For the past few months, I’ve walked through the glass doors at 3361 Battleground Avenue, picked up my bag of food, and walked out.
I haven’t been able to dine in yet.
For 20 years, the location in the Westridge Shopping Center was my second home. When my parents opened Kyoto Fantasy Express there in 1998, I was just six years old. I started working there at 11. It was my first job.
Now, a different restaurant occupies the space.
I first walked into Thai Square a few months ago, not long after my dad’s passing.
He died in May at 67 from Stage IV lung cancer. A lifelong smoker, he picked up the habit as a teen and kept it as he worked for decades running the restaurant.
The work was difficult. Staffing could be a challenge, customers even more so. Sourcing was costly. Keeping the business afloat for two decades weighed heavily on both my parents.
When my dad was in the hospital, I asked about his life. I felt guilt for his long hours at work, him coming home smelling like fried rice to put my sister and me through college. I wanted to know he had been content with his life, despite the challenges.
I learned his father had run a restaurant, too. He admired his father, just as I admired him. I thought my parents were resigned to serving food. But listening to him, I realized he took pride in his work. His dream wasn’t tied to his career but to his family.
My dad used to resent the old-fashioned name his mother gave him. Tokumitsu. But in one of our last conversations, he said he came to feel he grew into it.
It means “blessed by good fortune”. He had been blessed, he said, with a family he loved.
For my father, the restaurant was an act of family devotion. The literal blood, sweat, and tears he poured into was the love he had for us.
In 2018, Kyoto Express closed. For years, I averted my gaze as I drove by the shopping center. It was hard to accept something new replacing what had been there before.
I started by having pad see ew delivered at home.
A few things go into the perfect pad see ew. The chewiness from the rice flour. The sweet tang of the soy sauce combined with the crunch of Chinese broccoli. The noodles are thicker and wider than pad thai—more surface area for sauce. I get mine with fried tofu, which absorbs flavor like a sponge. It’s savory and sweet; it calms my nervous system.
A few weeks later, I walked through those glass doors for the first time in years.
The atmosphere is different now. Gone are the magenta walls my family spent hours painting. The back counter has been broken up to create a better flow from the kitchen. The decor is much more elevated.
I walked straight to the back, where I spent countless hours taking customers’ orders. A pair of women greeted me, handed me my plastic bag, and I walked out. I’ve participated in this ritual a few times now.
I don’t know if I will ever dine in.
But that’s okay. This space is now another family’s story.
Maybe one day, the children of the new owners will look back on their parents’ dedication with the same fondness I do.
I just hope that they, too, will feel “blessed by good fortune.”
For now, I’ll support them from afar, one box of noodles at a time.