An Open Letter to No Thai Restaurant

We folks here in Dexter, just west of Ann Arbor, love our own community, as much as we love Ann Arbor. It's not much more than an 8-minute drive to get to the Old West Side from the village. You might say that Dexter has become a bit of a bedroom community for Ann Arbor.

My subdivision is replete with university doctors and teachers and researchers, and members of successful businesses of every size headquartered here in Washtenaw county. All these folks have a couple things in common - they're often too busy to spend hours in the kitchen preparing a family meal, and they really appreciate great Thai food.

I do my best to, a couple times a month, hit up the No Thai! restaurant on Plymouth Road on my way home from Domino Farms back to Dexter.  The drive is just long enough that I might have to nuke the dishes for a few seconds once I'm home, but it's a small price to pay for great Thai at a great price. The closest Thai restaurant to Dexter is in fact on the Old West Side, but if I'm going to drive that far from Dexter, I'll go a few extra miles for No Thai!. Go big or go home, right?

The Dexter Patch this week reported that not one but two new pizza places have chosen to locate in the Village of Dexter. That sounds good, until you realize that Dexter is already replete with pizza places: eight, yes eight restaurants that currently either serve pizza exclusively or feature pizza at last count, and perhaps two more if you include the subs restaurants that happen to serve a "pizza" on the menu. That makes 10 pizza joints in the Village of Dexter, with a population of 4,100. Our new person-to-pizza ratio is around 400 to 1! Apply that math to Ann Arbor, and there would have to be 250 pizza joints in the city to maintain the ratio!

We've been discussing it on Patch.com and on Facebook (remember, we tornado survivors still chat with each other a lot online). The consensus is clear. WE ARE SICK OF PIZZA.

Mostly, we've been pining for Thai, Mexican, Korean, Chinese, etc.  And No Thai! has been mentioned several times in these sick-of-pizza threads. Many have noted that you've made plans to open a new location on South University near campus, hinting at the chain's long-term success and suggesting your expansion is well deserved.

Oh, what we would not do to see No Thai! here in Dexter.

There is plenty of room for you here, with unoccupied new construction at reasonable prices. Plus a central village location would extend your market toward Scio Township, Chelsea and Pinckney, which also suffer from a lack of great Thai (or other Pan Asian) fare. We have a reliable local work force, and we're not far from I-94. Finally, I believe there are enough campus students in love with No Thai! that they'd take up the slack lost from folks like me stopping for carry out on the way home from work.

So, what do you say, Mr. No? What we wouldn't give to answer the question, "is No Thai! coming to Dexter?" with "No kidding!"

Brian Shensky

Dexter Village resident