Chang Thai Durango

Hello..
All my customers and my support.

It have been 4 years since I opened Chang Thai Durango to serve authentic Thai food restaurants in Durango. I moved to Durango because I love Durango and I came here with my very strong thought I want to make great Thail food for people in Durango. I never want to increase my food price thar much. Because I love people here. I want everyone able to enjoy my food and happy.

I'm almost 50 years old. I worked 6 days a week. To serve people in the community. I worked very hard with a strong spirit. I don't even have time for myself or my health.

Now have a group of people that I don't know that they ever eat my food or not. They try to destroy my spirit and my soul. I feel so sad and depress. I feel like my hard work never matter with people here..??

I'm so sorry to say all this. I will try to not give up and continue work as best I can to serve all my support and all my customers who still love my food.

Thank you so much and I very appreciate for your support.

**I'm so sorry if my English not really correct. All I wrote are from my heart and my feeling.

Ja-Ae The owner of
Chang Thai Durango

Ja-Ae said to tell everyone that came in tonight, thank you for your support.

Hello Texans' and Californians',

It seems that many people from your state love Durango, Colorado. What's not to love about being in a valley with mountains around you 360 degrees, and white capped in the winter to boot! Not to mention, a river that runs through the entire town.

We are selling our business. So if you are looking to relocate and have a restaurant that you are looking to transfer, look no more. It's newly remodeled and has a great ambiance.

Places to rent in this town are very hard to come by, particularly a turn-key restaurant. They simply do not exist. This is a great opportunity to begin a new start in a great town.

Contact us at [email protected]

SPECIAL: Gaeng Hung Lay (Northern Thai Pork Curry)

Pork rib, hung lay curry paste, onion, tomatoes, fresh ginger, peanut, garlic, and Chang Thai seasoning. Served with rice.

Will be served starting on 5.24.2023

New Special dish..!!

Stewed pork hock with rice.

Slow cook stewed pork hock. Served with steam jasmine rice, steam broccoli, hard boil egg, and spicy and sour sauce.

Available today in the restaurant and online order until sold out.

KHAO SOI SPECIAL
For all of this week or until we run out. Starting tonight's dinner shift.

Soft egg noodle served with chicken drumstick topped with fried egg noodle, cilantro, green onion, red onion.

NEW DESSERT!

Our own made brownie with walnuts inside, scoop of ice cream (4 flavors to choose from), and whip cream. And nothing is complete without the cherry on top.

We now have Papaya Salad again, until it's sold out.

Available in Thai Style (sweet and sour with palm sugar) or Laos Style (pickled fish, salt crab).

Enjoying Thai BBQ for the super bowl.

Sunday nights?

It's always something with the restaurant industry. The throttling was supposed to be set at $150 every 15 minutes after $175 was too much the first 2 nights on the new platform.

Instead, tonight we got:

5:00pm - $380
5:15pm - $280
5:30pm - $315
5:45pm - $250
6:00pm - $170
6:15pm - $325..
7:00pm - $350

So, if you ordered tonight, that's why your food was late.

There's just too much aggravation in this industry. Too many variables are not within your control. The list is long, very long.

A guy comes in last night, 5 minutes early, and lets out an audible sigh when his food wasn't ready (5 minutes early). I ask him if he's in a hurry to which he replies, with attitude, WELL, NOW I'M NOT! By the time it was ready, it was only 1 minute late. Imagine the atrocity of such an event; meanwhile, there are people losing limbs or life in wars right now.

Drip...drip...drip

Working on some drinks tonight, if anyone is up for trying a drink on the house, stop in for dinner.

I'm curious as to how the chocolate pecan martini is going to come out. SOUNDS good anyhow.

Edit: Delicious!

WE NOW HAVE DESSERTS!

* As someone who is not a huge fan of mint drinks or ice cream, the vanilla mint shake is phenom.

Chang Thai Durango – Personal Chef & Catering Our chef, Ja-Ae, grew up with the delicious spices and strong flavors of Thailand. Food was not just a hobby or a job, but a way of life. It was a focal point in family gatherings and shared during special occasions. Food was family. All of this is still true to this day. We hope you’ll feel like ...

WE ARE NO LONGER USING CHOW NOW. WE HAVE SWITCHED TO GO TAB.

The new direct link to our ordering platform is:
https://gotab.io/loc/changthaidurango

Ordering can still be done through our website. If you are ordering any other way that is not listed (our website or a link to the Chow Now platform) please let us know below so that we can terminate it promptly. Thank you.

Also, when your food is done, the system will automatically send you a text message that your order is ready. Please be sure to have entered a working number. You will continue getting an email confirmation with your time, please check this and be sure to enter an email that you check, or will check. We will no longer be flexible in remaking food placed at the wrong time now that we have eliminated Chow Now - 2 systems can't have bugs, thus making it user error.

