New Authentic Thai Restaurant Opens Today

Lemongrass, bean sprouts, and a collection of bottles marked with curvy Thai lettering rest near a cutting board in the kitchen at 2102 Howard St. Between the laughter of her two sons and the movement of workers organizing equipment in the building, Usanee “Moo” Lloyd turns on her new gas stove for the first time.

“I love to cook,” she smiles. “The dream comes true today.”

On Thursday, Moo and her husband Jon Lloyd were busy around their new location, making final preparations for the opening of their restaurant Mojo’s, slated for an 8 a.m. grand opening Saturday morning.

The menu is diverse and centers on the couple’s specialties: several traditional and authentic Thai entrees and a few American and Tex-Mex favorites for the less-daring, as well as pizza and lasagna.

The couple has been dreaming of opening their own eatery for years, Lloyd said, but with two little boys they had their hands full.  Finally, after about a year of catering and working events, Lloyd found the building on Howard St. and began working towards opening the new business.

Moo, a Thailand native who has lived in the United States since 2006, said she’s always wanted to open a restaurant, and recalls cooking for her grandmother in northern Thailand. That skill learned overseas led to her preparing meals for family and friends in Texas, too.

“When I’m a little girl, I’m working so hard,” she said in a heavy Thai accent. “I start to do all kinds of things when I’m 10. [At] 12 years old, I’m washing clothes. You wash the clothes in Thailand by hand, not with machine. When I want to open restaurant, maybe about when I turn 15. [At] 15 I already decide I want to have my own restaurant.”

Moo demonstrates how Tom Y'am soup is made in her restaurant.

Moo explained that after she graduated from high school in Thailand, she was 18, and was met with an ultimatum from her parents: either get married or go to college. She comes from a small village in northern Thailand, she explained, and the culture in her hometown is much different from that of the U.S.

“When you’re a daughter or whatever, you marry them,” Lloyd said. “You don’t even date or nothing over there. They’re a lot more conservative than we are.”

Knowing she wanted to cook and have a family and uncertain where a college career would lead her, Moo decided against studying further. Meanwhile, her aunt Sammy began playing cupid.

Sammy was living in San Angelo in the early 2000s, and worked at Goodfellow Air Force Base with Jon Lloyd. During a visit in Thailand, Moo’s father tasked Sammy with finding his daughter a husband, a scare tactic that was initially intended to encourage Moo to go to college. Instead, she began talking to a man at the base about her niece and ended up pairing the two together despite the distance.

“When I started in ’04, her aunt, Sammy, was the line server,” Lloyd said. “She’s Thai. I had just gotten divorced…in about ’02, so when I moved back to San Angelo, Sammy was like, ‘Well, maybe you want to meet Thai woman’, you know. I said, ‘Yeah, ok,’ because I didn’t really have anybody. I didn’t really like the girl I was messin’ with at the time. It wasn’t like I went on the internet like a lot of people do now.”

Lloyd’s family owns the Hairport, a local hair salon on Sherwood Way. Moo was working as a hairdresser in Thailand when she and Jon began writing letters to each other. The two immediately found common ground.

Although she didn’t speak English, they remained in written contact for about a year before Lloyd flew over to Thailand to meet and marry his bride in June 2005. A friend of Moo’s family, who was an English teacher, helped the two communicate, and Moo gradually learned the language.

The two spent a week together that June, got to know each other between flights and Tuk-Tuk (three-wheeled scooter taxis) rides from Bangkok to her hometown. They completed the obligatory paperwork, and had a brief honeymoon before Lloyd flew back to Texas.

Lloyd said it was a bit strange at first, because they hadn’t personally met, she was nervous and he was tired. He knew he was there to marry, and when his flight was delayed, Moo was concerned that he was going to leave her standing at the alter. Despite the circumstances of the meeting and marriage, Lloyd said he wasn’t really worried that it wasn’t going to work out.

“If I didn’t like her, I had to turn around and fly back,” he joked.

“And I kill him,” Moo laughed.

“It was a fast seven days,” he said.

After the week was over, Lloyd landed back in Texas and Moo waited for her immigration paperwork to clear in Thailand. The process took roughly a year before she was permitted to enter the country, and the two have lived here since.

“When she got here, we had our ups and downs,” Lloyd said. “That’s when we really kind of got to know each other. That’s when you really find out if you liked each other and you’re going to be compatible. We hash it out like everybody [else].”

The couple has been together for 10 years now, and have two sons together, Michael and Austin. Every now and then they travel back to Thailand with their boys to visit family and tour the country.

“I’m happy that I get married with him,” she said. “He’s a sweetheart and he made me have anything today; a wonderful family, two kids.”

With the boys out of the toddler phase, the Lloyd’s began working events such as River Fest and Cotton Fest, selling Moo’s homemade egg rolls and other Thai dishes. She’d always loved to cook, and after seeing the response from the public, they felt it was time to take the next step and open a restaurant of their own.

“All the Thai food, my hand’s going to touch it,” Moo said proudly. “Nobody else, just me. Jon [is] going to do the American food. He cooks at Goodfellow. He's a very good cook, too.”

Moo said she values that her husband has a different set of culinary skills than she does, and said that by working together, they will be successful.

Jon Lloyd has worked at GAFB for 12 years in the kitchen, starting at the bottom and working up to first cook. Lloyd estimates that he and the staff at GAFB prepare 1,200 meals per day, and says the experience has taught him much that will help in running his own kitchen.

“It’s taught me a lot about mass cooking,” Lloyd said. “I grill-cooked for two or three years,” gradually progressing up the lines to first cook, a position he still holds.

The couple is also partners in a family dirt-hauling business in Thailand, and receives some income from their operations. Part of those funds have financed the purchase of the restaurant.

“I want to thank [my mom], because she put me here today,” Moo said. “She say I love to cook and 'why you don’t open restaurant'. She just talk about a lot of things and she say when I open restaurant I am okay. She just--it [was] her idea to have this restaurant, you understand? That’s my mom's idea.” She also wanted to thank her father for supporting her in her endeavors.

Mojo’s Restaurant will open Saturday, Nov. 22 from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. The restaurant will be open six days a week, starting with breakfast at 6 a.m. and closing at 10 p.m. The restaurant also has a drive-through, and patrons may order at the window.