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One of Boulder County’s favorite food trucks, Bee’s Thai Kitchen, has found a brick-and-mortar home in a historic Lafayette storefront that isn’t quite a restaurant … yet. Plus: Where to sample Colorado mead and a Market Meals recipe featuring marinated, pan-seared local pork steaks.

A personal note: Boulder EATS!, the exhibit I helped curate at the Museum of Boulder, closes permanently on July 26. I was grateful for the opportunity to share Boulder’s extraordinary food and restaurant history and meet so many Nibbles readers on my guided tours. Read more here.  

— John Lehndorff

When you enter the cool, peaceful front room at Bee’s Thai Kitchen, it feels like an old restaurant with its overhead fans. Classic Thai art adorns the walls of the historic Lafayette storefront, which is filled with co-owner Kevin Kisich’s hand-hewn wooden slab tables.

In the shaded garden behind the building, diners are surrounded by an unexpected and rare botanical collection of banana trees, kabocha squash, butterfly peas, cha-om, lemongrass, fragrant makrut lime, Thai basil, chilies and eggplants.

The eatery’s origin story starts with Bee Kisich falling in love with cooking as a child in Phayao, Thailand. Her mother sold a renowned green mango salad in the town market. Bee met her husband, Kevin, in Thailand and settled in Lafayette with their family. After working at local Thai eateries, Bee opened Bee’s Thai Kitchen as a food truck in 2021. The menu has featured distinctive dishes such as a Thai omelet, beef larb salad, chicken with egg noodles and pickled cabbage, crispy Thai bacon with fried rice, and Bee’s celebrated Bus Stop Chicken.

Kevin and Bee Kisich gather on the garden patio with their children: Sukhothai, Noey and Nessy. Credit: Bee’s Thai Kitchen

It’s only when you dine in and your meal is served on a paper plate with a plastic fork that you realize Chef Bee is still cooking inside her parked food truck. And because there is no liquor license, patrons who want to sip an ale with their Thai-hot green curry are advised to carry their food a block to Odd13 Brewing’s tasting room.

According to Kevin Kisich, paper plates are necessary because the building’s antique infrastructure won’t support a water line for a dishwasher on this sleepy stretch of Simpson Street east of South Public Road. 

“This is a real ma-and-pa neighborhood eatery,” Kevin Kisich says. Bee cooks most of the food, Kevin is the host and waiter, and their daughters, Noey and Nessy, work as food runners and prep cooks while saving for college. Their son, Sukho, is studying to be a chef.

Despite the limitations of cooking out of a food truck, the menu boasts a full roster of Thai stir-fries and noodle favorites like pad Thai. Pumpkin curry is a bestseller, served with steamed jasmine rice, while starters include pan-fried roti bread and papaya salad.

Dairy-free coconut vanilla sundae on one of Kevin Kisich’s handcrafted wooden tables. Credit: John Lehndorff

When you visit Bee’s place, remember that it is still a food truck, at least for the moment, with a small kitchen. If you’re in a hurry, order ahead and get takeout.

A word about heat levels: Don’t be silly and challenge Bee to make your dish “Thai hot.” She will smile, and you will end up sweaty, gulping water and unable to taste the subtleties of her cookery. 

As diners eat and chat, Kevin Kisich points across Simpson Street to a house on a small piece of property the couple owns. “In a couple of years, we plan on opening Bee’s in a space with a full commercial kitchen,” he says. 

In the meantime, Kisich is applying his do-it-yourself technical skills to build a new, larger mobile kitchen trailer with a dishwasher for reusable plates and silverware. In the coming months, the trailer will replace the truck and make Bee’s Thai Kitchen even more of a restaurant than it already is.

Stir-fry vegetables with shrimp and jasmine rice at Bee’s Thai Kitchen. Credit: John Lehndorff

Taste buds aboard for Bus Stop Chicken

Other than a wish for peace and a love of soccer, one of the few things the whole planet wholeheartedly endorses is grilled chicken. Some variation on a spicy grilled, smoked or roasted bird exists in virtually every global cuisine. One of the most appealing examples is the Khorat-style Bus Stop Chicken served at Bee’s Thai Kitchen. Ask Kevin Kisich about stopping to eat chicken during long rural bus rides through Thailand.