Choosing a dining-in option only will no longer be an option with this new system. If you are dining in, the entire order must be placed. Or you can roll the dice and just show up. I think most people know why this is, and our system has been dictated by the high amount of take-out orders placed in advance.

Unlike the hassle checking out for first time users with Chow Now, there is no creating an account with Go Tab. It will remember your information so you will need to only enter it once.

We have more options with the new system, and rather than having our system set at a number of orders (2) every 15 minutes we have set it to a dollar amount which will be much better for people ordering at lunch. However, until we get this dialed in, we will probably be late on some orders so if you are pressed for time, it may not be best to order in the first week. If you are flexible, we have drinks at the bar, and TVs, and a book probing why we now have 4, 8, 12, and 16 year old kids dying of sudden death in their sleep, along with top level athletes dropping dead on the field.

If you didn't know, we now have a wide variety of beers, wine, spirits and signature cocktails. We will now have 5 desserts with a return of sticky rice. We have added Fried Okra.

Banana pancake, JaAe made for the staff.

This was really good. And the mint leaf really sent it.

BEER

Black Chocolate Stout Brooklyn Brewery

Juice Drop Imperial Breckenridge Brewery

Old Chub Oskar Blues Brewery

Trippel New Belgium

Voodoo Ranger New Belgium

Checkered Future IPA Ska Brewing

Hazy IPA Ska Brewing

Cross Mountain Winter Lager Telluride Brewing

Belgian White Blue Moon

Modelo Negra Cerveceria Modelo

Drumroll Hazy Pale Ale Odell Brewing

Mexican Style Lager Dark Ska Brewing

Fat TIre New Belgium

Lagerado Crisp Lager Odell Brewing

Upslope Craft Lager Upslope Brewing

Modelo Especial Cerveceria Modelo

Coors Golden Beer Adolph Coors

Bud Light Beer Anheuser Busch

WINE

BOTTLE

Merlot (2019) Line 39

Cabernet Sauvignon (2020)

Chardonnay (2021) Line 39

Pinot Noir (2020) Line 39

Shiraz (2020) Ninety Plus Cellars

Prosecco Lunetta

Prosecco Tiamo

Pinot Grigio (2021) Vigenti Del Sole

Gait (2019) Gait Wines

GLASS

Malbec Boxsmith

Merlot Boxsmith

Pinot Grigio Boxsmith

Buttery Chardonnay Nighthawk Gold

I always like to experiment with food that has appeared to be overcooked, left out too long, etc., so that I can gain more knowledge to see if the taste is affected or not, or how to revive it.

We had 2 fresh rolls left over last night that we took home. This morning, wrap was a bit hard. Not that enjoyable. I put in microwave for 20 seconds, but not that much improvement other than a better temp. I wrapped a paper towel around 2 of the pieces, and then put it under the faucet with jetted spray for 2 seconds getting it all wet. Put it in the microwave for 20 seconds and perfect.

I've had curry that was left in my car for 24 hours, no issues. I've seen people not take stuff to-go because they don't have a refrigerator and will be driving many hours home. Such a shame. I also had a curry that was in the refrigerator for 2 weeks. No issues. It's kind of like that "Best by date", which does not mean at all that the food is bad. It just means the food "loses" nutritional content. That said, they found canned food near 100 years old which still had a good amount of nutritional content. Canned food can still be eaten decades after the "best by date".
https://www.survivalistboards.com/threads/canned-food-100-years-old-good-to-eat.180585/

If you reheat a noodle dish, they will by dry at that time. Add a shot glass of water in a pan to the noodles and it will be re-hydrated when done.

Canned food 100 years old good to eat http://www.grandpappy.info/hshelff.htm Canned Food Study One A Food and Drug Administration Article about a shelf life test that was conducted on 100-year old canned foods that were retrieved from the Steamboat Bertrand can be read at the following link...

Happy New Year's Day

This is our first Sunday open in a LONG time. We are giving away free Crispy Egg Rolls or Potstickers to the first 3 people who DINE-IN for lunch today.

We will be open every day this week through Thursday the 5th.

The "Dining-In" option has been disabled as most shifts this week we will be short staffed. The Exception is for people who place their entire order online and put in the notes, "DINING-IN."

If you do order dinner for tonight, we will running out of the thick noodles at some point, so if you order the Pad See Ew or Drunken Noodle, then specify if angle hair pasta is okay.

Last night JaAe wakes-up in the middle of the night with labored breathing. I'm still awake, so upon hearing this, I ask her if she's alright. She tells me she had 4 Pad Thai's. I wasn't sure how to process that, and it wasn't what I was expecting. Being chased by a lion maybe, just not that. She then fell back asleep.

