From Bangkok to Brown: Heng Thai and Rotisserie

Behind the delicious Thai cuisine offerings at Heng Thai and Rotisserie lies a lesser-known but impressive story about how one Providence business owner brings more than a taste of Bangkok to Thayer. Heng does not compromise on cultural authenticity, yet is able to maintain a diverse customer base.

“Oh cool, I thought it was closed from the outside,” a college-aged student said. She was followed into the restaurant by three other girls, all wearing baggy blue jeans and white sneakers. 

“Hello, for how many, four?” the gentleman at the host stand asked them. The girls nodded and were told it would be just a ten-minute wait, even on a busy Friday evening. 

As the girls huddled by the door to wait, Ploy, the gentleman who greeted them quickly ran around the restaurant to six different tables. He gave a few of the tables their checks, took orders from one table where nine people were seated, and cleared off two tables to be ready for the next customers. During these ten minutes, Ploy also handed off three delivery orders to the UberEats drivers who came in. 

“Wait should we say hi?” one of the girls asked the rest of the group. Their chemistry professor was seated at a table across the restaurant with the members of his research group. Before them were plates of rotisserie chicken, pad kee mow, papaya salads, and more. Before the girls could make the decision, Ploy seated them. On their short walk to their table, they were greeted by two separate groups of Brown students. They laughed at each other, joking about how they always see each other at Heng.

Since its opening in 2017, immigrant-owned restaurant Heng Thai and Rotisserie has been popular among Brown students and Rhode Islanders for its commitment to authenticity and its welcoming atmosphere. As the business charges on with its plans for expansion to the vacant space upstairs, it will strive to maintain its traditional methods and recipes for a different kind of cuisine–hot pot. Co-owner Angie Lim promotes this authenticity by hiring only native Thai staff, many of whom work on sponsored U.S. Visas, specifically to cook at Heng and Lim’s other Thai restaurants. Heng’s sponsorship of the majority of its employees demonstrates the business’ commitment to authenticity, which Lim claims is a key factor in her success, especially in an area with high levels of competition.  

At Heng, the aroma of potent spices and hisses of sizzling woks greet you. The inviting atmosphere is composed of exposed brick walls with fairy lights, succulents, ceramic knick-knacks throughout, and a whimsical mural of rotisserie chicken and a Thai street food cart inside. From nearly every seat in the restaurant, there is a clear view of the kitchen, where the chefs are hard at work behind a cloud of steam, churning out pad kee mows and pad C-U’s left and right. There is also a bar against one wall of the restaurant, where a wide selection of spirits and wines are displayed. 

While Heng offers a cozy atmosphere on the inside, from the outside it is easy to miss. The restaurant gives an underground feel, probably because it is literally underground. To get to the restaurant you have to walk a few steps down, below street level where there is a heavy door with no external view of the restaurant. This almost hidden factor is part of the restaurant’s charm. Many students might not know about the restaurant if they have never been told about it, but Lim tells me that they get a lot of repeat customers, many of which are Brown students. Besides the atmosphere, Lim takes pride in the restaurant’s menu offerings, making them stand out from the sea of other restaurants on Thayer Street.

Providence ranks in the top ten for the most restaurants per capita across all U.S. cities. Many immigrants own and run these restaurants. With colleges—including Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Johnson and Wales—packed together within a one-mile radius, local restaurants rely on the student population to keep their businesses profitable. Heng, located just around the corner from the Brown bookstore has become a popular hub for student gatherings and meals.

To escape the usual eats of chicken fingers and turkey burgers in the dining halls, students go to Heng for the flavorful offerings of traditional Thai cuisine in a welcoming atmosphere that allows for easy conversation. Most restaurants in the Thayer Street area are takeout only or have a couple of plastic tables and chairs available for students to hang out and eat their late-night meals at. While Heng offers takeout as well, many students flock to this casual spot to connect with friends over a meal, gather with their academic groups, or go on a date night. Heng is also one of the few restaurants to carry strictly authentic cuisine. You won’t find hamburgers on their menu, but you will find Khao Kha Moo, Khao Soi, and other traditional offerings that are difficult to find in other Thai restaurants in New England. These traditional menu items are curated by co-owners Angie Lim and Nick Aree in collaboration with the highly skilled chefs they sponsor Visas for to come to the United States from all over Thailand. These chefs have a strong commitment to their craft and to the restaurants they are sponsored to work in here, giving Heng and Lim’s other Thai restaurants a low turnover rate among employees. 

“I am very lucky,” Lim tells me. “The people who come to work here stay for years,” she says. 

Providence ranks in the top ten for the most restaurants per capita across all U.S. cities. Many immigrants own and run these restaurants. With colleges—including Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Johnson and Wales—packed together within a one-mile radius, local restaurants rely on the student population to keep their businesses profitable. Heng, located just around the corner from the Brown bookstore has become a popular hub for student gatherings and meals. 

To escape the usual eats of chicken fingers and turkey burgers in the dining halls, students go to Heng for the flavorful offerings of traditional Thai cuisine in a welcoming atmosphere that allows for easy conversation. Most restaurants in the Thayer Street area are takeout only or have a couple of plastic tables and chairs available for students to hang out and eat their late-night meals at. While Heng offers takeout as well, many students flock to this casual spot to connect with friends over a meal, gather with their academic groups, or go on a date night. Heng is also one of the few restaurants to carry strictly authentic cuisine. You won’t find hamburgers on their menu, but you will find Khao Kha Moo, Khao Soi, and other traditional offerings that are difficult to find in other Thai restaurants in New England. These traditional menu items are curated by co-owners Angie Lim and Nick Aree in collaboration with the highly skilled chefs they sponsor Visas for to come to the United States from all over Thailand. These chefs have a strong commitment to their craft and to the restaurants they are sponsored to work in here, giving Heng and Lim’s other Thai restaurants a low turnover rate among employees. 

