Tasty Thai Cuisine, one of the early Orlando Thai restaurants, before that cuisine caught on, closed on Saturday. According to the owners it had been open for nearly 20 years.
The restaurant occupied a free-standing building on Curry Ford Road. Its appearance from the road was distinctive for its long, unsupported overhang over the entrance, but otherwise was rather drab looking. A message board under the plain red and white sign with the restaurant’s name rarely had any letters on it, which made the place look abandoned. But a neon “open” sign in the window let people know it was still in business.
A note on the Tasty Thai Facebook page gives some hope to regulars that it will return in another location.
I first wrote about TTC in 1997 for a column on takeout food around town (the shirttail included information on how to contact me through my AOL address). In ’99, I noted that Tasty Thai was part of an “explosion” of Thai restaurants — I noted about a half dozen at the time. Urbanspoon now lists 53 Thai restaurants in Central Florida.
Make that 52.