Tonight, I hear her exclaim loudly, "Ahhhh!!!" So I say, "what?!" She replies, "the 4 Pad Thai's!!!" as she was referring to the $230 order we had, which had ordered 4 Pad Thai's 😄

Chang Thai will be open from December 28 through Jan 5th. This includes this coming Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and New Years Eve/Day.

We will be closed Jan 6th through Jan 17th, and will reopen on our regular first day of the week being Wednesday the 18th.

The Short and Skinny: We're ditching Chow Now in a few weeks.

The Long and Fat: I'm ecstatic to announce that after 3 years of hair pulling when dealing with Chow Now, we are terminating them. Finally, we have discovered a better 'game in town.' For some customers, they've had no issues ordering, for others, checking out seems to have been a headache.

Given that we have so many orders placed before we open, we need the "throttling mechanism" which limits the number of orders every 15 minutes. We currently have it set at 2 orders every 15 minutes. Companies lacking this feature is what prevented us from adopting another platform. Doing without would mean we'd have to frequently check to see if any orders came in and then block specific time slots manually. There's no peace of mind in that.

The throttling mechanism helps us stay on time, and it also allows us to get walk-ins or answer the phone when we can squeeze people in during smaller consecutive orders. The downside of throttling comes during lunch where there are smaller orders, and rather than having a total of 25 entrees ordered in a 1 hour time span such as during dinner, we can have only 5 or 6. Thus, we lose money because people don't have a large window to wait for lunch. One might say, just turn it off during the day and back on at night. Yes, we can do that, but then the orders keep rolling in for dinner and overloading time slots.

With the new platform, we can set the throttling per number of orders every set number of minutes, OR we can set a dollar amount (better imo) which will allow us to make more food for more people during lunch. A good thing indeed.

Guess who makes the BEST wings in town? Someone named, Ja-Ae.

Will probably serve on Sunday's once we get our alcohol license, which has taken another step forward today. It was told to me that it could be in 2 weeks, so I'll go with 3 weeks.

Our plan is to open on Sundays which we will serve appetizers and alcohol, only. Same hours to start.

We have had a few requests for hot tea lately, which we did not have. However, now we do. We have many different kinds to choose from.

Drunken noodles can now be made with angel hair pasta, on request.

It's good!

NEW SPECIAL:

Braised Pork Ribs with Honey

Slow cook pork ribs, carrots and celery in Chang thai honey signature sauce. Served with side of rice and steam broccoli.

Just got home a short bit ago, showered, relaxed...and then boom - Egg Noodle Soup. So I said, is the Egg Noodle Soup?? She says, yes. I'm eating it thinking, this is really good. Reminds me of the Ramen noodles...college student or poor we identify!😄 There seems to be that place in your heart for Ramen, right? Then I'm thinking it has that aspect of potstickers with the wonton but with pork and shrimp inside. The broth is flavorful. All good.

After I finish, she gives me a spoonful of HER broth. Unbeknownst to me she "doctored" her dish up - some of this, some of that...and yes, it was better than mine!

So long story short, she's duping us all! She's holding out. If you thought that her food couldn't be any better, it can! Fine, call me a rat, a snitch...but I'm honest lol.

Reminds me of listening to John Taylor Gatto (a pearl), 2-time teacher of the year in NYC. Fascinating to listen to. But he goes over the origin of the education system and how the majority of people got the peanuts, and the higher echelon got the goods when it came to knowledge. Yeah, we're the peasants on this one!

Don't worry folks, I got our backs. I will explore this and see about getting the "spices" to take us to the next level!!!

👊

If anyone has extra time and can install this we can barter some Thai Food. Unfortunately, I don't have the time currently.

You can send a text to 970.501.0000 if interested.

New Special (Nov 23rd):
Chu Chi Tilapia Curry

Chu Chi curry sauce, Tilapia filet, kaffir lime leaf, red sweet pepper.

I think the taste rivals the pumpkin curry. Soooo good!

Lunch Hours: 12pm-3pm
Dinner Hours: 5pm-830pm
(Dinner reservations can be made through the website)

*We will be closed all day for Thanksgiving. Reopen on Friday.

2 hairs in the baby corn!

Actually, they are "hairs", but hairs of the corn, not the human head. Just in case you see one... give it a closer look.

I have gotten 2 comments from customers about their noodle dishes being dry. One of the people stated that the green curry tasted excessively salty. Both can be a result of the food being left on the stovetop too long, and the noodles when in the Togo box over time will absorb into the noodle thus making it dry. We don't have these issues with dine-in. I guess another possibility leading to dry noodles is if the dish is under the heat lamp for 10 minutes. That said, if you dine in and order an appetizer, it's better to come in 15 minutes earlier than your reservation time because that's the time your entrees will be ready.

