Thai Passion owner gets the boot from downtown, finds new eatery location

Thai Passion has been a mainstay in the downtown Austin dining scene for 18 years, but that all changed when the restaurant shut down suddenly on Sept. 30.

Owner Pisit "Gene" Kobboon had to move after being given a 30-day notice by his long time landlord.

"Part of this was my fault. The lease was up in December 2013 and I just let it go month to month," Kobboon said. "The landlord said, 'Don't worry about it. You've been here so long'."

Kobboon didn't worry about it until August 5 when he received the notice. He was shocked to say the least, but he conceded he had been complaining about problems involving the grease trap and other issues at 620 Congress Ave. The entry to the restaurant was off West Seventh Street.

Complicating the situation, Kobboon said, is that the building owner is planning to retire and turn over responsibilities to his daughter.
The dynamics obviously had changed, and Kobboon said the landlord is going to convert the 4,200-square-foot space to something other than restaurant use.

As soon as Kobboon read the notice to vacate, the first phone call he made was to his friend Herman Tjahja, a principal and real estate broker at Retail Solutions. He's been the go-to guy for many owners and operators of Asian restaurants.

"I was surprised that's all the notice he was given. We began looking all over downtown right away," Tjahja said, though he noted that second-generation restaurant space in downtown is almost non-existent. "There aren't many of them and most of the landlords want national tenants. They don't want to deal with mom-and-pops."

With time running short, Tjahja showed Kobboon a 5,525-square-foot space that once held a Japanese restaurant at 13376 Research Blvd. in the Galleria Oaks shopping center.

Jan Buchholz covers commercial and residential real estate, construction and architecture and retail and restaurants for the Austin Business Journal.