East Charlotte Welcomes Sen Mee Noodle House with Open Arms

Everyone has their personally preferred form of greeting someone whom they’ve just met for the first time. Some people nod, others shake hands, some go for a first bump. Jenny Zajac at Sen Mee Noodle House is a hugger.

As soon as I made my way into the restaurant located next to Skrimp Shack on the outer edge of the Eastway Crossing shopping center in east Charlotte, Zajac was there with a hug and a smile, making me feel like we were old friends.

I quickly felt at ease in the small but quaint restaurant, which is rife with lush plants and depictions of hand-panted manga murals adorning the walls. My first order at the establishment was a lychee iced tea. With the sweet, floral and fruity notes balancing the tartness of the iced tea, the drink, like Zajac, was familiar even in its newness to me.

Zajac is one of four founders of Sen Mee Noodle House, an all-women-owned Thai restaurant that opened on Central Avenue in August 2024. The name is a play on words, with multiple meanings that all play their part in representing the restaurant.

“Sen mee” is Thai for rice noodle, like what’s sold at the noodle house, while the full title when said quickly sounds like someone saying, “Send me noodles,” which the staff at Sen Mee is more than ready to do.

Then there’s the fun innuendo that the team has turned into a motto of sorts; staff members’ shirts read “Send me noods,” playing on a more contemporary and salacious expression.

“We just play on it as our little quirky personality,” Zajac said, laughing.

As is apparent from the tongue-in-cheek T-shirts and easy-going atmosphere at Sen Mee Noodle House within the restaurant, Zajac and fellow cofounders Lin Wilet, Nana Chandara and Sophia Dong went into their venture with a goal not to take themselves too seriously.

Before opening the restaurant, the women were all friends who cooked together. They wanted to bring that energy into their restaurant, providing a place for Charlotteans to come together with friends and family, order great food and perhaps have a few drinks, Zajac said.

When the restaurant initially opened, the women planned to make it exclusively a takeout spot, but as customers fell in love with the Noodle House, they made it clear that they wanted to be able to spend time there. Ownership happily complied.

“I love to see them just stay,” Wilet said. “We have really good returning customers. [They] just come hang out, and after that, we become good friends.”

Establishing those connections is something the women said they believe they are capable of simply because they are women; they exhibit a care and level of empathy that many business owners might not be able to show.

“Society is manly and masculine-driven,” Zajac said. “I think the women can also be right there with them, especially with the experiences that we have traveling and we pick up along the way as we get mature. We have the experience, we have the drive, we have the power to do it as well.”

She said this translates to their readiness to help with dietary restrictions but also in the way they simply treat their customers like friends, something I had experienced upon my first visit to Sen Mee.

“When anybody comes to our restaurant, we give them hugs. We say, ‘Hi, how are you?’ I feel like that feminine aspect to that makes it really family-friendly,” Zajac said. “We really strive for that environment.”

The fact that Sen Mee Noodle House sits smack in the middle of Charlotte’s most diverse corridor only makes the new establishment even more of a perfect fit.

“We’re lucky to be able to express how we feel in our culture of food and share with this community as well, especially as a diverse community at that,” she explained. “We’ve been lucky enough to have people who [are] adventurous to try our food on top of that. [We’re] just friends who love food who are now operating a place that has our food.”

Community reception drives restaurant founders

Each of the four women who launched Sen Mee Noodle House has 12-15 years of experience in the restaurant industry. Zajac was a private chef who worked for clients including NBA players. Wilet and Chandara were managers at Rai Lay Thai and Deejai Thai restaurants, respectively.

The four founders share certain responsibilities from cooking to cleaning the bathrooms, which they try not to make their staff do. Then they each carry their own unique talents and tasks.

Wilet is the mixologist who takes care of the plants while Zajac and Chandara have their own special styles of cooking. Chandara, known as the most soft-spoken of the group, “speaks loudly” in the kitchen with her ingredients, Wilet and Zajac agreed.

A shared principle goes into how they approach their food at Sen Mee Noodle House: “Keep the menu small and do it well.”

The menu begins with “Easy Bites” that could also be thought of as appetizers or grouped together as tapas: crispy chicken wontons, fried meatball skewers, papaya salad, calamari and a number of other options.

Then there’s soup, noodle bowls, items from the wok, and curry dishes. If you’ve saved room, stay for a dessert like the mango sticky rice. After all, they’ve reshaped their business model to let folks stick around as long as they like.

If the company’s various awards and recognitions are any indication, the community has reciprocated the restaurant’s friendliness.

Queen City Nerve designated the newly opened spot as Best Takeout in the Critics’ Picks of our 2024 Best in the Nest issue while the Asian Chamber of Commerce voted them Best New Business.

They proudly display all their honors near the front of the restaurant, including a welcoming certificate from the newly formed Greater Eastland Business District.

While they consider themselves honored to have been so readily accepted, they still feel they have much to learn. While all of the women had plenty of restaurant experience, none of them had run their own business before Sen Mee Noodle House.

“I feel happy, but sometimes it can be really frustrating with operating,” said Wilet.

“I feel like us being first-time business owners, it is frustrating, but it’s also learning curves,” Zajac echoed. “As we go through the hurdles, we get stronger and we get more confident in ourselves as well.”

Their confidence is evident as they present a healthy mix of traditional cooking styles and innovative approaches.
Though they’ve added the ability for customers to sit down and enjoy their food, they’re still keeping the takeout vibe alive by serving entrees in to-go containers, almost as if to say, “Don’t stuff yourself, you can take it home with you.”

They’re also being creative with the menu. They insist the Mama Pad KeeMao with beef is a dish you won’t find anywhere else in Charlotte. That and the mango sticky rice are the restaurant’s best sellers six months into the business.

The team is currently working on some ideas to add more exclusive dishes to the menu.

The women said they feel like they’re hitting their stride, and while they would love to eventually have another location, it’s a distant dream for the moment. Right now, they’re just enjoying all the love they’ve received from everyone.

“I got to say, we’ve just been very lucky to be accepted in this community,” Zajac said. “Without this community, we would never be able to have this much success.”

In Charlotte’s east side, if you go for the hug, the community hugs you back.