Restaurant news: Beloved Thai restaurant reopens in brand-new NSB location

This beloved Thai restaurant has re-opened at a new location in New Smyrna Beach.

Thai Mango began welcoming guests at the end of January after announcing the eatery’s long-awaited opening on social media several days earlier. Owners Nicole and Joel Paige tell me the restaurant’s opening has been a long time coming for their loyal customers, and has been in the works for nearly a year.

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While new to some, many customers are familiar with Thai Mango’s authentic Thai cuisine, as the duo previously owned two other locations and a food trailer. According to Joel, the pair bought their first restaurant in 2010 in New Smyrna Beach, a location they maintained for a decade.

“Canal Street was our first one. We bought a Mexican restaurant, and then within two weeks were selling Thai food,” he said.

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Following the end of their lease, the pair took over what was then Stavro’s restaurant off U.S. 1 in New Smyrna, which they maintained for three years. According to Joel, the building’s need for extensive upkeep following two hurricanes encouraged the couple to expand their horizons by selling the restaurant and ultimately purchasing a food trailer — a venture they said lasted nearly eight months.

“We just thought we’d try it out and see how it would work instead of another brick-and-mortar restaurant,” Joel said. “The actual food truck work wasn’t bad, but it involved scheduling and pulling the food truck here and there, and it just wasn’t for me.”

Back to their restaurant-owning roots, the duo began to search for a new space, before eventually landing on the current location just over 10 months ago.

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Nestled within New Smyrna’s Plaza 44, Thai Mango is back with a packed menu of scratch-made, authentic lunch and dinner dishes.

The quaint new restaurant, decorated with vibrant oranges and blues, glowing strung lights, hand-painted wall murals and rattan light fixtures, boasts the best Thai food money can buy. Nicole, a Thai native and seasoned chef, received training from the Dunsit Culinary Academy in Bangkok, and, after moving to the U.S. in 2005, worked for various Thai restaurants in California, Texas and Florida before opening her very own.

“My wife’s Thai food is totally unique,” Joel said. “Everything has been developed by her over the years, even before we opened.”

“I learned through the kitchen. I wanted to learn everything and not do one thing — do 10 things,” Nicole added. “And people love it.”

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The eatery’s extensive, cook-to-order menu ranges from homemade soups and curries to noodle dishes, fried rice and stir-fry plates that vary in spice levels — though customers can customize the kick to meet their preferences.

Options range from the Thai fried rice — broccoli, carrot, tomato, scallion and egg stir-fried in brown sauce; and the red curry — a tangy and spiced combination of bamboo shoots, zucchini, basil and bell peppers; to the best-selling pad Thai — a rich combination of thin rice noodles, egg, bean sprouts and scallions stir-fried in a sweet tamarind sauce; the steamed dumplings — chicken-stuffed dumplings served alongside a spiced, soy-sauce-like brown dipping sauce; and the sweet and sour stir-fry — pineapple, tomato, onions, cucumber and bell peppers in a house-made sauce.

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“We have the highest-quality food that you can get; a lot of our stuff comes from Thailand — most of our stuff … and our soups — we don’t have a big pot of soup. Every bowl of soup is made order by order,” Joel said.

“We’ve never been a fast-food restaurant and never will be. (Quality) takes time. We have three or four people cooking, so we make appetizers order by order, soups, curry, sauces, you know? And we use lots of different veggies and have vegan items.”

Among the eatery’s scratch-made sauces is Nicole’s very own, bottled-for-purchase pad Thai sauce. The vegan-friendly sauce gets its sweet flavor from its main ingredient of tamarind — a sweet and sour tropical fruit from the tamarind tree.

The accomplished chef, who began selling the sauce several months ago and continues to do so at the newly opened restaurant, plans to create a new spicy wing sauce for purchase in the near future.

“The thing about Thai food, too, is a lot of it is kind of medicinal because of the ingredients they use — a lot of ginger, garlic, chilis. All those things are really good for your immune system,” Joel said.

“So that’s part of it, too — that’s the culture … When you leave you don’t feel bloated. There’s no bread, no cheese, and we hardly use any wheat.”

Thai Mango puts flavor, hospitality at the forefront

Nicole's passion for cooking and love for people fuel her restaurant endeavors.

“I always served my whole life. I like to talk to customers. I want people happy when they come, you know?” Nicole explained. She said she treats her customers like family. For example, if someone isn't feeling well, she'll offer them ginger tea.

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Though the duo has intentionally downsized with this restaurant — a necessary shift in order to adapt to changing times, Joel tells me — their high-quality cuisine remains as fresh, authentic and flavorful as ever.

“This is a restaurant where we’re making everything from scratch and each order is cooked separately,” Joel said. “(Nicole) does everything from her heart, and that really makes a difference.”

Thai Mango is located at 1714 State Road 44 E. in New Smyrna Beach and is open 11 a.m. – 8:30 p.m. Monday – Friday and 5 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Saturday. For information, call 386-428-0208 or visit facebook.com/nsbthaimango.

Helena Perray is the restaurant and dining writer for The Daytona Beach News-Journal. A New Jersey native and passionate storyteller, she can be contacted at hperray@gannett.com. Follow her on Instagram and Facebook. Support local journalism by subscribing

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Thai Mango restaurant opens in New Smyrna Beach