Tony Street had been in the restaurant business his whole life — his family’s legacy, not a career he chose so much as one he grew up inside. Jab Street came up differently, learning her craft over ten years as a chef at Toys Café before bringing that background to Dallas. What they shared was an obsession with Thai food done right, and eventually that shared obsession became a restaurant. Family Thais Asian Bistro opened in 2019 at 208 N. Market Street in the West End, ten tables, counter service, and has been the best Thai restaurant in Dallas ever since.
The name is literal. Jab runs the kitchen. Tony runs the operation. Their sons Sammye and Jesse are now part of the day-to-day. Arturo Lamas, a chef-partner who has worked alongside Tony for 27 years, is in the kitchen too. When you walk in, the room is a riot of color — rainbow decor, warm and crowded and clearly put together by people who wanted to be there rather than people who hired a designer. You feel it immediately. It doesn’t take long to understand why people come back every week.
Every morning the kitchen hand-folds wontons. That detail matters because it means the person making your food is doing the same repetitive, careful work every single day that a much more expensive restaurant would use as a marketing point. Here it’s just how it’s done. The Fried Wontons — vegetables and glass noodles stuffed into wrappers and fried, served with housemade sweet and sour — are the right way to start. The Corn Patties have their own following. The Chicken Larb Salad — tangy, savory, slightly spicy, the classic northeastern Thai preparation — is the dish that tells you where Jab’s cooking comes from.
The noodle section is where most people land and stay. The Pad Thai is the one the Dallas Morning News kept coming back to — rice noodles with tamarind-based peanut sauce, egg, bean sprouts, and green onions, balanced between sweet, sour, and salty the way the dish is supposed to be rather than the sugary approximation most places serve. The Pad Ka Pow — fresh wide noodles stir-fried with Thai chili, garlic, basil, bell pepper, and brown sauce — is the authentic staple that separates the people who know Thai food from the people who think they do. The Drunken Noodles with beef come up in nearly every review. The Panang Curry, rich and slightly sweet with eggplant, bamboo, basil, and bell pepper, and the Red Curry with its zesty lime finish are both worth ordering if you can’t decide between them.
The boba tea bar runs alongside the food menu — the Watermelon Patch drink gets mentioned by name in reviews often enough to be considered a signature. House-baked pastries are available daily. Vegan and vegetarian options cover most of the menu and can be made fully plant-based on request. Two people can eat well for $30, which in 2026 Dallas is not something you say about many restaurants worth talking about.
The West End doesn’t get enough credit as a dining neighborhood. Family Thais is one of the reasons it should. Ten tables, a kitchen run by a Thai chef with 25-plus years of experience, and a family that shows up every morning to fold wontons by hand. That’s the whole story.
Family Thais Asian Bistro is at 208 N. Market Street, Suite 150 in the West End. Open daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Phone: (972) 773-9950.
