The Thai restaurant at 17 East Main Street recently changed hands.

Eating at an ethnic restaurant is certainly nothing new in Carroll County. Ever since William Winchester founded Westminster in 1764 on one of the three main roads in Maryland for travelers headed west, there has always been a strong restaurant tradition in town.

By Kevin E. Dayhoff, Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Last Friday night, November 15, 2013, after John and Debby Sosnowsky’s opening at Off Track Art, John, Debby and Corrie Sosnowsky, Bobby Waddell, Linda Van Hart, Caroline Babylon and I went over to the Tim Thai Classic restaurant in Westminster at 17 East Main Street for some food and fellowship.

There has been a restaurant at 17 East Main Street as long as most folks can remember. It is believed that the “Central Restaurant” was located there as far back as the 1950s. Much more research will be needed to determine when the Central Restaurant opened and closed. Phone books from the very early 1950s show a “Central Restaurant” located in Hampstead at 20 South Main Street, but not in Westminster.

The 1952 Westminster phone directory shows Acme Market at 1 East Main Street; Treat Shop – owned by the Burk Family – at 5 East Main; the Carroll Pastry Shop at 7 East Main; “The American Restaurant” at 9 East Main; The Coffman-Fisher Co. Dept. Store at 11 East Main; Hollander’s Home & Auto Supplies at 13 East Main; Read’s Drug and Chemical C0 at 15 East Main; and 17 is listed for “Dryden, Clarence C, Helen F Myrtle… Kipe Doris, Larry E Martin.” Are we understand that it was a residence in 1952?

The 1954 phone directory does not show a listing for a restaurant. (It does give my address as 40 Ward Avenue in Westminster.)

Recently 17 East Main Street has been a Thai restaurant for many-many years. However, we were not aware that it recently changed hands.

Although the new owners have repainted some of the walls and are in the process of changing a few things around; the food and the service were still wonderful.

I had the vegetable fried rice, spring rolls, and shitake soup; plus a little of this and a little of that off of my friends’ plates. Caroline had the eggplant tofu. It was all delicious. And the service was friendly, conversational, personable and personal.

The website, http://www.thaiclassiconline.com/ notes, “We have recently changed ownership and management. As such our menu (now posted) will be changing.

“Our offerings are individually cooked in the traditional way. Thai and other Asian foods that have been "tweaked" for American tastes. Come in and try our Tom Kha (coconut soup) and taste the balance of sweetness and tartness…”

Eating at an ethnic restaurant is certainly nothing new in Carroll County. Ever since William Winchester founded Westminster in 1764 on one of the three main roads in Maryland for travelers headed west, there has always been a strong restaurant tradition in town. And Italian and Greek immigrants have played a key role in our Westminster restaurant tradition.

Restaurants and the hospitality industry have a history and tradition that dates back to the very beginnings of Westminster. The early history of restaurants, inns, hotels, - and saloons started when Westminster was located on one of the main roads that led settlers and early colonists west.

Many years ago, the research of historian Jay Graybeal revealed, “Throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, inns, usually known as taverns, and hotels provided lodging for travelers.

“Former Historical Society Curator Miss Lillian Shipley wrote an article for the Society's September 1971 News Letter entitled, ‘What Ever Happened to our Hotels,’ that provided some early history and anecdotes of Westminster hostelries:

“‘Around the turn of the century Westminster had seven churches, seven hotels and eighteen saloons.  The hotels Eastern or East End, the Main Court, the Central, the Westminster, the Albion, the Montour House, and the Anchor…’” 

In addition to an article in the Baltimore Sun on February 11, 2013, I have written quite a number of articles on restaurants, inns, hotels and saloons in Westminster.

The core and backbone of our community is a melting pot made-up of immigrant families who were itinerant Jewish tailors, Greek and Italian restaurateurs, Latinos, devout Muslims, Hindus, Koreans, Chinese and African-Americans who work hard and rub elbows together to weave this fabric we call community.

Many of the restaurant owners came to Westminster from Greece. The late Tula Lefteris and her family owned the City Restaurant and Lefteris Food Market for many years before they retired from the business in the 1980s. The American Restaurant and Central Restaurant in downtown Westminster were owned by Greek immigrants. The Sharkey family, of Greek descent owned Sharkey’s Cove for thirty years.

The late Tass Samios, a local restaurateur and grocery store owner was born in Kythera Greece. George Dimitrios Sirinakis, a Greek Merchant Marine, was a man from Skyros, a small island in Greece, who literally hopped-off a boat in the port of Baltimore in October 1957, married a local girl, Zoe Amprazis, and started working in the family restaurant business, Harry’s Lunch, on Main Street.

Harry’s Lunch was started in 1946 by Zoe Sirinakis’ parents, Greek immigrants, Harry and Bessie Amprazis at 54 West Main Street between Lefteris’ grocery store and J. C. Penney’s.

In the last several decades, Thai, Chinese, Mexican and other wonderful ethnic foods and restaurants have discovered what the Greeks learned generations-ago; that Westminster is a great place to operate an eatery.

When Kevin Dayhoff is not eating-out somewhere in town, he may reached at kevindayhoff@gmail.com