Nikky Phinyawatana grew up between two cities and two ways of thinking about food. Bangkok, where she spent her early years, treated Thai cooking as something worth taking seriously — fresh ingredients, careful preparation, proper seasoning, the kind of attention you gave a thing you respected. Dallas, where she attended The Hockaday School as a boarding student and later made her permanent home, had plenty of Thai restaurants but not quite that. The food was there. The spirit of it was somewhere else.
She studied business at Babson College in Boston, cooked obsessively for her dormmates throughout, came back to Dallas, went to culinary school at Dallas College, and in 2004 opened the first Asian Mint on Forest Lane at Central Expressway. The concept was direct: modern Thai food in a clean, bright room, fresh ingredients, a proper wine list, and desserts that didn’t exist anywhere else in Dallas. She called the style New Bangkok cuisine — a way of saying that this was not the Americanized approximation her customers might have expected, but it was also not a museum exhibit. It was food she grew up with, filtered through someone who had lived in two countries and cooked in both.
Twenty-two years later she has five locations across the Metroplex — Forest Lane, Highland Park on Oak Lawn Avenue, Inwood Village on Lovers Lane, Addison on Belt Line Road, and Richardson on Campbell Road — with plans to reach ten by 2030. The Thai government has certified Asian Mint through its Thai Select program, which it gives to restaurants outside Thailand that meet an official standard of authenticity. Nikky has a cookbook out. Her sauces are sold commercially. She films cooking videos where she shows up at random Dallas households and cooks a meal from whatever she finds in the refrigerator. She is one of the more genuinely busy people in the Dallas restaurant community and the food at every one of her locations reflects a kitchen that has been doing this long enough to know exactly what it’s doing.
What to Order
The Pad Kee Mow — what the menu calls drunken noodles — is the dish that most people who love Asian Mint cite first when you ask them. Wide, flat rice noodles stir-fried at high heat with Thai chili basil soy, Thai basil, egg, and red bell pepper. It has the char that comes from a very hot wok, the anise sweetness of the basil cooking quickly in the oil, and a heat level that you can dial up or down when you order. The name comes from a Thai drinking culture tradition — the dish was said to be good for hangovers, which explains the flavor profile. Everything in it is assertive. Nothing apologizes.
The Massaman Curry is the gentler argument. Massaman is a southern Thai preparation with Muslim influences, brought to the country centuries ago through trade routes from the Middle East and India, and it is different from the coconut-milk Thai curries most Americans know. The paste is slower and deeper — cinnamon, cardamom, dried chilies, cloves — and Asian Mint builds it around roasted kabocha squash, white onion, and cashews with tamarind running through the sauce. It is a curry that actually improves the second day, which tells you something about the paste underneath it.
The Pad Thai here is made with a house tamarind sauce that the kitchen has been calibrating since 2004. Thin rice noodles, shrimp, chicken, tofu if you want it, egg, green onion, bean sprouts, and crushed peanuts. The version in most Thai restaurants in America runs sweet to the point of cloying. This one doesn’t. The tamarind is genuinely sour, the fish sauce is present but balanced, and the whole thing has the slightly sticky, slightly charred texture that a proper pad thai develops when the noodle has direct contact with the wok. If you want to go further, the Pad Thai Woon Sen — the same dish made with glass noodles instead of rice noodles — is the one the staff orders for themselves.
The Green Curry is spicy in the way that earns the word. Coconut milk base, spicy green curry paste, Japanese purple eggplant, bamboo shoots, Thai basil, and red bell pepper — the eggplant soaks up the curry over the course of the meal and becomes the best thing in the bowl by the end of it. The Red Curry is the more popular version and tends toward a rounder heat, but the green is the one for people who want the dish to have some edge.
The Crab Fried Rice is worth ordering once even if you’ve never thought about fried rice as a serious dish. Crabmeat, jasmine rice, egg, green onion, and fresh cucumber and tomato on the side — it is the most delicate preparation on the menu, the one that relies on the quality of the seafood and the restraint of the seasoning rather than the force of a curry paste. Order it alongside something with more heat and let the two dishes take turns.
For appetizers: the Summer Rolls — fresh, not fried, rice paper wrapped around vermicelli, shredded lettuce, carrot, mint, and either chicken or shrimp, with a house-made peanut sauce — are the thing to start with if you want to understand how the kitchen thinks about freshness. The Shrimp Rangoon — shrimp and cream cheese fried in a wonton wrapper with sweet and sour sauce — is the crowd-pleaser that appears on every table regardless of what else gets ordered, and it earns that status every time.
The Khao Soi — a northern Thai coconut curry noodle soup with crispy fried noodles on top, pickled mustard greens, and a lime wedge — is the dish that takes most Dallas diners to a part of the menu they weren’t expecting. Khao Soi is Chiang Mai’s most famous dish, Burmese-influenced, richer and more complex than a standard curry. Asian Mint is one of the few places in the city doing it, and it is consistently the recommendation for anyone who has already worked their way through the standards and wants to go somewhere new.
The Rooms and the Locations
Nikky designed the Asian Mint interiors with the same word she uses for the food: clean. The rooms are modern and comfortable without being cold — warm lighting, contemporary finishes, the kind of space that works for a quick weekday lunch and a longer dinner with wine equally well. The Forest Lane location is the original and has the most lived-in quality. The Highland Park location on Oak Lawn Avenue draws the neighborhood crowd. Inwood Village has the best patio. Addison and Richardson serve neighborhoods that have been eating there since the day they opened.
Happy hour runs Monday through Friday at all locations — $2 off appetizers, soups, and salads, $3 beer and hot sake, $2 off cocktails, $3 off wine by the glass. Half off wine by the bottle all day on Thursdays and Sundays at Forest Lane. The cocktail program includes the Green Teatini, Mango Martini, Lychee Martini, Asian Mule, and Gingertini.
Five locations, each with its own hours — call ahead or check asianmint.com before going:
- Forest Lane: 11617 N. Central Expressway, Suite 135 | Open daily 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. (9:30 p.m. Friday–Saturday) | Phone: (214) 363-6655
- Oak Lawn (Highland Park): 4246 Oak Lawn Avenue | Mon–Fri 11 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m., closed Sunday | Phone: (214) 219-6468
- Inwood Village (Lovers Lane): 5450 W. Lovers Lane, Suite 222 | Mon–Thu 11 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Fri 11 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–9:30 p.m., Sat 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m., Sun 11 a.m.–9 p.m. | Phone: (214) 904-1055
- Addison: 5290 Belt Line Road, Suite 118 | Mon–Fri 11 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m., closed Sunday | Phone: (214) 242-9368
- Richardson: 300 W. Campbell Road, Suite 140 | Mon–Fri 11 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m., closed Sunday | Phone: (469) 677-0767
