A Wok and Roll Attitude
Like My Thai whets Erie’s appetite for Revitalization
Picture it: It’s the early ‘80s. A group of 12-year-olds in Saegertown, PA, sits on pillows on the floor around a coffee table, wearing bathrobes. They’re savoring a dish prepared by their friend, Mike, who races home each day from school to catch CBC’s “Wok with Yan” on a TV station out of London, Ontario. It’s hosted by Stephen Yan, famous for his aprons featuring puns like “wok on the wild side” in iron-on letters.
Inspired by the ebullient Yan, young Mike buys his first wok with birthday money at the Dahlkemper’s in Meadville, PA—a Taylor & Ng, from San Francisco.
“I took it home and immediately started to burn vegetables,” he recalls. “I remember my mother saying something about blue smoke in the house.”
As an origin story, it’s a tad unconventional. But then so is Mike Augustine, whose culinary adventures began as that wok-wielding 12-year-old. And so is Like My Thai, the wildly popular Erie, PA, restaurant where he’s chef and owner with his wife, Liz.
I’ll admit it: no unbiased journalism here. I completely adore Like My Thai. My husband and I dine there every week or two, lest we go through withdrawal. Addiction to Japchae—a smoky, wondrously savory bowl of tender veggies nested in sweet potato noodles and topped with a sesame-dotted fried egg—might not be medically recognized. But believe me: It’s real.
Mike was “totally infatuated with down-home Chinese restaurants” in his early years, and also loved cookbooks, which he used to take on Scout excursions. “I would read the recipes to the other Scouts in the van headed to camp and quiz them on which wine they should pair with each dish.”
For a spell, Mike gave up the wok and ventured into French-style cooking, as those ingredients were more readily available. “While I was in high school, I realized that I could charm girls with cooking and hilarity. If I could keep them laughing and feed them, I was a shoo-in every time,” he laughs.
Cooking and hilarity still define Mike’s approach, and his presence is as much a draw as his creations. At Like My Thai, nothing separates where the food is prepared from where it’s savored, so anyone can watch Mike’s wok wizardry in action. “I really like people,” Mike says, “and bringing the back of the house into the front of the house.”
He also loves the creative process of cooking. “The attraction is the flow, just like anything,” he explains. “That’s the part of cooking that’s the big payoff.”
Mike isn’t formally trained as a chef. But he’s worked at, managed or owned everything from fine dining to tavern to pizza shop—to selling gussied-up bagels out of a VW van at Grateful Dead shows.
It was while he owned the pizza shop Papa Joe’s that Pad Thai Tuesdays emerged in the mid- 2000s, along with red curry many Fridays. He and Liz also hosted a number of Pad Thai house parties— or “keggers with chopsticks.” By 2006, they had to let the pizza shop go. But they devised what’s now known as a popup and took Pad Thai Tuesdays on the road. I remembered one particular event at a dank neighborhood dive ironically named The Friendly Tavern.
“Yeah!” Mike recalls. “We were cooking on a pool table!”
Beginning in January of 2009, Mike and Liz operated their popup at about a dozen places, eventually finding a home for it at a nowextinct lunch place downtown, then later settling into La Bella, where Mike also worked, and where their Tuesday popup was a fixture for five years.
It’s also where they attracted the following that made crowdfunding the perfect fit.
In 2014, Mike and Liz connected with Kris Wheaton, a Mercyhurst University professor whose Quickstarter helps local startups maximize Kickstarter. For three months, they hammered out their campaign to convert the popup into brick-and-mortar, then launched that November.
They were fully funded in 29 hours. The next 13 days brought an additional $10,000.
“My phone would beep with every new donation,” Mike recalls. “At the end of the first week, I called Lizzie and said ‘I think we’re going to have to do this!’”
So, they went to Cleveland, locked themselves into their favorite hotel room with a couple of yellow pads and a bottle of bourbon, and conceived of what is now Like My Thai. They secured their State Street home when its commercial leasing agent dined at their popup and was served what he said was the best piece of salmon he’d ever eaten in his life. The space was theirs.
With the help of Mike’s dad and a couple of friends, they opened in late January 2015, and have been spicing up State Street ever since.
Erie has a reputation for being resistant to change, even a bit bland. The city’s current transformation isn’t the result of any top-down branding campaign; it’s thanks to folks like Mike and Liz Augustine, who’ve ingeniously pursued their passions, and served them to the city with a generous helping of humor.
Like My Thai offers Thai, Korean and down-home Chinese dishes, among others. They don’t care to placate purists or conform to any one cuisine. “That way we don’t have any competition,” Mike quips.
“Two words we stay away from are ‘authentic’ and ‘fusion,’” he says, but he has encountered the occasional “expert” in Thai food who questions his take.
“It’s been a real education in conditioning,” he reflects. “Whatever people are used to as their style of Pad Thai, that’s what Pad Thai is, in their scope. On the other hand, I have Asian customers who tell me they never order any of the dishes I sell anywhere else.
“Because of the fact that I’m not Asian, we have to inject a lot of sincerity,” he acknowledges. “I have a really great staff, with a lot of heart. If we don’t have heart, it becomes mechanical.”
Mike estimates that about 25 percent of Like My Thai’s customers don’t look at the menu, either because they already know what they want or they’ve tried everything and just let him decide.
As with any popular venture, he says there’s “a lot of courting of ‘what could be.’ But we’re still turning people away many Friday and Saturday nights, and filling up at lunch.” And, he’s still doing all of the cooking. He says there are a few special things he’d like to add to the menu—more Korean, for one—and they’re developing one more curry. But that’s the extent of expansion plans for now.
After we wrap up our conversation, Mike walks me to the door, pulls it open, and draws deeply a breath of the drizzly overcast day.
“You know what this is?” he asks. “This is noodle weather.”
What a wonderful reason to welcome Erie’s coming chill.
> Like My Thai: 827 State St, Erie, PA; 814-455-1026
