Greg and Si Hayden opened their Si Uthai Restaurant and Cafe in May on Grooms Road in Clifton Park, seven years after she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
To create the Si Uthai interior required a complete renovation, from floor to ceiling and lighting, including the installation of a bar.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
The cafe will open later this fall, featuring Thai-style coffee and pastries and other Asian baked goods. The large chandelier, long a fixture at the Century House in Latham, was purchased after it closed.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
The paloma cocktail gets a spicy Asian spin with the addition of a chile pepper. If you dare, break the chile in half and swirl it through the drink. The truly spice-tolerant will then eat it.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
Like a chandelier in the cafe area of Si Uthai, a mirror behind the bar was sourced at a sale of fixtures and equipment from the former Century House.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
Mindful of opening in an Instagram era, Si Uthai installed a wall for selfies.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
Si Uthai took over the former Celadon Thai space in a plaza at 675 Grooms Road in Clifton Park.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
This column originally appeared in Steve’s Table Hopping newsletter, delivered for free via email on Monday and Thursday afternoons. Subscribe now at timesunion.com/newsletters/table-hopping.
In the short version that Si Hayden tells of her last seven years, she hit her head and decided to open a restaurant.
Article continues below this ad
While true as a highly condensed outline, those 10 words elide the traumatic brain injury she endured after a car accident, endless doctor visits and medical frustration, several years when she could barely get out of bed and refused to drive, depression, the collapse of a banking career and busy social life, the birth of a daughter to her and husband Greg and the creation, over just five months earlier this year, of Si Uthai Restaurant and Cafe in their hometown of Clifton Park.
Open since mid-May in a retail plaza on Grooms Road that is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, the restaurant combines her nickname, Si — pronounced “see” — and part of the name of Uthai Thani, the province where her mother, Kulisara Jiraprapai, was raised in their native Thailand. (Si’s given first name is Paullin.)
They gut-renovated what had been the home of the second location of the restaurant Celadon Thai, adding a bar, an old chandelier and elaborate mirror purchased from the Century House in Latham after it closed, a new floor and ceiling, and a mural that depicts the palace from the famous Ramakien murals, a Thai adaptation of the ancient Sanskrit epic poem Ramayana.
The Ramakien palace mural has hand-applied gold accents.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
Nearby residents have quickly discovered them — “We thought we might have a few tables that first night,” Greg says, “but we had 20,” in a restaurant seating about 50 diners total — as has the smaller community of people with traumatic brain injuries who have heard Si’s story and want to come and talk or to sit by themselves, knowing they’re in a safe, welcoming space where someone understands what they’ve been going through.
Article continues below this ad
What sets Si Uthai apart, the Haydens believe, is the authenticity of the ingredients, the recipes developed by their Thai-born head chef, Janyaporn Onsa, and their staff’s devotion to Thai-style hospitality. In that tradition, hosting and feeding guests is an honor, and those guests may be sitting on a chair or barstool wiped down with a cloth during the afternoon break between lunch and dinner by Si and Greg’s 4-year-old daughter, Naomi, who shares a middle name, Malai, with her maternal grandmother.
Northern Thai curry with spare ribs is one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes. The fiery chile paste at lower right, meant to be stirred into the sauce, is so potent that it sets off sneezing fits in the kitchen when large batches are made.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
What truly distinguishes their story from those preceding the opening of the scores of new independent restaurants in the Capital Region each year, however, is how they got here.
Article continues below this ad
In 2019, a decade after Si arrived from Thailand with a suitcase, a dream of an American life and a position as an au pair, and nine years after she met Greg, she was driving on Erie Boulevard in Schenectady to an event at which she was to represent a big regional bank. She’d risen rapidly from neophyte teller to lauded branch manager in about five years, and she believed she’d found her career path.
A car behind Si smashed into the rear of her vehicle, sending its hood into the truck stopped in front of her. She happened to be on the phone with Greg at the time.
“She was on Bluetooth talking to me when the guy hit her,” Greg told me during a joint interview with Si at the restaurant. He said, “We’re just having a normal conversation, and then, all of a sudden, some loud noise, some silence, and then (she said), ‘Oh, my God. I gotta call you back.’”
After he arrived at the scene, Si, in shock and a little incoherent, resisted going to the hospital. Greg prevailed. The verdict: a concussion, from which about 80% of patients fully recover within two to four weeks. Si did not.
Article continues below this ad
As the months passed, she experienced blurred vision, vertigo and loss of coordination. Sometimes, while walking, “It was like my feet just flopped on the floor,” Si said. On one of the rare occasions food appealed to her, “My eyes had the feeling like a slot machine, and I remember the fork and spoon flying away.”
“It was brutal to watch,” Greg said. “I couldn’t really help her, beyond just being there, and we didn’t have any answers.” The bank fired her. Greg had to cut back on the time he’d been devoting to learning to take over his family’s business, Hayden Glass and Screen in Albany. Accident flashbacks triggered by passing vehicles meant Si would get in a car only to be driven to medical appointments.
Persistent headaches nearly debilitated her until finally, after several years, her third or fourth neurologist suggested Botox to try to address them. It worked, after a few weeks, but the several days following sessions in which 35 to 40 shots went into her head with a 10-gauge needle were agonizing. And this doctor, the first — for whatever reason — to order an MRI and a CT scan, found and patched a leak of fluid from her inner ear.
While symptoms began to abate, Si’s mental state didn’t immediately improve.
Article continues below this ad
“She developed real social anxiety,” Greg said.
He invited friends over to help celebrate her birthday, but this upset her.
Remembering her reaction, Si said, “Why do you have to pretend to be happy when you’re not?”
Being pregnant with Naomi in 2022 changed Si’s perspective.
Article continues below this ad
She said she thought, “Now I feel like I’m worth something. I’m not hopeless (anymore). There’s things I want to do. I have to eat. I have to get up and walk, for her.”
Si also volunteered at a Buddhist temple in Duanesburg.
“To cook for (the monks), have somebody eat my food and appreciate me, it was an inspiration,” she said.
After trying a return to banking, Si and Greg happened to be eating at a local Thai restaurant when its owner mentioned a desire to sell the business, charting a new course for the couple. That deal didn’t work out, but they discovered that Celadon Thai’s owners — for whom Si’s mother had once worked after first moving to the Capital Region, and for whom Si had processed a bank loan — wanted to reduce their responsibilities back to only their Latham location.
Article continues below this ad
That was in December. The Haydens took over the space in January.
Speaking of his wife, Greg said, “She did all the work to get it all done. She made it happen.”
Greg Hayden has never before worked as a waiter or bartender, but with his wife in the kitchen, he’s learning the arts of front-of-house service and mixology.
Steve Barnes/Times Union
Si Uthai Restaurant held its grand opening on May 17. The cafe part, with the Century House chandelier, Thai-style coffee and pastries and other Asian baked goods, will roll out later this fall.
Article continues below this ad
Si has not fully recovered. But she is happy.
“Like (people said) after COVID, this is the new normal,” she said. “And that’s OK. It is good.”
Si Uthai, at 675 Grooms Road, Clifton Park, is open Tuesday to Sunday, closed Monday, serving lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and dinner from 4 to 9 p.m. Online ordering is available through its website. Phone: 518-579-0011.
Dining and Cooking