The American chef who is taking Laotian food to Laos
She taught Americans to respect Laotian food. Now Washington restaurateur Seng Langruath is trying to teach Laos, too, where dishes have been toned down for tourist palates
Seng Luangrath has never before been to Luang Prabang, the mountain-ringed Mekong River city that is her home country’s top tourist attraction, and on a summertime visit she is eager to test her tongue.
The chef and owner of the only Lao food restaurant in Washington, DC, the United States capital, she has come to help shape a top-notch kitchen at a soon-to-open botanical garden. But the bubbly, driven Luangrath has a bigger mission at heart: lifting up the cuisine of Laos.
She has sat at some of the city’s top tables and is impressed with the slick presentation, but Luangrath finds the or lam, an eggplant-thickened meat stew, is lacking punch and there is MSG flavouring everywhere.
“I was surprised they watered down the food,” says Luangrath. When she inquires of locals, they reply, “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, 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.
