Nine days after Thai Pearl opened in March 2020, Covid closed its doors, but couldn’t defeat chef/owner Sujitra Chubthaisong

If Sujitra Chubthaisong’s sister knew how to cook, Sujitra – aka Chef May – might still be living in Australia, a rising young culinary talent in one of the country’s best restaurants, mentored by a Michelin-starred chef.

But luckily for Asheville, when her sister called, Sujitra answered the desperate 911. “She and my mother were living in Hendersonville (NC),” Sujitra recalls. “She told me she had signed a lease on a restaurant space. I said ‘Why would you do that? You don’t cook!’ She said that’s why she needed my help. I think my mother might have been part of that plan.”

It was not exactly Sujitra’s plan. Born and raised in the Issan Province of Thailand, she began cooking at a young age, helping her mother in her small noodle shop. Post high school, she enrolled in the Royal Palace Academy to pursue a more formal culinary education and after she graduated, launched her first business, starting small with a type of pop-up model. “I only had a couple things on the menu,” she explains. “People would call in their order the night before and I would deliver it the next day.”

When a friend of her uncle’s visited Thailand from Australia, he was impressed with her food and ambition and recruited her to come to The Land Down Under to work in an Asian Fusion restaurant he was preparing to open. “The first thing I had to do was learn English; I didn’t speak any. At the restaurants, I started washing dishes, then went through all the stations until I was good to go.”

Ginger Rice Soup, Chef May’s favorite breakfast

Sujitra settled into Australia, intrigued by the people and culture. She was there about five years when her sister called in 2017. “I only packed one suitcase; I left everything behind in Brisbane [Queensland]. My plan was to build the menu, teach the kitchen how to cook the dishes, get the restaurant open and go back.”

Just as BoonChoo Thai Express was ready, she received notification from the Australian government that her legal status in that country was going to expire unless she returned very quickly. “It was a big decision,” she says. “Do I go back to the restaurant where I had built my career and was working with a world class chef or stay in North Carolina with my family and start my own business.”

In the end, family – and a new relationship – won the day, and though she continued working in the Hendersonville restaurant, she joined her personal/professional partner in Asheville, with the intent of opening a Thai restaurant there.

“I didn’t know Asheville at all,” she remembers. “I saw an ad online for a space for lease that was already built out as a restaurant (the former Nantahala Brewing space on Haywood Road in West Asheville). We thought it would be the best option to get open pretty quickly.”

They signed the lease in December 2019, did a lot of social media to get the word out and build anticipation for what would be WAVL’s first Thai restaurant, and on March 9, 2020, Thai Pearl opened the doors to its cozy, 44-seat restaurant.

They were busy from the get-go. It didn’t hurt that Thai Pearl was right next door to Asheville’s local institution Nine Mile. “I didn’t know anything about Nine Mile and how popular it was. But I still remember that first week seeing lines of people waiting to get into Nine Mile, looking in our window and then coming in to try us. Everybody who tried it loved it and said they’d be back.”

Nine days later, Covid closed every restaurant in Asheville. Because Thai Pearl had been open less than two weeks, they were not eligible for any aid from the federal Paycheck Protection Program or the $5 million Buncombe County Tourism Jobs Recovery Fund.

Luckily for Chef May, Thai food lends itself to take-out, and as many other restaurants struggled to figure the process out – or found it impossible to segue their menu from fine dining to cardboard containers – Thai Pearl rolled right into it. “We kept doing the full menu, we took orders by phone, online and partnered with delivery services. We set up a little table in front of the door and would put the bags of food out there.”

Drunken Noodles

In a lemons-to-lemonade way, it helped them build a solid clientele and by the time they were able to fully re-open, the dining room filled once again.

Sujitra says there is not a significant Thai population in Asheville, so she counts on neighbors, locals and a large following of regulars. The large menu sticks to dishes from Thailand, with some nods to American tastes, like onion rings and fries, albeit seasoned with Thai spices (no ketchup or ranch in the house!). She reveals that Thailand’s most well-known and popular dish – Pad Thai – does not enjoy the same status back home. “If there were just three items on a menu – curry, stir fry or Pad Thai – Pad Thai would be the last choice.”

First choice among Thai Pearl customers is the restaurant’s signature item Drunken Noodles Issan. “In Thailand, if you’re having a party and there’s lots of drinking, you want some Drunken Noodles to help sober up a bit, or if you’re feeling the party the next day, Drunken Noodles can help you feel alive again.”

Heritage Hero award

Her favorite is a stir-fry dish called Secret Wife, first made for her by a friend who explained the origin of the cheeky name. “It uses off-cut meat, meat with a little bone and a little fat. The real wife gets the whole chicken, the full love; the secret wife gets the scraps. There is a lot of spice in the stir fry, because secret love is hot and spicy.”

Sujitra’s bubbly personality and photogenic appearance have helped build a high profile for the business, and she regularly participates in community culinary events. In July, Chef May and Thai Pearl won the Heritage Hero Award at the 2026 Heritage Fire Tour Asheville stop. In January, she brought her young cousin Palakorn Katsamrong (Chef Pai) over from Thailand to lend a hand and develop his skills in the kitchen. “He makes things we have been craving that we put on as specials, but sometimes they are too Thai for our customers.”

In early 2026, she became the sole owner of Thai Pearl and even looking back at the many challenges she did not anticipate – Covid, Helene, a slowdown in hospitality – she is happy she made the decision to stay. “Maybe I can make a new dish, and call It Lucky Me.”

More about Thai Pearl.

— Written by Kay West

— AIRfare is sponsored by McGuire Wood & Bissette

Photos courtesy of Thai Pearl.