It was a customer who suggested Richardson restaurateur Ararin “Irean” Wongchingchai go to the hospital last fall. Wongchingchai was unable walk. She felt dizzy. Maybe something was wrong with her eyes or her ears, she told doctors.
Over three days, doctors studied what could have made Wongchingchai so weak. They forced her to lay down, to rest. Instead, she fretted about her Richardson restaurant Thai Soon, a family-owned business too small for its boss to get sick.
The doctors’ diagnosis was as disappointing as her debilitated state, she said.
Exhaustion.
Restaurant News
“Just” exhaustion, single mom Wongchingchai mused.
“There was nothing wrong with me, internally,” she said. She said she felt embarrassed she went to the hospital in the first place.
Irean Wongchingchai has a small staff that works at Thai Soon, but many of the unassigned jobs fall to her. She delivers catering orders, picks up supplies from Restaurant Depot and hops into the kitchen during busy lunches or dinners.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Rent was piling up and Thai Soon was in jeopardy of closing over a lack of sales. The business dates back nearly 40 years, as one of Dallas-Fort Worth’s oldest Thai restaurants, and Wongchingchai feels responsible for the future of the place her mother built.
So what’s a small businessowner to do?
“You go back,” Wongchingchai said.
She left the hospital and went straight back to the restaurant.
“I realized: All this stress is not going to kill me. And, besides,” she said, pausing to hear herself admit, “I don’t know to stop.”
Irean Wongchingchai prepares Pad See Ew with shrimp on the wok at Thai Soon in Richardson.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
38-year legacy
When Wongchingchai’s mother, Soon Chanchaisri, opened Thai Soon on Greenville Avenue in Dallas in 1987, the restaurant carried the tagline “Exotic Thai Cuisine.” Back then, plates of pad Thai, red curry and basil fried rice were new to some Dallasites without any ties to southeast Asia.
Their family business took off, and within six years, the family opened Thai Lotus in Dallas and Thai Soon in Austin. Thai Soon moved from Dallas to Richardson in the early 2000s.
Dr. Manish Assar, a cardiologist, has been a customer since his residency at Parkland Hospital in the mid-1990s. Jobs took him to the East Coast, all the way to Canada, then back to Texas, where he said of Thai Soon: “I got back there as soon as I could.”
Some of Assar and his family members are vegetarian, vegan and nut-free, and he said Thai Soon has been the center of “so many celebrations” over the years.
“They really take care of us,” he said. “It’s been an integral part of our family.”
Soon Chanchaisri holds a photograph of herself at one of her first Dallas restaurants, which opened in 1987.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Family matriarch Chanchaisri, now retired and a devoted volunteer at the Buddhist Temple of Dallas, looks back on her decades as a pioneer of Thai food in Dallas and Richardson. She actually doesn’t love to cook, she said. She never wanted to open a restaurant.
But Chanchaisri, a Bangkok native, put herself through college by working in restaurants, eventually earning a business degree from Pacific States University in California.
After she moved to Texas, she opened a Thai restaurant to make money for her young family. She became consumed by her small business. Her professional ambition to work outside the restaurant industry evaporated.
A mother of three, Chanchaisri worked six days a week at Thai Soon.
Then history repeated itself. Wongchingchai took over the restaurant and is now a busy mother of three, one generation later.
“I work six days a week,” Wongchingchai said, hearing the echo in their stories.
“That’s not a life, to not see my kids.”
Silent spiral
Wongchingchai feels caught in a silent spiral. She’s too busy to deconstruct the financial problems in her business, yet too emotionally invested to quit. That’s common in family-owned businesses, said Emily Williams Knight, president and CEO of the Texas Restaurant Association.
Red Curry with chicken is one of the owners’ favorites at Thai Soon.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
“Restaurants are frequently passed down through families because they are more than businesses — they are legacies rooted in relationships and community,” Knight said in an email to The Dallas Morning News.
Thai Soon’s struggles are mirrored by other Texas businessowners, Knight said, even though Wongchingchai feels isolated.
“These are the restaurants we must protect: family-owned businesses that carry legacy, employ neighbors and anchor our communities,” Knight said.
As Wongchingchai considers how to “fix” a financial problem she was never taught to face, friends and customers continue to offer endless ideas for Thai Soon. Do more catering. Give smaller portions. Increase prices. Cut back on vegetables. Ask ChatGPT!
Will Wongchingchai make these changes? Probably not.
“I don’t know how to be anyone but who my mom taught me to be,” Wongchingchai said.
Irean Wongchingchai adds coconut milk as she cooks red curry with chicken on a wok at her restaurant Thai Soon in Richardson.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
She said she doesn’t charge extra for gluten-free or vegan ingredients, which can cost more. She also refuses to to compromise on the quality of important ingredients like coconut milk, which ballooned from $30 a case to $45 a case in the past two years.
Wongchingchai said earnestly: She wants customers to be happy, and she hasn’t calculated the financial complications of her hospitality.
“If I see someone who is taller or bigger, I give them more. I don’t want him to go home hungry,” she said. “It’s not good for business. But it’s how my mom taught me.”
Rent to pay
Wongchingchai started to worry about the longevity of Thai Soon in 2025, when inflated ingredient prices, depressed sales, looming tax fees and lingering COVID-19 woes pushed her to borrow money from her uncle, her mom and her friends.
She’s also been borrowing money from OnDeck, which has a painful 47% interest rate.
Today, Wongchingchai owes $17,000 in back rent.
Thai Soon is on Coit Road, near Belt Line Road, in Richardson.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
She locks up the restaurant after scrubbing the kitchen, often around midnight. Should she dream up a special to sell low-priced fried rice, cheapening her mom’s food to save the business? Should she work on spreadsheets after that, when most people sleep?
Quick business fixes seem overwhelming at times, irrational at others.
“It’s just me, running everything,” Wongchingchai said.
“I feel like I haven’t been doing it correctly, because I’ve just been doing.”
Family business, for sale
The mother and daughter look back on their restaurant. It’s a happy place where Wongchingchai knows regulars by name. It’s also a grueling, unprofitable business.
Her mother has already given her permission to move on.
“I don’t want to see her work so hard anymore,” matriarch Chanchaisri told her daughter.
Thai Soon is a corner tenant in a shopping center on Coit Road in Richardson.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer
Over the years, investors have asked to buy or franchise Thai Soon, but Chanchaisri never wanted to. The recipes were too special to share. Now, Wongchingchai is wishing they’d welcomed investors years ago.
Wongchingchai quietly put the restaurant up for sale for $200,000. She shakes her head, wondering if she’s throwing away her mom’s legacy.
The landlord has offered Wongchingchai an early out, meaning Thai Soon could cease operations before July 2026 and Wongchingchai wouldn’t owe extra rent. She hasn’t agreed yet.
She’s still hoping for an angel investor, a new operator or a surge in business. She wants more time with her kids and less time running deliveries. But she also doesn’t want to quit on her mother’s legacy. So she waits.
“For me, it’s too soon to give up,” she said.
Thai Soon is at 101 S. Coit Road, Suite 401, Richardson. Open for lunch and dinner. Closed Sundays.
Pad See Ew with shrimp is popular with customers at Thai Soon in Richardson, the owner said.
Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer