Onjira Phukingngoen Scrimpshire
- Food, hospitality, music, and community may seem like separate pieces of Aie’s story, but they come from the same places.
Meet Onjira Phukingngoen Scrimpshire. We call her Aie.
At a young age, she moved from Thailand and grew up in her stepfather’s hometown, Enterprise, Clarke County, Mississippi. But memories of cooking rice in the dark with her grandmother before school never faded.
“Food was part of life from an early age,” Aie says, explaining that as a girl, and especially the oldest girl, learning to cook was expected. It was tradition.
Aie found herself cooking for family and friends and thought, “Why not try to make a living instead?” That was the first motivation for opening a restaurant and, as Aie puts it, “being your own boss!”
In 2014, she opened Aie’s Taste of Thai in Lauderdale County, thousands of miles from her home country and miles from her home in Clarke County, Mississippi. Downtown Meridian made sense to her because it was a larger community where she believed there was room for what she wanted to offer: a menu that was distinctly hers.
Three dishes that shape Aie’s restaurant story are her Cashew Chicken, Pepper Steak, and Pad Thai. But if you ask Aie which foods are most personal to her, she points to her stir-fries and curries.
“Everything on the menu I made up,” she says. “So, you can’t find or compare anywhere else.”
The basics of sharing food blend the Thai culture she was born into and the Southern culture she grew up in. Her welcoming kindness garnishes both.
The restaurant has since evolved into what matters most to Aie: hospitality, community, generosity, and music. “We want everyone leaving here to feel as if they have been to my home,” she says.
Eventually, running her business became more than just feeding people. It became the place where she could give back. That desire had also mattered to Aie’s mother.
“She would stand along 8th Street, handing out toys to children she did not know,” Aie says. “So, I have always had a giving heart. And owning her business meant, “Meridian and the surrounding areas have always been very supportive,” she says. “I can give back without asking permission.”
That freedom placed another item on the menu. But it wasn’t food.
Most everyone in the region knows about Aie’s support for live music, especially young musicians and songwriters who perform in her restaurant. However, some may not know that this grew from a deep personal pain.
After the tragic loss of her daughter in 2020, Aie stopped listening to music because it felt as if music had just …stopped.
But Jeff Holland, an immensely talented singer and musician, brought music into her restaurant and back into her life. Jeff passed away in 2023, but the spirit of his music revealed a medicinal power.
“Music tells stories,” she says. “They can be sad, happy, or interesting. And some stories can be painful.”
Her greatest musical interest is allowing young performers to play at her restaurant. And that desire has become very personal.
“I realized that my daughter should have had opportunities like the ones these young musicians are getting.”
For a young songwriter, an opportunity to stand in front of people and perform a cover or an original song can be significant. It’s no wonder Aie makes room for inexperienced performers as well as established musicians to perform at her restaurant. At Aie’s, the song carries more than a melody. She wants young people to have somewhere they can try, a safe space where they and their music feel valued.
“Don’t get nervous,” she tells them. “Just sing.”
That simple instruction captures what Aie wants her restaurant to be for them: a relaxed, welcoming, forgiving space where a young musician can take a chance. She says few places offer that kind of setting, so she wants to make more room for more of them to be heard.
“I just wish everyone would feel the way I feel most times,” she says, “always thinking positively.”
Aie says she is working toward having another place for the music, suggesting that what began inside the restaurant may become something larger.
It fits the evolution of Aie’s Taste of Thai. Food, hospitality, music, and community may seem like separate pieces of Aie’s story, but they come from the same places—her heart, her family, her friends, her customers, and her Thailand and Mississippi roots.
Richelle Putnam
