Mornings for the Wages family start with preparing their kids for school before splitting off to one of four family-owned Malai Kitchen restaurants across North Texas, including one at Fort Worth’s The Shops at Clearfork. Yasmin Wages says one of the reasons the couple opened a restaurant was to spend more time together.

“We used to work for different restaurants,” she says, “and wouldn’t spend much time together. If we opened our own restaurant, we thought, we could work together. That was the plan. As we grew, we realized it didn’t make sense for us to be together. We have to divide and conquer most of the time.”

She says she works well with her husband Braden because they are willing to “give and take” when needed.

“We believe in getting to a solution without fighting,” she says. “Who wins is never something that we celebrate or even remember. We keep the focus on the guests.”

Having children has taught the couple to empathize with workers who call in with sick kiddos.

“Before, we didn’t know the struggle,” Yasmin says. “Now I totally get it. It changes how you manage your team a little bit. You have a lot more patience.”

Braden says working with his wife allows them to celebrate wins together. Reaching certain milestones becomes more of a family affair.

“There’s no way I could have gotten to where we are without Yasmin,” he says.

Malai Kitchen has launched their brewed in-house seasonal beers for the Oktoberfest Tap Takeover happening now through October 6 at all locations. The Thai and Vietnamese restaurant has been brewing their own beer at their nano-brewery within their Southlake location since 2014 and has three seasonal beers on tap including the Hefewiezen, Helles Lager and Oktoberfest beer...

Yasmin Wages, the co-owner of Thai and Vietnamese restaurant Malai Kitchen, which has four locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, told CNN that Malai Kitchen is seeing an increase in single reservations for lunch and late-afternoon meals.

“Previously, solo diners would prefer to sit at the bar,” she said. “Increasingly so, they’re preferring a more private table or booth.”

Wages’ newest restaurant, which opened three years ago, was designed with smaller, two-person booths. They’re proving perfect for single diners. Each dish on the menu is designed as an individually sized portion, which is also a draw for people eating alone.

“Solo diners have a little cubby. They really like the intimacy, the privacy,” Wages said.

Solo dining used to be looked down upon, she said. Now it “looks peaceful to me. You can disconnect from the world for 40 minutes and enjoy your food.”

Following your passion and doing it with loved ones is the recipe for success. Malai Kitchen co-founders and husband-and-wife team Braden and Yasmin Wages discovered that secret early in their careers...

...Their menu centers on Thai and Vietnamese cuisine, and they strive for authenticity in every recipe...Another distinctive feature they’ve added is making their rice noodles from scratch, which is “very rare in the world,” according to Braden. The process began with sourcing equipment from Vietnam in 2021. “We didn’t start actually serving the noodles from the machine until the end of 2022,” Yasmin says. “We thought it would be so easy. ‘Rice flour, check, water, check’ but it was not.”...

Malai Kitchen is back with its one-day Hanoi-style street food pop-up like one might find in Vietnam. They’ll have their own Vietnamese beer, Bia Hoi, for $1. And, as done in Vietnam, everyone will sit on small plastic stools at the tables. The menu includes shrimp ceviche, finger bread banh mi, crispy rice crackers, baked scallops, purple yam donuts and salted caramel fish sauce ice cream. You just gotta go.

Malai Kitchen, the husband-and-wife-owned restaurant offering a modern take on Thai and Vietnamese cuisine will host their annual Bia Hoi sidewalk pop-up restaurant on Saturday, October 21 from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. (or until they run out) at their West Village location at 3699 McKinney Ave.

The one-day pop-up will feature a Hanoi-style street food stall along with unique bites like you might find in a stall in Vietnam, and Malai’s signature Vietnamese beer, Bia Hoi, which will be served for $1 per pint. Guests will be able to...

Malai Thai-Vietnamese Kitchen refers to their dining experience as “a modern approach to Thai and Vietnamese cuisine.” After visiting their Fort Worth location, I can attest, you won’t find a more interesting or delectable menu anywhere. Owners Braden and Yasmin Wages forged their take on Southeastern Asian food after extensive travels to the region, including Thailand and Vietnam. With that in mind, there are some other twists and turns to their menu, which uses only freshly sourced ingredients and almost exclusively scratch-made items...

When it comes to authentic cooking, timeworn traditions and real-deal ingredients are essential to any cuisine..."There are a handful of classic Thai dishes that we use as a bar when trying new restaurants," explains Braden Wages, co-owner and chef of Malai Kitchen, a Thai restaurant with four locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. "These are dishes that are simple in concept, require some not-so-off-the-shelf ingredients to make them real, but have room for creative liberty while still respecting tradition...

Malai Kitchen’s in-house-made rice noodles are the food equivalent of luscious, soft white velvet. These noodles are different from all the other noodles in North Texas because they are made using a noodle machine designed and built in Vietnam just for Malai Kitchen...