Solution: If you get home and you feel that your curry tastes too salty, or the noodles are dry, you can put the food in a pan and add some water. How much? To your taste satisfaction. With curry, you can also add coconut milk.

New Special: (Starting Thursday the 20th)

"Egg noodle and pork wonton soup with red roast pork"

Egg noodle, pork wonton, baby bok choy, green onion, cilantro, and fried garlic in Chang thai signature noodle broth.

Kaeng Hor
Glass noodle, heung lay curry, red curry, green bean, cabbage, zucchini, eggplant,, Thai chili, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaf.

1st person to claim it gets a dish not on the menu from the Amazing Ja-Ae!

You can come around the back in the next couple hours to get it.

Our Chow Now system is set at 2 orders every 15 minutes. This enables us to stay on time. Sometimes we get big orders back to back which might cause us to run a little behind, but we also get smaller to medium-sized orders more often which allows us to gain time and be able to squeeze people in (ie. people who walk in without reservations or people who call in). Thus, while the online system might say the next order is at 7:45 pm, it doesn't mean that we can't take more orders. If you call and we don't answer it means that we can't squeeze anyone in. If we answer, it means we can. Sometimes we need to sort this out, and if we can get you in we will call you back. So it never hurts to call. Every night we are squeezing people in. It's just that we never can predict when that will be.

As for ordering issues (ie. checking out and not being able to), the message from Chow Now is it's pretty much on the user's end and that oftentimes there is an incompatibility with the browser which has been my advice for any situation in this realm - try a different browser.

In other news, with the drop in temperature, we have a drop in temperature in the restaurant with just the door opening and closing in the back. I have noticed this has led to the Fresh Spring Roll wrap being less soft during the evening. If this has been your experience in the last 2 days, we apologize. We are working on a solution. In the food truck, we just had to discontinue them during the winter. At least now we have the ability to rectify this.

In other news, we were told that we might be able to have our packet of info submitted for next month's meeting for liquor licenses. The truncated story is that we might be able to have our license by the time the holidays roll around in December. That would be great. We will be holding off on our patio expansion till then. We will also plan on extending our hours from 8:30 pm to 11 pm or midnight. We will have alcohol and appetizers during this time, and other things TBA as time gets closer. I think we will also be open 7 days a week, but the 4 days we are open now will remain as such for the restaurant. I remember one lady asked me if we had "normal" hours when we first opened. I often think of those words when we leave sometimes at 11 pm on our "days off". With all the prep work to be done, making most of our own appetizers, etc., we wish we were kicking our feet up and relaxing, but that's not the case. Thus, 5 days a week won't happen from the perspective of serving food. But the 3 other days are totally doable with the right person steering the ship in our absence. And despite not serving food, when the TBA is announced, you will see that it's still worth coming.

We appreciate our regulars and all the fantastic people who show up. It's great to meet and talk to people whether locals or travelers. Thank you for supporting us.

NEW DESSERT!

Fried Bannana with ice cream.

Choice of ice cream is chocolate, cookies and cream, vanilla or green tea. Ice cream by the scoop also available.

NEW SPECIAL: AVOCADO CURRY
Green curry sauce, avocado, chicken, shrimp, green beans, red pepper, peas, and Thai basil.

Only this Friday and Saturday. If conditions are right with avocados may continue early part of next week.

Yesterday, our electricity went out, our internet went out, and the website server went out. Trying to take preemptive measures in the future considering we lost electricity 3 times in 2 weeks.

For ordering if the website has issues:

Here is the direct link to Chow Now: https://direct.chownow.com/order/16739/locations/49574

The online App is also easy to use.

Thanks again for your patience with these issues that hopefully should be resolved now.

Online Ordering | Powered By ChowNow

3:20pm
Looks like the order online button is at least functional to order so that's good. Lost all the changes we made with our updates but that's secondary right now.

2:53 pm

Still issues, they actually made things worse. Fortunately, my developer is intervening so we'll see. Using the App is the easiest way to order if you're a repeat customer. No issues there.

All kinds of issues today from the power going out, the internet going out, and our server/hosting company having issues so our website experienced more issues. A bit of a nightmare. Our website was being migrated to another platform which was said to take 2 hours now is 5-7 days! Our developer created a landing page with an order online button which was working until this hosting company had issues at some point today. We will see what tomorrow (Thursday) brings. If it's not working then we will be taking orders by phone. Much easier to take calls before 5 pm, but should call back within several minutes if on the other line. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Update: We're getting orders 👍

SPECIAL: Gaeng Hung Lay (Northern Thai Pork Curry)

Pork rib, hung lay curry paste, onion, tomatoes, fresh ginger, peanut, garlic, and Chang Thai seasoning. Served with rice.

Website is having an issue so online ordering is not working. We will be taking phone orders for pick-up, and walk-ins okay for lunch. Will reassess for tonight at a later time. Thank you.