Some of Pierce County’s best Thai food is inside this sports bar
While I was talking with the owners of Erawan Sports Bar & Grill on a recent Wednesday evening, a young man vaulted through the door and stopped mid-step. He looked around — to the back bar stacked high with bottles straight ahead, the modest open kitchen to the right, a pool table to the left, one lone guest enjoying a combination platter of noodles, potstickers and egg rolls to the left, and us, conversing at a table in the middle of this little restaurant in Lakewood, steps from the Sounder train station.
Jerry Theriault, then sitting across from me, said hello and told him to sit wherever he’d like. The man, looking genuinely confused, replied, “Sorry, this isn’t what I was looking for,” and retreated.
I feel bad for that fellow because he missed an opportunity to enjoy not only some of the region’s best Thai food but also a dining experience as memorable as they come.
Erawan Sports Bar & Grill is the brainchild of co-owner and head chef Yuphaporn “Anna” Theriault. After years working in Thai restaurants mostly in Olympia, she yearned for a place of her own.
“She doesn’t do anything like everybody else,” her husband said.
Mangos are peeled and cut to order for the vibrant fried rice, abundant mint and cilantro torn off the stem just before hitting your table, scallions and lemongrass sliced to be an inch long. Curries begin with a paste, but Anna Theriualt and her sous chef Amorn Jackson, a friend since the Theriaults settled in Pierce County 15 years ago, hover over the stove for hours adding herbs and spices to confer their own recipe.
We have become accustomed to ordering food and receiving it within minutes, but have you ever stopped to wonder why? Prep work ahead of service speeds the process but diminishes flavor and freshness. Takeout has become synonymous with pizza and Asian; it doesn’t have to be that way. Sit down at Erawan to have Theriault and Jackson cook for you, as would your aunt who insists on feeding you every visit.
Most everything at Erawan takes a tad longer than it does everywhere else, but as her husband said, the chef is not like everybody else.
Start with steamed potstickers, obviously hand-pinched and filled with juicy, lemongrass pork, served on a bed of lettuce and julienned carrots with naam jim kai, the familiar sweet chile sauce that here tastes bright and appropriately acidic. Order a beer — a handful of drafts include Pacifico, Stella and Elysian IPA, and bottles range from Corona and PBR to Thai imports of Chang, Singha, Leo — or a cocktail from the amusingly long list. The neau tod, a typical drinking snack of marinated and deep-fried beef or pork, stands as an ideal appetizer while awaiting the rest of your meal.
It should absolutely include yum neau rod ded, Theriault’s deliciously spicy beef salad, the meat nearly hidden beneath a blanket of fresh herbs, with cabbage on the side for little wraps.
On your first visit, try the house-favorite khao pad muang (mango fried rice), with your choice of meat sautéed with that à la minute fruit, bell peppers, carrots and tomato, accented by Thai basil and textured cucumber slices. Whereas other such restaurants mold this mixture — intended as a rescue mission for day-old rice — into a uniform dome, Erawan gloriously heaps it onto the plate as one would at home.
Per customer request, said Jerry Theriault, the menu also features khao pad kee mao, or drunken fried rice, derived from the popular “drunken noodles” that is itself a relative of phat si ew — stir-fried wide rice noodles with broccoli and soy sauce, cooked over high heat to achieve its signature smoky flavor. In its native country, both are considered street foods, or something quickly assembled at home with minimal ingredients.
From the yellow curry to the papaya salad, Anna Theriault approaches each dish, and every single order, with precision — she weighs the meat to ensure optimal ratios — and an apparent love for her native cuisine. She has combined her upbringing in Udon Thani, one of the four major cities of Isaan in Northern Thailand, where the food harkens to the spice and funk of Laotian and Vietnamese, with classic Bangkok, she said.
The Theriaults met in Korea through her sister, they explained, and they married in 2005. He was from Quebec, Canada, but had family in the Tacoma area. They eventually settled near Yelm, on the Pierce County side, and discovered this gutted storefront in the same Pacific Highway shopping plaza as the Samoan bakery Fiaola Bread through a fellow Thai business owner.
Since opening in late 2019 and pulling through the pandemic, regulars have amassed for daily pool games or a to-go order of two Thai iced teas, strongly brewed in-house. (Try it in one of two specialty cocktails, mixed with amaretto and Kahlua or Bailey’s and topped with whipped cream.) Many of Erawan’s online reviews laud the food, the familial service and its “diamond in the rough” nature, and some have lamented that they wish word wouldn’t get out because this place is, as one customer described it, “legit.”
Oops.
ERAWAN SPORTS BAR & GRILL THAI CUISINE
▪ 11620 Pacific Highway SW, Lakewood, erawanbar.com
▪ Wednesday-Monday 11 a.m.-9 p.m. (closed Tuesdays)
▪ Details: family-owned Thai restaurant with Northern Thai specialties, full bar with table and counter seating, plus free pool
▪ Most dishes $10-$14; order takeout online or by phone, in-house delivery within 9-mile radius