Mob Thai’d: Thai House After Dark
The best Thai food in OKC comes from a truck called Mob Thai’d, a name derived from a Drake lyric, and owners Amanda and Benji Sukmanee launched the business with a huge water balloon fight on April 13, 2024, in conjunction with Thai/Lao New Year. (The Drake song is “Mob Ties,” and the artist is a favorite of Benji’s cousin Logan Sourignavong, who also works on the truck. That’s the first and last time I mention Drake in a story. Hopefully.)
“We chose the weekend for good luck, because of the new year, and we had a Songkran-style water balloon fight, and the Asian Chamber of Commerce had a ribbon cutting,” Benji said. Thailand’s annual Songkran (Water) Festival commemorates the new year, and because water is symbolic of cleansing and renewal, it features prominently in celebrations. The brightly colored clothing and super soaker fights are just part of the fun.
Benji’s family opened Thai House in 1994, making it what Benji believes is the oldest Thai restaurant in the metro at 30. She and her sister came to the U.S. from Thailand when she was 13, and they lived with a maternal aunt until the rest of the family joined them. Like many kids in food service families, she started working in the kitchen young, also attending Harding, NW Classen and finally UCO for an advertising degree with minors in marketing and art. When her father moved back to Thailand, she left another job to come back to the restaurant business to help her mother.
On a photoshoot for a friend’s bachelorette party, she met Amanda, a nursing administrator who grew up in Moore in a Vietnamese/White family. Amanda attended Westmoore and Platt College. At the time, Amanda swore she’d never get into food service, but Thai House After Dark got both thinking about the possibility of late-night eats for the club crowd and anyone else who might love Thai food.

All photos by Benji Sukmanee
“We’d go out and party in the clubs,” Amanda said, “and afterwards, there would be nothing to eat, so Benji started taking the group to Thai House, where she’d cook for all of us, sometimes as many as 20 friends. We called it Thai House After Dark. It was just kind of a joke, but we loved it, and everyone would go home full, a little more sober, and ready to sleep.”
The truck idea slowly evolved from those experiences and subsequent conversations, and their relationship developed into marriage in September of last year. “The truck also makes it possible for us to spend more time together,” Amanda said. “I have to admit it can be a little scary, just two women posting up in a food truck that late at night, but we love it. Logan does too. We’re training him to be a second Benji.”
Amanda takes care of front of house – greeting guests, taking orders, packaging the orders, and updating social media – while Benji does the bulk of the cooking. She is actively training Logan the way her mother trained her, which is to say, in the proper way to do Thai food: slow, deliberate, meticulous, flavorful, and fresh. Her mother, who at 67 is still in the kitchen at Thai House, prepping, cooking and cleaning like she has most of her life, wasn’t wild about the truck idea, and both women laugh when Benji said, “My mom says the truck is kids’ play, and while she didn’t mean it as a compliment, we take it as a positive now. I’m proud of the food we do; we still do it the right way.”
The theme is too common to ignore in immigrant communities. Parents and grandparents arrive in the new country, settle in, raise the kids, cook the recipes they learned from the home country, and teach the children to do the same. The process of integrating into a new culture exposes the kids to all kinds of new foods, and they want to mix flavors and dishes in a way that we unfortunately call fusion instead of evolution. The older generations push back, but in the home country, food has continued to evolve. Yes, the old recipes are still around, but food always evolves. Benji and Amanda are doing an amazing job of respecting the traditions of Thai cuisine and cooking while adding their own voices to the process and ingredients.
“Some of the dishes on the menu are childhood favorites of mine,” Benji said. “Khao man gai, which we call The Underboss on the menu, is popular Thai street food. Khao soi noodles are a popular street food in northern Thailand, and I’m planning to add Thai grilled chicken and a dessert this year.”
The khao soi noodle bowl – Off the Record on the menu – is one of the ten best dishes I tried last year. Bright, lively, vibrant, punchy, zippy, umami…you run out of words trying to describe this dish’s palate impact. It’s astonishing, and because they’ve avoided what Amanda calls the “American fillers” of sugar, salt and fat, the dishes don’t weigh you down, even the ones with sauce.
They do have a pet peeve, and it’s one I should introduce by saying it wasn’t until Chef Jeff Chanchaleune opened Ma Der Lao Kitchen that I got over my issues with sticky rice. I, too, treated it like many Americans do: What is this and why is it all stuck together? Once I learned the culinary joy of dipping it in jaew bong and jaew mak phet, I was hooked, and I get the same urge when I have Mob Thai’d’s khao soi noodles – all that delicious yellow curry in the bottom of the bowl needing my attention.
“We did an event for the Asian Chamber last year, and we made 150 portions of moo ping – pork skewers with sticky rice,” Amanda said. “At the end, all the skewers were gone, and no one had touched the sticky rice.”
“We had it on the menu at Thai House in the early days, but no one ordered, so my mom took it off the menu,” Benji said.
They are correct that sticky rice is wonderful, and people who finally give it a try in the proper context – like I did – end up “getting it.” While older generations have accused young cooks like Benji and Logan of being “lazy” for not doing things the old way, the Mob Thai’d crew are actively fighting to save and gain respect for culinary traditions like sticky rice.
Currently, the truck will be posted up two nights a week starting February 6 and 7. They are looking to get out more this year, and they’re actively seeking events where Mob Thai’d will be welcome. They continue to work on the menu, too, by offering specials weekly, and taking feedback. At the Asian District Festival last year, the feedback on the khao soi noodles with pickled vegetables was so overwhelmingly positive that Benji convinced her mom to add it to the Thai House menu. That right there is your not-so-subtle hint that if their posted hours are too late for you – I really do understand; I’m old, too – then you can start working your way through their menu at Thai House. And when you finally make it to the truck, laab-inspired wings are also a must.