Empty Bowl Gourmet Noodle Bar Celebrates 10 Years of Thai Noodling

At a quick glance, the success story of Empty Bowl Gourmet Noodle Bar can be accurately appreciated as the triumph of a tasty Thai menu reliant on fresh ingredients, handmade recipes, and a sharply honed efficiency that’s mandated by a tiny kitchen and the fast pace of visitors to the Santa Barbara Public Market. Upon the eatery’s opening in April 2014, the food was instantly and almost unanimously deemed delicious; the menu was served to consistently high standards; and the kitchen was as transparent as it gets, every move visible by diners perched along the wraparound bar.

“We found the right niche,” explains Jerry Lee, who cofounded the restaurant with Emre Balli and Nui Pannak. “The menu has not changed since we opened. We don’t want to change it. It works.”

But reading a little deeper into Empty Bowl’s 10-year anniversary reveals more dramatic arcs: three immigrant owners achieving their American dreams; innovative entrepreneurs persevering by serving comfort food to the community through natural disasters, a pandemic, and the turnover turmoil of neighboring establishments; and culinary visionaries synthesizing cultures to satisfy an upscale Santa Barbara clientele while overcoming the stigma that ethnic food must be cheap.

Those themes can all be found in the richly spiced, savory broth of Empty Bowl’s popular Khao Soi Northern Thailand Curry Noodle Soup. Truth be told, the curry noodles are outsold by the Khao San Road Pad Thai, a k a Empty Bowl’s version of the most common Thai noodle dish in the West. But, said Lee, “the curry is right up there!”

When he was developing the restaurant concept — encouraged by the Public Market’s developer Marge Cafarelli, who gave Empty Bowl a chance when the original taco bar tenant dropped out — Lee told Pannak about the curry noodles he’d enjoyed in Chiang Mai during his many travels to Thailand. “I used to go there with my boys all the time, just for fun,” said Lee.

Pannak was working as a server at Zen Yai, a job she got back in 2000 when she moved from her native Bangkok to Santa Barbara. “I never was in the kitchen,” she explained. “I cooked because I missed Thai food. It made me learn more. Some of the dishes I couldn’t find here.” Because of his many Thai trips, Lee befriended Pannak to learn more of the culture. “We cooked together,” said Pannak. “That’s how we became friends.” 

She was excited about the idea of becoming a chef, and then further convinced when she saw the spot in the middle of the Public Market where they’d be located. Calling it “the head of the dragon,” Pannak explained, “Everybody who comes in, they see you.” 

But she didn’t know the curry noodles, since they weren’t popular in Bangkok when she grew up. So Pannak queried her sister about the dish, and learned that it was a cross-cultural creation: the stewed chicken and noodles from China, curry spices from India by way of Myanmar, coconut milk from Thailand. “It’s a mix of cultures; they tried to mix and match,” she came to understand. “They put everything together to become that dish.”

With Balli on board as the third partner — he came from Turkey to work at San Ysidro Ranch, which is where he met Lee — Pannak worked on the recipe, which is still made in multiple batches every day by hand. The process involves muddling galanga, cilantro root, Thai chile, lemongrass, and red curry, mixing them with yellow curry powder and coconut milk in the stock where chicken breasts are boiled, and finishing with flat egg noodles, chili oil, crunchy fried noodles, cilantro, green onions, and pickled mustard greens. 

“You have to have pickled mustard greens in it,” said Lee, who adds pickled serrano peppers for heat instead of the even spicier pickled and dried Thai bird’s-eye chilis that sit in their own jars atop the bar. “There’s no butter and no cream,” confirmed Lee, which some customers don’t believe, given the broth’s lush nature.

It is very much like his Chiang Mai memories, with a few significant twists. Instead of being served in smaller bowls that are ordered multiple times, as is done in Thailand — which doesn’t really mesh with American eating styles — Empty Bowl’s version comes in one big bowl. It doesn’t use red onions either, which is common overseas. And while the traditional protein is dark chicken meat, Lee admitted with a laugh, “We changed to white meat for the gringos in Santa Barbara.”

It’s the quality of each ingredient that hooks fans — particularly that free-range Shelton’s chicken, which is distributed by Newport Meats, the same place that services high-end spots like San Ysidro Ranch and bouchon. “That’s why we get the repeat guests; that’s why we’ve been here so long,” said Lee. Some did hesitate at Empty Bowl’s prices at first, since they were more than the typical Thai menu. “But once they taste it,” said Lee, “they go, ‘Oh, yeah.’”

Lee’s basically been in the restaurant business since he moved to California from Taiwan at age 7. His parents — his dad was originally a film director, his mom a makeup artist, which is how they met — resettled in the Carmel area, where his grandparents ran a Chinese restaurant called the Golden Buddha. When he was 12, they moved to San Luis Obispo, where his parents started their own restaurant called Mandarin Gourmet. “They were there 24/7,” said Lee, who delivered food for the restaurant when he was old enough. “I never saw my parents. I basically raised my sister.”

They later divorced, his dad going back to Taiwan and his mom moving south, leaving their son to live with a friend for his senior year of high school. “Those were some tough times when they left,” said Lee. He came to attend SBCC in 1993, but got a job as a baker for Great Harvest and then at Citronelle and never finished school. He moved on in 2005 to San Ysidro Ranch (where he built up the legendary wine cellar) and briefly to El Encanto when it reopened in 2013.  

A few years ago, after 30 years of very little contact with his father, he put his parents back in touch at their request. “Now they’re remarried,” he said of their second-chance love story. “They live in Orange County.”

When Cafarelli called with the opportunity to do something in her Public Market, Lee, Pannak, and Balli bet it all on Empty Bowl. “We had like $2,000 in our bank account when we opened,” said Lee. “We put everything into this place.”

It worked, as Empty Bowl is the only original tenant left, aside from Rori’s Artisanal Creamery. Three of the restaurant’s roughly 40 employees have been there since day one, and many more have worked there at least eight years. After six or so years of working around the clock, the founders now mostly serve as managers, allowing them to focus on balanced lives, unlike the one that Lee — now the father of two young ones — experienced as a child. 

The team did place a losing bet in 2018 with the opening of Khao Kaeng in Montecito, but the sit-down concept ran into the bad economics of the post–Thomas Fire and mudslide era. They also opened Three Monkeys as a Thai street food and Vietnamese bánh mì spot in the back of the Public Market a year ago. That’s working all right, but the back-of-building location is not ideal. 

Empty Bowl remains the golden child. “We got so lucky that we have mostly local people as customers,” said Pannak. “Tourists help, but local people make me alive.” And they just signed another 10-year lease. Said Lee, “We’re not going anywhere.”

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To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Empty Bowl Gourmet Noodle Bar (inside the S.B. Public Market, 38 W. Victoria St.) is hosting a contest — running on Instagram @emptybowlnoodle April 11-14 — to see who can guess the number of Khao Soi Northern Thai Curry Noodle soups they’ve sold since opening. The winner will receive a $200 Empty Bowl gift card, plus a $50 gift card for Rori’s Artisanal Creamery, which is also celebrating its 10th anniversary at the S.B. Public Market. Call (805) 335-2426 or visit emptybowlnoodle.com.