Photo by Michael Schrader/Pinkbike Media
RESTAURATEUR Roxanna Williams’ life began as the stuff of a romance movie. Her father was a U.S. soldier stationed at a Royal Thai Air Force base during the Vietnam war. Her mom, Jhanya, was an official greeter at the airport, waving the military men in as they landed. (“I still have her little orange dress,” Williams says.) After the war, the couple returned to the soldier’s hometown of Martinsville with little Roxanna in tow.
When Roxanna moved to Indianapolis to attend Butler University, her mother followed, and the script evolved into a tale of the American dream. Jhanya opened her first restaurant in 1997, and after Roxanna joined the business, the pair opened a series of Thai restaurants around the city.
When Williams started raising her own young family, she traded the restaurant life for another profession, but her love of the game remained. When her kids hit their teens, she started looking for a standout space for a new restaurant, given Indy’s current boom in Asian dining. A freestanding Wanamaker home that had last housed a hair salon fit her vision of a cute, cottage-style Thai spot to call her own.
The mother-and-daughter team opened Baan Thai Bistro there in June, 2023 with a sentimental menu of traditional dishes. “So many things we chose to put on our menu have a special meaning to me and my mom,” Williams says. “But everything you get is what my mom would have made you in Thailand in the 1970s. That’s how we still make it today.”
8705 Southeastern Ave., 317-759-8424, baanthaibistro.com
