Sam Miller's

	Thai Country Restaurant Address: 8131 Staple's Mill Road, Wistar Plaza, Richmond, Va. Phone: 261-1111 Hours: Dinner: 5-10, Monday-Thursday, 5-10:30, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. 5-9; lunch, 11:30-3, Monday-Saturday Prices: $$-$$$

Darryl L. McGuire, who personifies the phrase “good old country boy,” had never so much as even tasted Chinese food when he was called to install a steam table at the Vietnamese Tea House in Blacksburg a few years ago.

While there, the owner introduced him to his new chef, a tiny Thai woman who had moved down from Northern Virginia after a cousin at Virginia Tech told her the restaurant was looking for an Asian cook.

Although McGuire wasn’t enticed to taste the food, he was smitten by the cook, Pramvadee Uthaiphop.

About all that Darryl and Pramvadee had in common was their age—he is now 52, she 51--and marital status as divorcees. McGuire returned to the restaurant several times over the next few days on the pretext of checking on the equipment, but he wasn’t quite ready to taste the exotic fare.

But after several visits Prmavadee talked him into trying one of her dishes—chicken with cashew nuts over fried rice—and he loved it, proving the adage that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. He asked her out to a movie and within a month they married.

Shortly thereafter, the newlyweds pooled their savings and opened their own restaurant, Thai House, in rural Fairlawn in Pulaski County, near Darryl’s regular job as a machine operator in a textile factory. When he couldn’t get time off to help open the restaurant, he gave up 25 years’ seniority to devote fulltime to their new business. 

Pramvadee’s talent in the kitchen assured that the venture was successful from the start, but last year a friend made an offer for the place that they couldn’t refuse.

So they set off to the big city—Richmond—to hunt for a new site. After encountering sticker shock at properties in the Short Pump area, they settled on space in the Wistar Center, just north of the train station on Staples Mill.

The menu at Thai Country (he’s country, she’s Thai) is similar to that of most Thai restaurants: Spring rolls, satay, soups, curries, paid thai and various combinations of chicken, pork and beef with toppings that include sweet and sour, green curry coconut, mango, peanut salad, black bean, mushroom and ginger.

Soups and appetizers range from $5 to $8; most entrees are $8 to $10, with a few seafood dishes costing $15. The later are offered steamed or fried with various toppings and sauces. Lunch, with soup, spring roll and entrée, is $6.

What makes Thai Country stand out is the cooked-to-order care Pramvadee gives to each serving.

The steamed tilapia was a large portion so juicy it could have been fresh, though with the exception of salmon, the seafood is previously frozen.

Panang beef came in a creamy red curry peanut sauce with fresh basil and sprinkled with lime; a sliced pork offering was sautéed and served with fresh lemon grass, mushroom, garlic, green onion and a hot sauce.

One appetizer, kanom jeeb--steamed dumplings filled with crab meat, pork loin and water chestnuts—is every bit as good as the signature dish of Pramvadee’s former employer in Northern Virginia, Tara Thai, which opened a branch at Short Pump a year ago.

Other noteworthy starters are crispy spring rolls, stuffed with clear noodles, cabbage and carrots; chicken satay, grilled skewers of white meat marinated in spices with peanut sauce and cucumber relish, and shrimp in a blanket, four deep fried black tiger prawns wrapped in a thin spring roll and served with a sweet sauce.

Thai Country is located in space that formerly housed an Italian restaurant whose owner offered to sell its furnishings to the new occupants. But the seller may have mistaken Darryl’s ah-shucks twang for naiveté, asking prices that Darryl thought were too high. Instead, Darryl went shopping for himself.

He found a used refrigerator and freezer in Richmond at half of the offered price, drove to New York and bought new dark laminated wood tables and black chairs for a third of the old ones, and purchased heavy glassware and white plates at Ikea.

Darryl and Pramvadee, aided by her two adult children, who also are the servers, painted the two dining rooms, both of which are non-smoking, put in a couple of aquariums, and opened in the fall.

By now Darryl not only loves Thai food, but can cook a passable chicken cashew with scallions, peppers and a Thai sauce. He’s not allowed to cook at the restaurant, however. “If I did I’d run everybody off,” he said.

There’s little chance that Pramvadee’s cooking will run anyone off, unless it’s to tell someone about the great little Thai restaurant in the neighborhood.