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QuickTake:
From their early days at WildCraft Cider Works to opening a restaurant on Pearl Street, the owners of Krob Krua have shifted their Thai eatery once again to a food cart called Lucky Thai in Eugene’s Friendly neighborhood.
Lucky Thai is a trip to Bangkok’s night markets — and to the analog era.
If you’ve tried, say, the food cart’s ba mee moo dang ($16) — succulent wood-smoked red pork, tender-crisp bok choy and springy egg noodles curled in a punchy broth — you likely either phoned in or ordered at the counter.
Lucky Thai isn’t on food ordering apps and seldom posts on social media. The closest you’ll get to ordering ahead is by phone, and that’s if they’re not too busy to pick up.
“It says it on the message, you know, ‘Sorry. Come down or wait five minutes and try back, and we’ll get you,’” said co-owner Jeffry Hardinger. “We’re kind of running it like 1999, man. Paper menus and phone calls.”
Lucky Thai was opened in early June by the owners of Krob Krua, the Thai restaurant formerly operating at 13th Avenue and Pearl Street in Eugene.
I reached out to Hardinger a few times back in early May, when rumors first surfaced about Krob Krua’s sudden closure. I left a voicemail, stopped by the restaurant a few times and sent messages to their Instagram account. I never heard back.
Turns out, Hardinger, along with his wife, Varalux “Luck” Hardinger (whom Lucky Thai was named after) and Luck’s close friend and sister, Sujitra “Pat” Baker, were busy preparing to open Lucky Thai in Eugene’s Friendly neighborhood.
I pulled up to Lucky Thai’s digs on a random Wednesday in early August, walked across the parking lot of The Healthy Pet and placed my order, asking Jeffry Hardinger to surprise me with a few dishes of his choice.
“It works,” Hardinger said of the old school system. “People show up, and they get some human contact.”
Hardinger said the decision to exchange their brick-and-mortar restaurant for a mobile eatery has given the crew a better work-life balance. And with reduced overhead costs, they’re not charging as much. Prices for some dishes decreased by as much as 35%, according to calculations on recent Krob Krua and Lucky Thai menus.
“[Customers] are not paying $24 for a restaurant experience, but they’re getting restaurant-quality food, and a lot of times they’re going to take it home anyway,” he said.
If you prefer to dine in, there’s a covered seating area just off the food trailer with picnic tables, benches, lights and flowers hanging next to a small raised garden growing mint, tomatoes and chilis.
“This is the vibe in Thailand too,” Hardinger said, looking around. “There’s an indoor-outdoor dining room, and then the kitchen is built into that room space. A lot of the yummiest restaurants I ate at were those.”
House-smoked, marinated and grown
The ba mee moo dang is just one showcase of the work the trio put into each of their dishes: They smoke the pork, make their own broth and source fresh noodles from a company in Portland.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s McDonald’s or La Bernardin,” Hardinger said. “It’s got to be fresh. Are you making it all the time? Are you moving through it? And then: Are you making it from scratch?”
At Lucky Thai, the answer is often yes. The dumplings are hand-wrapped. The fillings, curries, broths, sausage and marinades are their recipes. The meat, which they buy whole, is butchered and smoked by the trio. Beyond their food cart garden, Jeffry Hardinger grows herbs and produce for Lucky Thai at a greenhouse in west Eugene.
Such standards complement the bold flavors found across the diverse landscapes and regions of Thailand: the sharp aromatics and lush herbs, the blend of sour and sweet and salty, the slurpable curries and noodles and soups, the immediate heat (if you want it spicy).
Lucky Thai’s menu is designed like that of a restaurant, organized by appetizer; soup and salad; and main, which is further broken down into noodle, stir fried, fried rice and curry dishes. Such a layout can help folks explore new menu items based on their favorites.
There’s nothing wrong with ordering the pad thai ($15) again, but you could try another noodle dish that is just as tempting. How about pad kee mow ($15), with wider-cut rice noodles, Thai basil, string beans, bamboo and bell pepper?
For a meaty appetizer, you have options, such as the smoked chicken satay with peanut sauce or the house-made and smoked northern Thai-style pork sausage.
And when that smoker is running, the sausage and chicken hang in the air like a backyard barbecue on a summer night.
‘A place to go’
Jeffry and Luck Hardinger along with Baker have been making ba mee moo dang for more than 15 years — well before Krob Krua.
Hardinger, who graduated from Lane Community College’s culinary program, has been cooking for 30 years. His knives and hands and aprons have graced Excelsior, Marché, The Davis and other restaurants across Eugene.
He’s worked in fine dining restaurants, fancy seafood spots and hotels. He ran restaurants in New York, including Long Tan, a once-beloved and now-shuttered Thai restaurant where he met his wife and Baker. The three cooked together there in the early 2000s.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Hardinger, like millions of New Yorkers and commuters, was trying to get to work. He hadn’t yet realized a hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center.
The trains had stopped running, which never happened, so he hailed a cab from Queens. It wasn’t until he was riding toward Long Tan in downtown Brooklyn, that he saw from across the East River that the south tower of the World Trade Center had collapsed.
From the Spanish radio station, he heard the words “avión” and “terroristas.” When the second building buckled and crashed, it felt like an earthquake, he said.
Hardinger made it to the restaurant on foot, watching thousands of people spill out from the Atlantic Terminal commuter station. He found a staff member in the basement rolling spring rolls for the day, listening to Thai music, living in a different world from the people just above.
She’d taken the train in before the first attack. Hardinger sent her home to Queens in a cab, then opened Long Tan’s doors to people escaping downtown Manhattan. Two men walked in, suits coated in ash, and sat at the bar. They couldn’t work, couldn’t get home, so they drank and bought drinks for strangers. Hardinger cooked.
They stayed open till four or five in the morning, Hardinger said, making spring rolls and pad thai and pouring drinks.
“Everybody was just happy to have a place to go, get some food,” he said.
Twenty-five years later, he and Luck Hardinger and Baker are still cooking. He’s happy to be back in Lane County and closer to his family, but he’s taken a lot of lessons from working in New York.
New Yorkers are savvy, he said. They’ll ask, “Is this the same? Are you the same people?” before stepping foot in a beloved restaurant under new ownership or a different name. If it’s just as good, they’ll come back.
You could say the same about Krob Krua’s regulars, many of whom followed the crew from Pearl Street to Friendly Street.
While the name is different and it’s now a food cart and the wood-fired oven is no more, the meat is just as smoky at Lucky Thai, the vegetables just as fresh, the Thai dishes just as bright.
If you go
Lucky Thai is at 2777 Friendly St., Eugene. The food cart is open 11 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday; 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Lucky Thai boasts pad thai and other crowd favorites, as well as unsung dishes, from laab and crispy rice salad with sour sausage to khao soi and pad kra pow. Prices hover between $15 and $17 for mains, and protein options include tofu, vegetables, chicken, ground pork, steak and shrimp.
