Pygmy hippos are an endangered species. There are fewer than 2,500 within the wild.
A picture of 1 adorns the signal of a small Thai restaurant on Fredericksburg Street close to 5 Factors.
Maybe Moo Deng rings a bell. That’s the identify of a lovable child hippo whose picture went viral one yr in the past this month.
The hippo from Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand additionally impressed a retired restaurant proprietor in San Antonio. Robbie Maksomboon acknowledged a dearth of Thai meals choices in Beacon Hill and opened Moo Deng Thai Restaurant in December.
“It took me one hour to give you the identify,” stated Maksomboon, who’s from a province in Thailand southwest of Bangkok. “However three months to give you the idea.”
Maksomboon thought of a small menu of fried rice choices. He toyed with the identify “Joe’s Fried Rice.” 20 years of restaurant expertise instructed him neither concept would work. So he settled on Moo Deng, and finally, a tag: “The place Thai Meets Jazz.”
There isn’t any dwell music at Moo Deng, a six-table eatery with partitions painted popsicle orange. There isn’t any cool jazz enjoying via audio system. “Jazz” is brief for jasmine rice, a nationwide staple in Thailand.
“Our hottest merchandise is pad Thai,” stated Maksomboon, 50. “The second is Thai fried rice. I do know my meals is nice. I’ve been within the enterprise for 20 years.”
Maksomboon stumbled into the enterprise. He got here to the U.S. in 1993 to check laptop science at Oklahoma Metropolis College.
After relocating to San Antonio, Maksomboon met his spouse. He left his profession as a pc scientist and have become a restaurateur.
The couple opened two eating places, Chongco Thai Rice & Noodle and Tiger Wings, which finally closed. Maksomboon retired till his brother wanted assist launching a brand new Thai restaurant.
Round this time, a 2-month-old pygmy hippo went viral. Moo Deng, which interprets to “bouncy pork,” grew to become an web sensation, producing hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok.
A world social media viewers fell in love with Moo Deng being lifted and sprayed with water, due to a TikTok account with 3.3 million followers.
The zoo says weekend guests doubled after Moo Deng went viral. Based on Forbes, the hippo boosted the zoo’s social media accounts.
“There could also be one other issue at play behind Moo Deng’s rise to fame,” Forbes wrote, “as her content material is alleged to be one thing of a “timeline cleanser,” wiping away a lot of the toxicity from social media timelines.”
The hippo’s delivery and recognition got here on the proper time and brings curious prospects into a novel eating spot in Beacon Hill.
“Naming the restaurant after the infant hippo was one of the best concept,” stated Moo Deng chef John Roquis. “It’s been good for enterprise. We had two events at the moment. We’ve been going nonstop from the minute we opened this morning.