To make the dish, butterflied, bone-in chicken is rubbed with a thick paste of garlic, lemongrass, fish sauce, black pepper, palm sugar and soy sauce, then marinated overnight. The next day, the chicken is slowly smoked over hickory and grilled, producing tender, juicy meat with exceptionally crispy skin and a harmonious mouthful of my favorite Thai notes: fiery, acidic, bitter, aromatic, sweet and funky.

Grilled Bus Stop Chicken is served at Bee’s Thai Kitchen in Lafayette. Credit: Bee’s Thai Kitchen

Openings: A new French bistro and a Louisiana cafe

Boulder’s new French bistro, Cinq à Sept, is open at 4580 Broadway. 

Remi’s Cajun Creole Cafe is open at 211 Public Road in Lafayette. The Louisiana-accented classics include fried chicken, filé gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish étouffée, BBQ shrimp, po’boys and muffuletta sandwiches. Reservations here.

Elevado Kitchen has opened at Valor Peak Distillery in Longmont, serving tacos, churros, grilled wings and cocktail-friendly fare. 

Küper Wine Bar has moved and reopened in a bigger space at 704 Main Street in Longmont. 

Longmont’s Küper Wine Bar has reopened in a larger space for tasting at 704 Main Street. Credit: Küper Wine Bar.

Discover great mead, ‘Ratatouille’ sweets and Polish pierogi

The Great Orpheus MeadFest, on July 25 in Golden, spotlights award-winning meads from leading Colorado producers, including Boulder’s Redstone Meadery. The event includes vendors offering honey, beeswax candles and food, along with performances by the Orpheus Pagan Chamber Choir. Tickets here. 

One of my favorite culinary movies is Pixar’s “Ratatouille.” Naturally, I identify with the dining critic, Anton Ego. “Ratatouille” will be screened Aug. 5 at Denver’s Sie FilmCenter as part of the theater’s Foodie Film series. The Inventing Room Dessert Shop will give each attendee a box of chef Ian Kleinman’s artisan treats corresponding to key moments in the film. Tickets here.   

Slow Food Boulder County hosts a cheesemonger-guided tasting on Aug. 9 featuring six Italian cheeses at Longmont’s Cheese Importers, plus a tour of the store’s famous walk-through cheese cooler. Reservations: 303-772-9599. 

Pierogi, cabbage rolls, Polish sausage, beer and polka music are on the menu at the 13th annual Polish Food Festival Aug. 29-30 in Denver. 

(Get your upcoming food event, festival or class listed for free on Boulder Reporting Lab using the self-submission form here.)

Market Meals: Herbs infuse pan-seared pork steaks

This week, we look beyond fresh produce and focus on protein with a guided tour of vendors selling locally and sustainably raised meat, eggs and cheese at the Boulder Farmers Market.

Get the recipe for marinated, pan-seared pork steaks here.

Cassius: “Will you dine with me tomorrow?”
Casca: “Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth the eating.” — From “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare. The play is being performed at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival through Aug. 2.

Want more Boulder bites?

28 Boulder County farm stands worth a summer road trip

Where to find fresh produce, eggs, flowers, meat, honey and other locally made goods, often straight from the people who produced them. Continue reading…

Before Mustard’s Last Stand, there was Bush’s Drive-In — a look at Boulder’s fading roadside past

Mustard’s Last Stand carries the legacy of Boulder’s earliest drive-ins, from Bush’s Drive-In to the Twinburger era. Continue reading…

Check out recent editions of Nibbles:

🍕 Hosea Rosenberg’s new Morso opens in Boulder

🎆 A Fourth of July toast to the foods that made Boulder famous

🚗 Best roadside eats near Boulder (all day-trip worthy)


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John Lehndorff is Boulder Reporting Lab’s food editor. A Massachusetts native, he has lived in Boulder since 1976 and has written about food and culture here for nearly five decades. His Nibbles column has run since 1985, and he also serves as Food Editor of Colorado Avid Golfer magazine and Exhibit Historian for the Museum of Boulder’s upcoming Boulder Eats exhibit. A former restaurant cook, caterer and cooking teacher, he has been Food and Features Editor of the Daily Camera, Senior Editor at the Aurora Sentinel, and Dining Critic for the Rocky Mountain News. His writing has appeared in Westword, Yellow Scene, the Washington Post and USA Today. Nationally recognized as a pie expert, he is the former Executive Director of the American Pie Council and longtime Chief Judge at the National Pie Championships. He has hosted Radio Nibbles on KGNU-FM for more than 30 years and co-hosts Kitchen Table Talk.