A new eatery at Tysons Galleria is catering to diners who crave staples of Thai cuisine but don’t have the time to eat a full, sit-down meal.
Bird’s Eye Thai, a relatively new concept from the team behind Reston’s Tiki Thai, opened just over a month ago on Dec. 6 in the mall’s third-floor food court, taking the place of the recently relocated Empanadas de Mendoza.
“It’s very good, because it’s a holiday,” Pattana Restaurant Group co-founder and executive chef Porntipa Pattanamekar said of the concept’s reception so far. “We got good feedback from the customers … [With] the holiday season, there was a lot of traffic in the mall.”
The fifth concept developed by Pattana, which was started by Pattanamekar and her longtime friend and current CEO Parasak Chokesatean in 2005, Bird’s Eye Thai was first introduced with a kiosk at Water Park in Arlington’s Crystal City neighborhood.
According to Pattanamekar, National Landing developer JBG Smith reached out about two years ago with a proposal to bring Tiki Thai to the Water Park. However, because the kiosk format presented limitations in terms of the available kitchen equipment, the restauranteurs developed a new “grab-and-go” approach so people could eat Thai food while walking around the park.
Launched in August 2024, the pop-up has been enough of a success to draw the attention of Tysons Galleria owner and manager Brookfield Properties, which invited Pattan to open a second Bird’s Eye Thai at the mall.
Like its Arlington counterpart, which will eventually be folded into a Tiki Thai restaurant when that opens, possibly this fall, the Tysons location serves drunken noodles, pad Thai, curry rice and other Thai dishes in bowls with either chicken or tofu. For another $3, customers can add two spring rolls and a soda or bottled water.
Pattanamekar says the menu was kept casual to provide an alternative to the more formal restaurant setting, where patrons might have to wait as long as 30 to 45 minutes to get their order, depending on how busy the place is.
“We have this concept to serve the people who want to get the new experience of the grab-and-go Thai food,” she said. “It’s highlighting the convenience to get the food, but still get the bold flavor of Thai food.”
Bird’s Eye Thai also offers only halal chicken and tofu because they wanted to be able to “serve everybody,” Pattanamekar says, including the area’s robust Muslim population.
The eatery joins a food court at Tysons Galleria that has been steadily filling out over the past year after struggling during the pandemic under previous food hall operator Urbanspace.
In addition to mainstay Andy’s Pizza, the third-floor dining area is now home to the popular coffee shop Shotted, Mexican street food stand Rabbit Taco, burger maker Char’d and Scolapasta, a handmade pasta concept that expanded to Ballston last month.
The misspelling of “restaurateur” in the headline has been corrected.
