Come ‘Nom Nom’ at Heber City’s only Thai restaurant

When Tyler Sycamore first tried Thai food, he hated it. Making matters worse, he had just accepted a marketing internship in Thailand.

“I remember eating that curry and being like, ‘I’m not going to eat for however long I’m in Thailand,’” Tyler said. That ended up being eight years.

As soon as he touched ground in Thailand in 2006, Tyler realized it was the subpar restaurant he’d tried in Provo that had been the problem. He fell in love, first with Thai food, and later with his wife, Nat, whom he met while working in Bangkok.

Last month, the couple opened Heber City’s only Thai restaurant: Nom Nom Thai, located at 1095 S. Main St.

Tyler handles administrative tasks, while Nat is the head cook. Nat has worked various jobs at restaurants in Thailand and the United States, but it was only when she immigrated to the latter country with her husband 12 years ago that she really dove into cooking. 

“She wanted Thai food because that’s what she’s used to,” Tyler said. “We live down in Orem. I took her to every restaurant I could find. Then, we started expanding our horizons to Salt Lake. We went to pretty much any restaurant that we could think of, and she didn’t like any of them.”

So, Nat learned how to cook her native country’s cuisine herself, using YouTube videos and cooking classes as a guide.

The couple started attending farmers markets in Orem and Provo in 2022. They sold only two items: mango sticky rice and curry wraps. 

The latter is an original dish by Nat, inspired by the curry puffs of southern Thailand. Instead of stuffing chicken, potatoes, onions and curry sauce into a pastry, as is done when making a curry puff, the ingredients are wrapped in a fried egg roll. 

The curry wraps were more than a little popular at farmers markets.

“I knew most of our customers by name, because they just kept coming back every week, and they’re like, ‘I need more curry wraps,’” Tyler said.

The owners are constantly asked about when they’re going to start offering them at Nom Nom Thai. They’ll come soon, Tyler promised — as soon as the restaurant is fully staffed.

After making $1,000 during a four-hour farmers market in 2023, Tyler and Nat realized they could pull off opening a restaurant. They looked for a space in Orem for nearly a year, but no location felt right, in part because every one was “within spitting distance” of another Thai restaurant, Tyler said.

The couple started exploring an untapped market in Heber City after Nat posted to a local Facebook page asking if anyone would be interested in a Thai restaurant. The response was overwhelming.

“Four hundred people responded, like, ‘Please, please! We need something in Heber that’s not burgers or Mexican,’” Tyler said.

The Sycamores introduced themselves to Heber City in 2024 by hosting a booth at the summer Market on Main while they worked to secure a space. 

“The support up here was probably the best we had anywhere. We did probably 30 or 40% better, in terms of sales, up here than we did down in Orem or Provo,” Tyler said.

The building the Sycamores now rent was constructed from scratch, which took longer than anticipated. But after opening Nom Nom Thai last month, the rush has been constant, with lines out the door and waits sometimes as long as 40 minutes.

The most popular dish is undoubtedly the pad Thai because it’s the most familiar dish to patrons who haven’t eaten much of the cuisine, Tyler explained. He hopes that, as diners repeatedly return to the restaurant, they become more comfortable trying new items on the menu. 

Nom Nom Thai offers street food dishes like pad si ew, drunken noodles, curry and fried rice; appetizers like chicken gyoza and shrimp tempura; and drinks like milk teas and matcha lattes. 

Tyler encourages customers to splurge on a drink or appetizer using money they would have left as a tip. Nom Nom Thai pays employees a living wage with a bonus sales incentive instead of relying on customers’ generosity.

Nat hopes to expand the menu with her experimental fusion dishes, which combine the cuisines of the various regions of Thailand. 

There are currently options for people with dietary restrictions, but Nat plans to launch a full vegan and gluten-free menu for good measure. She’ll use plant-based meat rather than only tofu and hopes that diners won’t be able to tell the difference between a vegan and non-vegan dish.

“(Vegan food often) sounds like a boring taste. I don’t want that. I want to make Thai food that’s flavorful, but vegan,” she said.

The hardest part of opening the restaurant has been importing sauces from Thailand. Nat is very particular about which sauces should go with which dish, so some brands can be hard to find.

“She’s worked at Thai restaurants where they just have a big, 5-gallon bucket of sauce, and they put it in everything. It does not matter what you get. It’s the same thing,” Tyler said. 

The trade-off for the trials and tribulations of securing ingredients from across the world is a more culturally authentic taste.

“We had a customer in here last week who said, ‘We just got back from Thailand two months ago, and this tastes exactly like I am in Bangkok.’ I was like, ‘That is exactly what we’re going for,’” Tyler said. 

For the Sycamores, Nom Nom Thai is not just about sharing delicious food. It’s about other aspects of Thai culture. The couple hopes to host events like cultural nights and language and cooking lessons.

They hope Nom Nom Thai not only creates a sense of belonging for local Thai Americans but also fosters a broader appreciation for Thai culture. 

The Sycamores’ mission is seen in their logo, a bear, representing Utah, wearing a traditional Thai chada headdress. 

As for the name?

It’s inspired by the ravenous munching of Cookie Monster, Nat explained. Tyler initially made that the restaurant’s ringtone, but it was too quiet to hear amid the hustle and bustle of the dinner rush.