Thai Evergreen
Thai · Orem · 160 E University Pkwy
Thai Evergreen is the Orem Thai room that the county visitors' bureau credits as the start of Thai cooking in Utah County, which if it holds makes it one of the older continuously running independent kitchens in this directory.
Where it is
In a strip on East University Parkway in Orem, in a suite rather than a standalone building. University Parkway is the cross-valley artery, so this is an easy stop and an easy one to drive straight past.
Orem runs its own address grid from its own origin point, and it does not line up with Provo's — the same number is a different place in each city. Our guide to how Utah addresses actually work covers why.
What we know about it
The claim is worth stating carefully, because the dates in circulation do not agree. The visitors' bureau describes the owner as the person who started the first Thai restaurant in Utah County and names a Daily Herald award from 1997. Other listings give a founding in the late eighties, another gives 2000, and the restaurant's own material dates the University Parkway location to January 2008. Those are reconcilable -- an operator can start one restaurant, run others, and move -- but they are not the same date, so we print the attribution rather than picking a year.
The cooking is home-style rather than modern: massaman curry, tom kha, khao soi, pad thai, cream cheese wontons, mango sticky rice. Reviewers consistently describe a plain room and food well above what the room suggests, which is a fair description of several of the valley's better kitchens.
It closes Sunday, and some listings show it closed Monday as well. That two-day pattern is common among Utah Valley's independent Asian restaurants and catches people out. Ask before you go.
Everything we have written about it
This is every page on Provo.com that names Thai Evergreen, most substantial first. The directory exists to route you into the writing rather than to replace it.
The durable facts, and the ones we refuse to carry
- Name: Thai Evergreen
- Address: 160 E University Pkwy, Orem, Utah
- Cuisine: Thai
- Where we read the address: our own page, not a third-party listing
- How we know the city: the only pages naming it are scoped to a single city in their own titles
We do not publish opening hours, prices, phone numbers or ratings for any venue in this directory. Those are the facts that go stale, and a directory carrying them is wrong within a season while still looking authoritative. For hours, ask the restaurant.