“I want our customers to have the best experience in dining while at OISHII THAI, where our motto is ‘Food Heals Life.’ “ Sinee Techa
PROFILE
SINEE TECHA, Chef Owner
OISHII THAI
New ideas sprout up all the time for Sinee Techa, Chef Owner of OISHII THAI restaurant in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Sinee is also the owner of Lily’s Window Fashions in Wheeling, Illinois (106 East Dundee Road). She is a seven-time, award-winning designer, a self-taught seamstress and a draper with 24 years of experience.
Sinee has now parlayed her art and creativity into her latest business venture, OISHII Thai, an upscale 50-seat restaurant which she personally designed. It opened in Buffalo Grove, Illinois in December 2008.
Born in Surathani, Thailand (located in the Southern part of Thailand), Sinee came to America in 1975 to study at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she earned a Master’s Degree in Economics. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from ThammasatUniversity in Bangkok, Thailand.
She then went back to her homeland of Thailand to pursue her humanitarian dream job. She started working with the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees in Bangkok, Thailand. Working as an Executive Assistant to the Chief of Resettlement Department, she helped resettle hundreds of thousands of refugees in the Southeast Asian region, especially refugees who fled from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, to Third World countries.
Sinee met her future husband (Ken Techawatanaset) while they were students (at ThammasatUniversity). They married in Thailand and came back to America in 1984 to join her husband. He was in the window blinds business. She learned the business and also started selling window blinds. They have two children. Sinee’s husband passed away in 2005 of cancer. She has had time to think about things over the past few years, as her children have grown.
Chef Sinee Techa has had more than ten years of experience helping her family manage two full service restaurants back in her homeland, Thailand. She had grown up in a small town in the southern part of Thailand's countryside, where everyone cooked from scratch three times a day. She herself developed an early culinary interest, creating her first curry sauce (a green one) at the age of only eight years old. (Today, all of OISHII Thai’s sauces are created on-site, with Chef Sinee's secret recipes.)
Chef Sinee says that in a small town in Thailand as a small child, especially in the summertime, there is a lot of time to people-watch. She recalls spending hours walking around the neighborhood, watching people prepare their daily meals, helping the older people cook, and learning the process. “I learned cooking from watching my mother and my neighbors,” she says.
“When I wanted to eat something as a child, I tried to prepare it myself. I like to make everything from scratch, because that's what I grew up with.”
By the age of 12, Sinee was already the budding entrepreneur. The family home in Thailand was located at the bank of the TapeeRiver. Her father was a fisherman, and her mother also helped with his fish business. Her neighbors owned a fish business. Sinee recalls a part-time job helping to clean, salt and dry over 20 different types of fish in Thailand’s hot tropical sun. She is proud that she was able to bring home 40 baht a day, which she says was, “a lot of money” in those days.
In 2008, with the opening of OISHII THAI, Sinee was able to make her longtime dream of opening her own restaurant a reality.
“We provide a large array of food selections prepared with the freshest, healthiest and best quality of ingredients - healthy food for one’s mind and spirit, so that one can eat mindfully.”
“With a beautiful, relaxed and intimate environment, it is my sincere hope to help as many people as possible enhance their quality of life by improving their well-being. We hope that everyone will choose to visit and revisit OISHII THAI.” … Chef Owner Sinee Techa
Chef Owner Sinee Techa says she chose the use of granite tables because they are a design trend, they look nice, are aesthetically pleasing, and easy to clean. Ever-mindful of being healthy, she also points out that it’s the “green” thing to do. She points out that cutting out the use of linens (and the chemicals used to clean the linens) is healthier for people, in addition to being more environmentally-friendly.