Web site makes Thai Curry an accessible staple

Atlanta Intown Paper
July 2006
By William E. Bray

Atlanta-based CurrySimple.com is an innovative new approach to ordering your own curry and curry sauces over the Internet. The curry is made in Thailand with natural ingredients. Mike Moran is the 29-year-old Atlantan who added this spice site to the world of Internet shopping, making global flavors more convenient and accessible to home cooks. He's also selling his spices from a CurrySimple booth at Piedmont Park's Green Market on Saturday mornings.

Moran started his first business at 14 as a baseball cards dealer in Bethesda, Md., where he grew up. He recently recalled: "My mother would drive me to the shows, and I would set up my table. I was this little kid among adult businessmen." By 17 he was working at a restaurant in Bethesda, and "more or less managing it," he said.

At 21, seeking greater opportunity and more adventure, he moved to Atlanta, where his sister was living, and got his start as a bartender at the American Roadhouse Restaurant in Virginia-Highland. Soon, as entrepreneurs do, he had two things going on the side - a business as a stock market consultant, and buying and restoring a house in Poncey-Highland. He then began tending bar at Surin in Buckhead, on of Atlanta's most popular Thai restaurants.

Continuing to dream up new business possibilities, he began listening to customers complain about how difficult it was to make Thai food, especially Thai curry, at home. When he met Nimitr Harimtepathip, known as Lim, a member of one of Bangkok's best-known restaurant families and a Surin manager, he asked how difficult it was to make curry at home.

That conversation grew into a collaboration and eventually the creation of CurrySimple. The online business includes curry sauces and other products made in Thailand. It features fresh, authentic ingredients that meet standards of American tastes.

Moran owns the American end of the business and Lim is his Thai business partner. CurrySimple products include red, green, yellow and masaman curry sauces, as well as syrup for making Thai tea and sauces for pad Thai, the popular noodle dish.