In the short version that Si Hayden tells of her last seven years, she hit her head and decided to open a restaurant.
While true as a highly condensed outline, those 10 words elide the traumatic brain injury she endured after a car accident, endless doctor visits and medical frustration, several years when she could barely get out of bed and refused to drive, depression, the collapse of a banking career and busy social life, the birth of a daughter to her and husband Greg and the creation, over just five months earlier this year, of Si Uthai Restaurant and Cafe in their hometown of Clifton Park.
Open since mid-May in a retail plaza on Grooms Road that is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, the restaurant combines her nickname, Si — pronounced “see” — and part of the name of Uthai Thani, the province where her mother, Kulisara Jiraprapai, was raised in their native Thailand. (Si’s given first name is Paullin.)…