Seng Luangrath had never been to the mountain-ringed Mekong River city of Luang Prabang, her home country’s top tourist attraction, and on a summertime visit she was eager to test her tongue.





The chef and owner of Washington’s only Lao food restaurant had come to help shape a top-notch kitchen at a soon-to-open botanical garden. But the bubbly, driven Luangrath had a bigger mission at heart: lifting up her country’s cuisine.

She dined in some of the city’s top restaurants and was impressed with the slick presentation. Then she took a bite. Luangrath found or lam, an eggplant-thickened meat stew, without enough punch and MSG flavouring everywhere.

“I was surprised they watered down the food,” Luangrath said. When she inquired of locals, they replied, “Oh, because of tourists.”

Yet Luangrath has punctured the myth of bland Western palates in Washington, where she’s building an empire. She has two established restaurants – one of them, Thip Khao in Washington DC was honoured last year as one of Bon Appétit magazine’s top 50 new restaurants in America – and two more in the works. She’s also working to build what she calls the Lao Food Movement, to popularise the distinctive tastes of a nation she once fled in the dark of night.

“A lot of kids are growing up in America, got married to other cultures and lost their Lao culture,” Luangrath said. “It seems like the food is bringing us back. It has reconnected us. People are so proud of it. It’s stinky? It’s okay. It’s spicy? It’s okay. Bring it out because nowadays, travelling people are willing to try anything new.”

Luangrath spent her early years in the capital city of Vientiane at a time of upheaval. The communist Pathet Lao took over in 1975 after a disastrous civil war that drew in the United States and North Vietnam. Like many Laotians, 12-year-old Seng and her family made a break for it in 1981.

Late one night, they took a bus to a hut outside the city where, she recalls, they met smugglers who eluded patrols to take them by boat across the Mekong into Thailand. They spent the next two years in refugee camps before the United States granted them asylum.





It was in a refugee camp in Thailand that Luangrath, with no school and her mother working, learned to cook from neighbours using less-than-inspiring ingredients provided by the United Nations. Cabbage soup was common.

The family settled in California among relatives, and Luangrath continued her culinary education by watching as much TV cooking as she could. She later married her husband, Bounmy Khammanivanh, who is also Lao.

They worked together on flooring and construction businesses, but she got more satisfaction – and rave reviews – when she would cook for clients and coworkers. So Seng left the business to craft a menu, testing and retesting so much at odd hours that her husband half-jokingly suggested putting a bed in the kitchen.

With US$30,000 in savings and a bit of luck, she took over the Bangkok Golden Thai restaurant in 2010. Though their landlocked homeland has rich flavours and delicacies of its own, most Lao chefs in the US cook only the better-known food of Thailand.

It’s typically only at staff meals or in home kitchens where members of the Lao diaspora grab a pinch of sticky rice – used as both starch and utensil – and dive into shared plates that lean toward the bitter, the herbal and occasional flamethrower levels of spice.

Luangrath’s path to Lao food evangelism was gradual. Her Lao dishes started as specials made at the request of regulars and insiders. Eventually, plates such as papaya salad flavoured with fermented fish sauce and fried quail with lemon grass migrated to the menu.

The Lao dishes ended up outselling the Thai food and inspiring Luangrath to seek out a space for a Lao-only restaurant. Thip Khao opened in December 2014 to warm reviews and national buzz. So Luangrath started thinking bigger.

For a few months, she launched a noodle shop pop-up called Khao Poon. Luangrath has also signed a lease to develop another more casual Lao restaurant in DC, with an opening date still to be determined.

The empire is fast becoming a dynasty. Luangrath’s son Bobby Pradachith, 23, did a stint at José Andrés’s Minibar and now runs Thip Khao’s kitchen. Pradachith is also sketching out his own venture to serve historic Lao food from long-forgotten recipes.

“Food is the easiest way to introduce a culture,” Pradachith said, telling of classmates who did not know anything about his ancestral home. “We can really get people to understand what Laos is and really become a unique country.”

To that end, Luangrath is connecting with Lao chefs around the United States via her Lao Food Movement, to which she has dedicated parts of her website, along with Facebook and Instagram pages. Her message: They don’t have to open a typical Thai restaurant. The unusual nature of Lao food is a selling point. Thip Khao includes a “jungle menu” with pig’s ears, fried duck heads and other rural specialties rarely found on American plates. Luangrath is working to bring in chefs to see how she makes Lao food for Americans.

Laos, it seems, might need its own crash course.

– The Washington Post