Yumm Thai: Sushi and Beyond

Yumm Thai: Sushi and Beyond occupies a storefront on North Court Street in downtown Florence, inside the historic Rogers Department Store building, a structure dating to 1894. The restaurant opened in 2012 and describes itself as the only truly Thai restaurant serving the Shoals area, pairing Thai cooking with a sushi program under the same roof, a combination it markets as “sophisticated and delicious, but…VERY affordable.”

The dining room mixes upscale indoor seating with sidewalk seating along North Court Street, reflecting the age of the building it occupies while presenting a modern, clean interior, a contrast the restaurant leans into as part of its identity in downtown Florence. Service is split across lunch, a Saturday brunch, and dinner, giving the restaurant a presence across most of the day rather than functioning strictly as a dinner destination.

Lunch service runs Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with the same window used for Saturday brunch. Dinner runs from 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and extends to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. The kitchen makes its own sauces in-house rather than relying on prepared bases, and the menu draws on both Thai and Japanese technique, with dishes like Pad See Ew, a Bangkok-style grilled chicken, and a wasabi-crusted filet appearing alongside more traditional Thai curries and a Thai beef salad. The curry list runs beyond a single house version, with a Rama curry, a Massaman chicken curry, and a green curry chicken all on the regular menu, alongside a Thai chicken coconut soup and a spicy beef dish.

Seafood shows up throughout the menu as well, along with tempura preparations, a firecracker shrimp starter, lettuce wraps, and sushi rolls including a vegetable tempura roll, a tempura shrimp roll, a roll the restaurant calls the Spiderman roll, and a Salmon Bacon Time roll built with smoked salmon, spicy Cajun crab salad, crispy tempura, Japanese mayo, red tobiko, salmon bacon, eel sauce, and spicy aioli. A katsu preparation and a shrimp and grits dish round out the entrees that push the menu past a standard Thai-restaurant format, and a starter called Tuna Tataki pairs seared, thinly sliced ahi tuna with a soy onion vinaigrette, carrot, and spring mix. Among the kitchen’s signature entrees, a dish called the Sinking Ship combines tiger shrimp, crispy catfish, and calamari in a spicy chili garlic red curry sauce. On the sweeter end, the kitchen serves a mango sticky rice, a cheesecake, and a tiramisu, departures from a standard Thai-restaurant dessert list that reflect the “and Beyond” part of the restaurant’s name.

The bar program is one of the restaurant’s distinguishing features locally: Yumm Thai installed what it describes as the Shoals’ first Enomatic wine dispenser and preservation system, a setup that allows wine to be poured by the glass from a wider selection than a typical by-the-glass list without the bottle degrading once opened. Japanese-style craft cocktails and martinis round out the bar menu, including a drink called the Gin Kiss, and the restaurant promotes its happy hour as among the best in town. Beyond the dining room, Yumm Thai also books catering orders and private parties, and it sells gift cards for guests planning a visit for someone else.

Being housed in the Rogers Department Store building ties the restaurant to a specific piece of downtown Florence’s commercial history, a building that has outlasted its original retail purpose and now anchors a stretch of North Court Street built around independent restaurants and shops. For visitors walking the Court Street corridor, Yumm Thai offers one of the few Thai-focused menus in the Shoals region, set inside a building whose age gives the restaurant a sense of place beyond its cooking alone.

Guests coming from outside the immediate area often plan a visit to Yumm Thai around its brunch hours, when the lunch menu is available on a Saturday alongside the restaurant’s cocktail and wine program, giving it a slightly different rhythm than its weekday lunch and dinner service.