The newly opened Thai restaurant is focused: noodle soups, dry noodles, and rice bowls that fill shops across Thailand. Owner Thisun Polasub says it’s a side of Thai cuisine that rarely gets its own spotlight in Seattle.
There is no pad thai on the menu at RUAM, by design.
“When we talk about Thai food, people just think of one category,” Polasub tells CHS. “But if you talk about Japanese food, there’s a dedicated sushi restaurant. There’s katsu. There’s ramen. In Thailand, we have a big noodle culture, and I want to highlight that.”
RUAM is Polasub’s second restaurant. His first, Thai Rhapsody in Mill Creek, serves traditional dishes most diners expect: pad thai, pad see ew, fried rice. For Capitol Hill, he wanted a new concept.
“This one is totally different,” he said. “We don’t have pad thai. We don’t have fried rice.”
The restaurant veteran is candid about the risk. Opening on 15th Ave E is “totally different water” than Mill Creek, with a very different cost structure. The investment has kept him up at night.
“This is quite a big bet,” he said. “But I want to offer the best thing I can do for my customers. I believe if I do good, people will see it, and they will come and support.”
That energy is needed on the strip where a long wait for redevelopment on a core block of 15th Ave E has come with the closure of several neighborhood spaces.
CHS reported in September on the sudden closure of Rione XIII, Rubinstein Bagels, and Bar Vacilando as structural issues and landlord problems have emptied the 96-year-old building where they made their home at 15th and Harrison.
2026 has also left the former Ada’s Technical Books shuttered but new businesses are joining the area including a rebirth of Bar Cantinetta and delayed but still in motion plans for Fire Tacos & Cantina to join 15th in the old Coastal Kitchen building.
Looming around it all is the on-hold six-story redevelopment of the street’s old QFC block as local developer Hunters Capital keeps the stretch busy with pop-up businesses while waiting out the challenging economic conditions that have put new construction mostly on ice across the city.
The street continues to welcome new openings like the addition of Ha Ha Coffee this fall. Losses continue, too, like Club Comedy Seattle that failed to find a buyer and shuttered in the street level space below where RUAM has opened up.
RUAM itself is replacing a recent 15th Ave E closure. Bites of Bangkok shuttered after a seven-year run in the space. The restaurant space was home to Capitol Hill’s much-loved Bagel Deli.
For Polasub, RUAM’s focus is personal. Noodles came to Thailand from China, he said, and the country’s large Chinese immigrant community helped make them part of everyday life. He grew up eating soup noodles, dry noodles and simple rice bowls topped with chicken or pork.
“That’s the food every Thai person grows up with,” he said. “It’s my favorite.”
At RUAM, those noodle-shop staples get dressed up. Where a street vendor in Thailand might serve beef noodles with whatever cut is on hand, RUAM uses ribeye. Dishes come topped with fried enoki mushrooms and microgreens. Some bowls swap in Japanese udon for traditional rice noodles. The menu also includes Pink Velvet Yen Ta Fo, a version of Thailand’s well-known pink noodle soup, served with crispy seafood.
“The look is modernized, but the taste stays true to bold, authentic Thai flavor,” Polasub said.
The restaurant’s signature dish is the ribeye Jaew Hon, an aromatic, herb-heavy soup from Thailand’s northeastern Isaan region. The kitchen makes the sauce in house from lemongrass, galangal and other herbs. Polasub says it’s the dish every first-time visitor should order.
He remembers the first time he tasted the finished version, a few days after opening.
“I slurped that hot soup and it just blew my mind,” he said. “I didn’t think it would taste that good.”
The menu comes from executive chef and manager Scott Wisitkran, who runs RUAM day to day. Wisitkran grew up cooking in his parents’ restaurant in Thailand before moving to Sydney, Australia in 2012 where he worked his way up through kitchens to become a head chef. He came to Seattle in 2017 and has worked in Thai and other Asian restaurants around the area since.
Polasub says he gives Wisitkran full creative control. “I give him freedom because I know how good he is,” he said. The two do adjust recipes together, along with Polasub’s wife, who runs Thai Rhapsody and who he says has a gift for knowing exactly what a dish is missing.
Most of RUAM’s ingredients are sourced locally. Polasub says herbs that were hard to find in the U.S. 10 or 15 years ago are now grown in Florida and Mexico and easy to get here. Only a few specialty items are imported from Thailand.
The name RUAM means “together” in Thai. Polasub says he chose a name that people who don’t speak Thai could still pronounce, and one that captured what he wants the restaurant to be: a place where people gather over good food. He picked the location for its mix of a quieter, walkable Capitol Hill street with parking out front.
“We gather, we simmer it, and you savor it,” he said.
Polasub says he reads customer feedback closely and passes it along to the kitchen so the team can keep improving. “I really care about my customers,” he said. “I want people to leave happy.”
So far, the early signs are encouraging. Polasub says RUAM started slow and quiet while staffing settled in, but has already started to collect five-star reviews from customers.
He admits he obsessed over the details of the space, changing the design several times.“My wife reminded me, ‘Honey, you are not building a museum,’” he said.
RUAM is located at 340 15th Ave E. Learn more at ruamkitchen.com.
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