Press

Joining a recent wave of Thai restaurants opening in New Orleans is Pomelo on Magazine Street. Chef Aom Srisuk, a Bangkok native who moved to New Orleans in 2018 after years spent working in her family’s Japanese and Thai cafes in Thailand, opened the restaurant along with her husband Frankie Weinberg in late 2021.

The story starts in 2000, when a romance blossomed in the city of Ayutthaya, once the capital of the ancient kingdom of Thailand. Frankie Weinberg, an American college student teaching English in Thailand, met Srisuk, who was working at her family’s restaurant. They got to know each other over plates of glass noodles and shrimp, bowls of rice and green curry. They fell in love. But as time went on, the strains of being 9,000 miles apart and the demands of their separate everyday lives took a toll on their romance.

Srisuk is an experienced restaurateur from Thailand who is opening her first New Orleans restaurant with her husband Frankie Weinberg, a Loyola University professor. Look for dishes like boat noodles in beef broth, tom yum ramen and a range of Thai salads, called yam, layered with meats, seafood, herbs and chiles.

There’s a new Thai restaurant coming to the Uptown area. Pomelo is settling into the small Magazine Street building in the Touro-Bouligny area that housed another Thai restaurant, Long Chim, which closed over the summer.

A number of excellent Thai restaurants have opened in New Orleans in the last few years — Budsi’s, Cho Thai, and Thaihey, to name a few. Continuing that trend is chef Aom Srisuk, a Bangkok native who moved to New Orleans in 2018 after years spent working in her family’s Japanese and Thai cafes in Thailand.