Arnold Myint took Pad Thai off the dinner menu at International Market. It's the equivalent of a certain Starbucks order, he said.
"It pained my kitchen for us to create all these beautiful things for people just for them to get a pumpkin spice latte," he said.
When he told his sister and business partner, Anna Myint, that he wanted to pull one of the restaurant's most popular dishes, her answer was swift.
"No," she said. "It pays the bills."
She wasn't wrong.
At International Market, the Nashville Thai restaurant Arnold and Anna Myint's parents opened in 1975, the kitchen was turning out 25 to 30 bowls of Pad Thai a night while dishes like smoked duck noodles and pork belly krapao went comparatively ignored.
One antidote to that kind of default ordering
has been Arnold Myint's decision to add something a bit more adventurous, but just as comfortable, to the menu.
International Market now offers a three-course, family-style meal that lets the chef decide what lands on the table.
For $55 per person, with a two-person minimum, diners get a spread built around what's in season and what Myint is excited to cook. Some are riffs on dishes already on the menu, while others change with local farm finds.
Anna Myint eventually relented on eliminating Pad Thai, which was far and away the restaurant's best-selling dinner dish. Keeping it on the lunch menu helped.
Still, not everyone has embraced the change. She said some customers have walked out or canceled takeout orders after learning they couldn't get their favorite iconic noodle dish at dinner.
But she's standing behind her brother's decision.
"I want our customers to experience more authentic Thai food and other amazing options Arnold has made on the menu," she said. "Like our mom, she introduced so many to new things. This is our chance to."
What's on the menu at International Market in Nashville?
The result is a fun, multi-course dinner that feels like being invited into a Thai family home by someone who really, really knows how to cook.
On a recent summer night, that meant bright chicken liver larb tucked into tiny tart shells, watermelon layered with tamarind gastrique and crispy rice, trout and shrimp fritters scented with red curry and lime leaf, corn ribs folded into green papaya salad, and charcoal-grilled head-on prawns served with house chili crisp and Thai seafood sauce.
The menu changes, but the goal remains the same.
"I feel like there's an opportunity now that I have kind of a captive audience that trusts me, but they don't know how to navigate the menu," Arnold Myint said.
That's especially true now that International Market has been recognized by Michelin. The recognition is not the same designation as a star, but it lends additional cachet to a restaurant widely credited with introducing generations of Nashvillians to Thai food.
In some ways, the family meal is a new version of something their mother, Patti Myint, was already doing decades ago, although her approach was less formal.
"What do you want?" Arnold Myint recalled her asking customers at the table. "Chicken, beef or pork or shrimp. Extra for shrimp."
Pick one, and she'd take it from there.
"If you ever had that kind of experience from Patti, then that's definitely kind of what this is now, what it's evolved to," he said.
International Market's immigrant DNA
Keeping customers happy has always been part of International Market's DNA, but there's a generational difference in how mother and son approach that work. Patti Myint's version existed in an era when many Asian American restaurateurs survived by giving customers exactly what they wanted.
"There was a bit of a desperate plea to the community to support her when she first opened," Arnold Myint said. "Which was the Asian American food story, right? 'Please come and eat my food. I'll make anything for you. Just stay.'"
He sees that as part of a larger immigrant story — one told through long hours, adaptation and the need to make a sale.
Where his mother's generation built restaurants around accommodation, his generation has the luxury of approaching things differently. Now, a growing cohort of diners places the same value on the process behind Asian cuisine that they've long bestowed on Eurocentric restaurants.
"That something-for-everyone mentality has been lost in this new food movement that we're in these days, where we stand by what we do well as opposed to 'The customer is always right,'" Myint said.
That doesn't mean policing diners or lecturing them about authenticity. It just means inviting them to the table for a real Thai dinner.
"During the day, you can still get the Pad Thai," he said. "And you can still get a taste of what I do at night. That's just honoring my legacy and the heritage that my parents gave me."
Family meal is available on the dinner menu for dine-in only. A la carte options remain available. Find out more and make reservations at www.im2nashville.com.
Mackensy Lunsford is the senior dining reporter for The Tennessean. Reach her at mlunsford@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Arnold Myint killed Pad Thai. What he wants you to order instead
