Crumbs in my 'Stache: Like a prodigal son

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-At a party in the newly remodeled Thai Me Up last week, a few dozen friends gathered to celebrate the restaurant’s reopening under its new owner, Jeremy Tofte, who originally opened the restaurant in 2000.

Tofte, who is in his mid-30s, sports a longish goatee and has a Pacific Northwesterner’s easygoingness, sold Thai Me Up in the summer of 2006. Heeding the call to flee to warmer climates, he went on an extended sojourn that took him to Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and Southern California.

Tofte’s Jackson Hole hiatus was no mere trip to the beach, and he returns full of ideas and myriad interests.
“I tried to start a bio-diesel facility in New Zealand,” he said.
He also ate Thai food, lots of Thai food. In the region of the world that stretches from Down Under to the South Pacific, Thai cuisine is as omnipresent as Mexican food is to large swaths of the United States.

“In New Zealand, a town the size of Wilson would have at least one or two phenomenal Thai restaurants,” Tofte said.
Tofte has resumed his proprietorship and management of Thai Me Up, complete with a new airy, contemporary-feeling interior. Much of the staff left or trickled away under the interim ownership, which, fair to say, saw the restaurant in decline. But most of the front-of-house and kitchen crew have returned along with Tofte.

“Ronnie’s back in the kitchen, so you know it’s going to be delicious,” Tofte says on the restaurant’s outgoing voice message, referring to one of his longtime chefs.
And it is delicious.

The fresh spring rolls ($6), Napa cabbage, rice noodles, cilantro and mint wrapped in rice paper, served with the house spicy chili and peanut sauces, provide a perfect contrast between the dish’s crunchier, mixed innards and a chewy, delicate rice paper wrapping. It had all the characteristics of Thai food: fresh, exotic and, well, refreshing.
The Larb Gai ($8), a choice of tofu or chicken sautéed with chili, mint, kaffir lime leaf, red onion, carrots and cabbage, had a pleasant though weirdly sour, lime taste. I had it with tofu, which Tofte said he has, at times, happily subsided on for three meals a day.
The coconut curry-marinated chicken Thai sticks ($8) were tender moist and, served with another, spicier peanut sauce, tasty.

Thai Me Up also serves the gamut of yellow, red and green curries; Thai-style fried rice; Pad Thai and more ($13-16).
Currently, Thai Me Up is open for Tuesday through Saturday for dinner only, but lunch service will begin around May 5.

With a booze permit pending, bring your own wine or beer. And, if you forget to brown bag it, there’s a chance Tofte will whisk you to a nearby liquor store on a vintage Tuk Tuk, a three-wheeled, gas-powered Thai motorcar.
With Teton Thai and Bon Appe Thai anchoring opposite corners off of Town Square, Jackson has never been closer to Bangkok.

Photo by ANDREW WYATT
Ashley Watson enjoys Thai Me Up’s gala reopening last week.


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Crumbs in my 'Stache: Like a prodigal son | Planet JH News Article: Restaurants And Dining

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