Samui Thai is gone after 23 years, and they're not done yet

Samui Thai Cuisine in Plano has closed. The restaurant served its last plate on Saturday, October 24, 2026, after 23 years at the Shops at Legacy on Legacy Drive.

Twenty-three years. That number is the story. Think about what Legacy looked like in 2003 and what it looks like now. The whole thing went up around them. Legacy West didn't exist. Most of the restaurants that opened alongside them are two or three tenants removed by now. Samui Thai outlasted basically all of it, in a development where the turnover of storefronts is close to a spectator sport.

If you've lived in this area more than a few years, you've eaten there. It was the Thai place at Legacy, not one of several but the one, and the kind of restaurant you ended up at without planning to, because it was right there and it was reliably good. D Magazine put it on its Best Neighborhood Restaurants list back in 2008. It racked up more than 400 Yelp reviews, which for a single-location strip restaurant in Plano is a lot of dinners.

The name came from Ko Samui, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand that owner Melissa Zaino's family used to vacation on. Twenty-three years of Tom Kha coconut soup and tamarind pad Thai in a Plano shopping centre, named after a beach halfway around the world.

Why it closed

Zaino hasn't said publicly, and I'm not going to speculate about someone's business. What I can tell you is what's taking the space.

A Flower Child is going in at 5700 Legacy Drive, the salad-and-bowl chain. It'll be their second Plano location; the first opened near Preston and Park in January 2024, and they're up to seven around DFW with another on the way in Frisco. A state filing lists Samui Thai as the previous occupant, so this is confirmed rather than rumoured. Renovations are estimated to start around December 15, with the restaurant opening in early 2027.

I went by this week. The sign is already down. You can still read where it was, two bare patches of stucco on the tower above the entrance where the letters were pulled off and nobody has bothered to repaint yet. Underneath it, on the lamp post, the Shops at Legacy have hung a banner that says DISCOVER YOUR PLACE.

Make of that what you will. A 23-year independent out, a regional chain in, at one of the highest-traffic addresses in Plano. That's not a scandal. Rent is rent, and a landlord does what a landlord does. But it is the specific way these neighbourhoods change, one lease at a time, and it's worth noticing while it happens rather than two years later when you're trying to remember what used to be there.

What's next, and this is the actually useful part

They're planning to reopen.There's a notice on samuithai.com saying the team “hopes to reopen at a new location soon.” They haven't named it.

What they have done is put up a list you can join to get the new address before it's announced, and they're throwing in two free Sunshine Rolls for signing up.

So if Samui Thai was your place: go to samuithai.com and get on that list. That's the entire practical takeaway here. A restaurant that survived 23 years at Legacy is trying to land somewhere new, and the thing that decides whether that works is whether enough of their old regulars find them again. Getting on a mailing list is about forty seconds of effort, and it's the difference between them reopening to a room full of people who remember them and reopening to strangers.

One thing worth clearing up, because the internet is confusing about it: there is no second Samui Thai still open. Some directories still list a location on West McDermott in Allen. That address is Silver Thai now, and has been for years. The Legacy store was it.

Where to go while you wait: Too Thai Street Eats, Frisco

If you're missing Samui Thai and you're on the Frisco side anyway, try Too Thai Street Eats on Warren Parkway.

It's a different proposition rather than a replacement. Samui Thai was a sit-down room you took your in-laws to for 23 years; Too Thai is Thai street food, built around noodle dishes like pad Thai and pad see ew, grilled and fried meats, curries and rice plates. It's the second location of a small operation that started in Carrollton, and it only opened in Frisco back in April, so it's still new enough that most people haven't got round to it.

The practical reason to put it on your list: it's open 11am to 9:30pm every single day, including Sunday and Monday. Samui Thai was closed Mondays for dinner, and a Thai place that's open seven days with no awkward gaps is genuinely useful when it's 7pm on a Monday and nobody wants to cook.

If you never went to Samui Thai

You've missed it, and I'm sorry to be the one telling you. But the list is the same list. If they reopen within driving distance, start with the Tom Kha: coconut soup with mushrooms and your protein of choice, and the thing most of their reviews end up talking about.

Twenty-three years is a long time to feed a neighbourhood. Here's hoping they get a second act.