In place of openings, closings, and snarky opinions, this week I’ve got a story for you. It’s about a new restaurant on Jinxian Lu you wouldn’t normally think twice about.

It starts with Coconut Paradise, their success, and their one-time head chef, Krisada.

Krisada gets the idea to strike out on his own. He and his wife, Jasmine Fang, find a space on Kangding Lu and find a graphic designer to copy Coconut Paradise’s menu design down to the numbers on the dishes and the travel shots behind them. They open, call the restaurant Chiang Mai Thai Cuisine and boast, a bit brashly, about being “just like Coconut Paradise, but cheaper.” Coconut Paradise is non-plussed; Chiang Mai’s lo-res menu pictures are an apt metaphor for the whole operation.

Krisada has a friend, Mr. Yang. Yang is a vegetable supplier. He sold to Coconut Paradise, and when Krisada and Fang opened their copycat, Yang sold to them too. The pair got on well. Yang gave them lemons, a fruit juicer, and credit. (Fang, Krisada’s wife, contests this.) One day, Yang comes in for lunch and orders a ¥38 lunch set. He expects it to be free, or, at the very least, discounted. (“The ingredients didn’t cost them more than ¥10,” he told me.) But Fang isn’t having it. She charges Yang the full ¥38 for lunch, which sends him into a rage, and then, into entrepreneurial revenge plotting. He asks Fang for a menu, but she doesn’t want to be copied herself (oh, the irony...), and, sensing his motivation, gathers up all the menus in the restaurant. She doesn’t let Yang anywhere near them. Yang gets even angrier, and, he claims, it’s now that the vague idea of opening a restaurant crystallizes into a Xerox plot. “I knew I was going to do a Thai restaurant. But when she hid all the menus, that’s when I decided I was going to make it just like theirs,” Yang recalls.

So he does. Yang finds a tiny storefront on Jinxian Lu and someone selling all kinds of Thai tchotckes. And he finds a menu that looks exactly like Chiang Mai’s, which is to say, like a bad copy of Coconut Paradise. The lo-res travel photos are the same; item number nine is the same Chiang Mai style sausage. So is item number 21, 68, 74 and every one in between. Says Yang, “I had a friend who did the design for Chiang Mai. He helped me.” Says an indignant Fang, “He stole a menu. I know it. I’m missing one menu.” Yang rips off the business card, down to a temple picture and sprightly white lotus flowers brightening up the telephone numbers. The best part? Yang is now the proud owner of Qing Mai Heaven Thai Cuisine, 145 Jinxian Lu, near Maoming Lu. He’s open for business now.