smoky sweetness that deepens over the grill. It is served with sticky rice and nam jim jaew, a dipping sauce built from tamarind, lime juice, fish sauce, roasted rice powder, herbs, and chili.
“Nothing beats that charred smoky flavor,” Nat says.
Sawasdee’s menu reflects the breadth of Thai cuisine rather than focusing on one specific region. Thailand is a large and diverse country, and each region carries its own culinary identity. Eastern dishes lean spicy and sour. Northern cuisine tends to be milder and influenced by Chinese cooking. Southern Thai food, close to Malaysia, is famously fiery.
Over time the restaurant has drawn from across those traditions, creating a menu that captures Thai cooking in broad strokes while staying approachable for Vancouver diners.
That accessibility has helped the restaurant maintain a loyal following. Nat has seen generations pass through the dining room.
“I’ve had people coming here for over thirty years,” he says. “I’ve seen infants grow up into teenagers here.”
Those kinds of relationships change the nature of a restaurant. It stops being just a place to eat and becomes part of people’s lives.
You can see it in the small details. Guests who greet the staff like old friends. Families who know exactly what dishes they want before they even open the menu. Diners who remember how the neighborhood used to look decades earlier.
Because Main Street itself has changed dramatically.
When Sawasdee first opened in the 1980s, the street was quieter. There were fewer restaurants and less nightlife. Over time it evolved into one of Vancouver’s most energetic food corridors, lined with coffee shops, cocktail bars, and independent restaurants.
“A lot of places came and went,” Nat says. “But now it’s such a great street to be on.”
Through all that change, Sawasdee remained.
Now the restaurant is celebrating its fortieth anniversary, an achievement that few restaurants reach. Rather than marking the milestone with elaborate promotions or a reinvention of the menu, Nat decided to celebrate the thing that made the restaurant what it is: the memories.
He has invited guests to return and share stories from their time at Sawasdee. Old photos. Family anecdotes. Even artifacts from the past.
One customer recently brought back an old takeout menu from decades earlier, when most dishes were priced at $9.95.
Moments like that remind Nat just how long the restaurant has been part of the community.
The torch officially passed to him in 2023 when his parents retired. His father has stepped away completely, dividing his time between Vancouver and Thailand. His mother occasionally returns to the kitchen for what Nat jokingly calls a “celebrity shift,” helping out when the mood strikes.
The restaurant remains firmly family run. Nat’s wife works alongside him, and his younger brother still helps with the operation. The next generation may not be far away either.
When asked about the future, Nat hints that there may eventually be another project in the works. But Sawasdee will always be the foundation.
For now, the focus remains on the restaurant that raised him.
Every service adds another layer to its history. Another birthday dinner. Another couple celebrating an anniversary. Another family gathering around the table.
Forty years in, Sawasdee Thai Restaurant is no longer just a place on Main Street.
It is a memory bank for the neighborhood.
And Nat is its deserving caretaker.
