This beloved Thai restaurant closed during the pandemic. It’s reopening in a new spot
Chef “Cake” built a loyal following for six years in a tiny Thai restaurant on Miami’s Upper East Side before he had to close Cake Thai during the pandemic.
He hopes his fans remember him.
Chef Phuket Thongsodchareondee returned to Miami after taking a year to regroup in his home country of Thailand and will open a new restaurant named Cake Thai in the DoubleTree hotel in downtown Miami, he said.
His first time around, Chef Cake created a beloved restaurant with just six wobbly tables but an authentic Thai spirit. His mother worked the front, he worked the kitchen. (His mother nicknamed him Cake for all the cake she ate when she was pregnant with him.) But he expanded too quickly, trying to open several other restaurants, quality dropped off and he even was dinged by inspectors before closing for good in August 2020.
“I learned you have to be more focused,” he said. “It was a big lesson to learn. Now we have to do it all again.”
He spent a year working back in Thailand where most of his family lives. There he “learned a lot from grandma,” in the Phuket island province where his family had a longtime seafood company. He opened a small curry house that was always packed, he said, near a downtown police station.
When Cake returned to America last summer to renew his green card, Takato chef Taka Lee asked him to stay. Now 37, he met an investor who proposed he open a new Miami location in the downtown hotel.
His new Cake Thai will be more fusion and seafood heavy — influenced by the food he created in Phuket. Also expect Thai flavors in Chinese-style dim sum, which he says he grew up eating for breakfast as a boy. The restaurant is under construction and should be open the first week in July.
“I love Miami and the people here still support me,” Cake said.
Cake Thai
Address: 1717 N Bayshore Dr., downtown Miami in the DoubleTree hotel
Opening July 2022
This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