“I am very lucky,” Lim tells me. “The people who come to work here stay for years,” she says. 

Providence ranks in the top ten for the most restaurants per capita across all U.S. cities. Many immigrants own and run these restaurants. With colleges—including Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Johnson and Wales—packed together within a one-mile radius, local restaurants rely on the student population to keep their businesses profitable. Heng, located just around the corner from the Brown bookstore has become a popular hub for student gatherings and meals. 

To escape the usual eats of chicken fingers and turkey burgers in the dining halls, students go to Heng for the flavorful offerings of traditional Thai cuisine in a welcoming atmosphere that allows for easy conversation. Most restaurants in the Thayer Street area are takeout only or have a couple of plastic tables and chairs available for students to hang out and eat their late-night meals at. While Heng offers takeout as well, many students flock to this casual spot to connect with friends over a meal, gather with their academic groups, or go on a date night. Heng is also one of the few restaurants to carry strictly authentic cuisine. You won’t find hamburgers on their menu, but you will find Khao Kha Moo, Khao Soi, and other traditional offerings that are difficult to find in other Thai restaurants in New England. These traditional menu items are curated by co-owners Angie Lim and Nick Aree in collaboration with the highly skilled chefs they sponsor Visas for to come to the United States from all over Thailand. These chefs have a strong commitment to their craft and to the restaurants they are sponsored to work in here, giving Heng and Lim’s other Thai restaurants a low turnover rate among employees. 

“I am very lucky,” Lim tells me. “The people who come to work here stay for years,” she says. 

Lim, a Thai immigrant herself, has a different story about how she came to America and started her own successful business, now co-owning two Thai restaurants in Rhode Island. From a middle-class family, Lim came to the United States as a student in 2000 to get her MBA from the University of California- Riverside. After receiving her diploma, she made the big move to Allston Massachusetts, where she joined some of her friends in the food business. Lim had no experience in the restaurant industry at the time and started working as a server in a local restaurant. It was at this restaurant where she met her lifelong friend and business partner Nick Aree, the executive chef of the restaurant. Before coming to the United States, Aree was an engineer in Thailand, having learned to cook mainly from his mother. Lim credits much of her cooking skills to Nick and admires his commitment to traditional methods of Thai cooking.

“He is picky in his ingredients. He doesn’t choose the shortcut way to do things. He’s crazy,” Lim says. 

After gaining more work experience in the restaurant industry through working as a server in multiple restaurants and observing her friends start their own food businesses, Lim and Aree opened their first restaurant in Boston in 2004 and soon after another location in Frankin, Massachusetts. The Franklin location had many customers coming from Barrington, Rhode Island, where Lim and Aree would later open their restaurant, Tong-D in 2009. When they sold the initial businesses in 2008, Lim and Aree moved to New York City, where they gained valuable knowledge about the restaurant industry. Aree continued working as a chef there while Lim worked as the general manager of an Au Bon Pain Cafe. 

“New York taught us a lot to give us a different vision for our restaurants,” Lim says. Lim recalls her fears about cost management when choosing restaurant locations with high rent.

“In New York, we had friends paying 10,000 for a 1,200-square-foot restaurant. Where we came from, rent was only 800,” she chuckled. Lim and Aree realized that good locations were worth investing in, and that is definitely seen with Heng. College Hill has some of the highest rent prices in Providence, but also high foot traffic and many hungry students.

In 2009, while still living in New York, Lim, and Aree heard of a vacant opening in Barrington and decided to take the risk. Renovations of the restaurant began in July 2009, and Lim commuted back and forth from New York to Barrington weekly to check on the restaurant and handle business there. They then moved to Rhode Island in late August 2009. 

With the Barrington Restaurant, Tong-D, being a successful restaurant, the business expanded to South Kingston, Rhode Island in 2015. Lim and Aree opened and sold a few other food businesses for the next few years, until ultimately opening their most popular location, Heng Thai and Rotisserie. 

While the menus and atmosphere among all of the restaurants vary, one thing remains the same– the authenticity of the cooking. Nearly all ingredients used across the restaurants are imported from Thailand and stored in the business’s warehouse in Cranston. Other ingredients are sourced from local Asian markets, but even there some ingredients can be extremely hard to find.

“The holy basil is very very hard to find, you can only get that at some Asian markets in Rhode Island, not even in Massachusetts. It is very special,” Lims says. 

All of the Heng team is Thai, with about 60-70% of the staff being sponsored from Thailand, and everyone else being hired locally. Many of the chefs come from Northern Thailand, which explains the menu offerings like Khao Soi, a Northern Thai Yellow Curry that is rare to find at most Thai restaurants in New England.

The popularity of Heng can also be attributed to Lim and Aree’s passion for good food and their aim to keep the menu up to date with new, yet still authentic Thai offerings. Every time Lim returns to Thailand, she comes back with new menu ideas based on the Thai street food she encounters. Aree’s mother–in–law is also responsible for many of Heng’s menu items. She cooked lunch for Lim and Aree for years, and whatever they liked, they put on the menu.