Order pad thai at Drunken Noodle on Laurel Street, then walk two doors down next week for a plate at Chick N Rice, and it feels like you sampled two different bets on downtown Brainerd. You didn't. Both restaurants, along with Blue Oyster, share the same two owners.
That overlap is easy to miss if you're just hungry. It gets harder to miss once you start asking why so much of downtown's newest activity keeps tracing back to the same two people.
One Partnership, Three Storefronts
Chick N Rice opened in July 2024 inside the old Northwind Grille space on Laurel Street, a building that had sat empty since its previous occupant couldn't find enough staff to reopen after pandemic closures. A year later, the same ownership group brought Drunken Noodle to 603 Laurel Street, expanding a restaurant that had already been running in downtown Crosby since 2023.
The people behind both spots are Thamrong "Keng" Dechawuth and Sarawut "Em" Rasaphakdee. Dechawuth came to the United States from Thailand to study electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, graduating with a master's degree in 2000, before turning to restaurants. Rasaphakdee told a local TV station he wanted Brainerd to see more of the Southeast Asian cooking he grew up on, not just the pad thai most people already know.
"Brainerd should be the one that we can serve people year-round because there's a good population here," Dechawuth said.
Why a Repeat Bet Beats a Ribbon Cutting
A downtown where five different owners each open one restaurant is a downtown getting tested by five separate guesses. A downtown where the same two people open three restaurants, with the third one an expansion of a location already running successfully in nearby Crosby, is a downtown where somebody with actual receipts decided Laurel Street could support the same bet again.
That pattern isn't new to this block, either. Back in 2018, Sage on Laurel owners Ed and Sarah Hayden Shaw bought the old Iron Rail building further down the street, telling the Brainerd Dispatch they wanted to be part of what they called a revitalization along Laurel Street. This year's wave of reinvestment from Dechawuth and Rasaphakdee is the same move made by different owners, seven years later.
What the Facelift on the 700 Block Uncovered
Last spring, renovation work on the 700 block of Laurel Street pulled the facade off a storefront most recently occupied by Ivy Room, a bridal shop. Underneath the panel was an old painted sign for a drugstore that had been covered for decades.
Local historian Carl "Fert" Faust dug through Downtown Business Association and Crow Wing County Historical Society records and traced the same block's occupants back more than a century:
- 1910 to 1920: rooms and residents in the Imperial Building
- 1930: Hall's Music House
- 1940s to 1951: Burton's Electrical Equipment and Burton's Radio Service
- 1960s and 1970s: Frances Shop
- 1985: a consignment shop
- 1990: a vacuum and sewing shop
Read that list next to this year's restaurant turnover and the story looks less like a burst of new energy and more like an old habit. The block has never sat empty for long. It keeps finding whatever the era needs, a radio repair shop in the 1940s, a sewing shop in 1990, a Thai kitchen in 2025.
What Else Moved In This Year
Laurel Street's other changes this year came from a similar mix of existing local operators reworking what they already had, rather than brand-new owners testing the market cold.
The Last Turn Saloon closed temporarily in July 2024 and reopened April 10, 2025, after new owner Shawn Hopman rebuilt it into a brew pub on Eighth Street.
The Sweet Spot opened on Laurel Street next to The 218 Urban Nest clothing store in the summer of 2025. Owners Nicki Traut and Kara Kristofferson stocked it with candy, baked goods, ice cream, toys, and gifts, filling some of the gap left when Fancy Pants Chocolates relocated to West Washington Street.
Passport Restaurant and Catering, at 606 Laurel Street, keeps a rotating menu built around a different country's cuisine every month, alongside its year-round local dishes, in what its owners describe as a historic, artsy downtown setting.
Line those addresses up and the pattern holds again. Almost none of this year's Laurel Street activity came from an outside chain testing the water. Compare that to neighboring Baxter, along Highway 371, where a Panera has been working through city approvals for a 2026 opening and a 7 Brew drive-through cleared its planning commission review near Westgate Mall earlier this year. Baxter's growth is chain expansion along a highway corridor. Laurel Street's growth is local owners doubling down on the same few blocks they already know.
Two Weekends That Bookended the Summer
Laurel Street's new restaurants opened into a summer with two very different anchor events on either end. Lakes Jam brought a country music crowd to Brainerd International Raceway from June 24 through 27, four days built around headline sets at the raceway rather than downtown storefronts.
The Crow Wing County Fair closed out the other end of the summer, running August 4 through 8 at the fairgrounds on 13th Street Southeast, with project judging the day before on August 3 and nightly entertainment on the Mills Free Stage. That fair wrapped one day before this was written.
Between those two weekends is where almost everything on this list actually had to prove itself, without a festival crowd to lean on. Drunken Noodle, Chick N Rice, Blue Oyster, The Sweet Spot, and the rebuilt Last Turn Saloon all had to earn regular Tuesday and Wednesday business from people who live here, not people passing through for one big weekend. That's a harder test than an opening-week photo, and it's the one that actually tells you whether a storefront lasts.
What That Leaves You With
The easy version of this story is that downtown Brainerd got a handful of new restaurants this year. The more useful version is that two operators with a working record on Laurel Street bet on it three separate times, an old storefront reminded everyone the block has reinvented itself before, and the summer's two biggest weekends came and went without either one carrying the new spots. What's still standing in the quiet weeks between Lakes Jam and the county fair says more about Laurel Street's health than any grand opening ever could.
We track this kind of detail because it's the same texture that eventually shows up in a conversation about what a downtown address, or a nearby lake home, actually means for daily life here. If you're weighing what living near this corridor is worth, or you're further down the road and thinking about lakeshore property in the area, Sandy Smith Lakeshore Real Estate Group is a good place to start that conversation. Schedule a Free Consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
