You can teach culinary students all the techniques of cooking, but more elusive is the acquisition of good taste. It’s something that can’t be taught, but developed only by being open to trying new ingredients, new cuisines and myriad flavor profiles beyond one’s comfort zone.
Outside of restaurants, some of the best meals I’ve had have been from self-taught Thai and Laotian home cooks. Why? Laos and northeastern Thailand were once part of Siam and share a culinary heritage with complexity built in thanks to influences from China, Portugal, the Netherlands, India, France and Japan.
Where Japanese cuisine favors soy sauce, mirin and miso, and Korea’s flavor profile is heavy on chili paste, garlic and fermentation, Thai and Laotian cuisine embraces fish sauce, palm sugar, bright citrus and dozens of herbs. These add up to a great foundation in building one’s taste buds to detect nuance and a mental library of flavor profiles.
Their cooks were adept at adapting recipes by improvising with native ingredients, such as replacing the ghee in Indian food with coconut oil or coconut milk, and augmenting or toning down spices with herbs, tamarind and limes to achieve depth of flavor and a holy balance of spice, salt, sourness and sweetness. When it all comes together, the result is powerful and eye-opening enough to imprint itself into one’s memory forever.
Ashley (Ash) Thairathom was born into such a milieu, growing up in Laos, moving to Hawaii at age 6, and always observing her mom in the kitchen, all the while making mental notes on what she was tasting. She was about 9 when she tried cooking a bamboo soup for her family.
“They thought it came out pretty good for my first time. I just went by taste, like my mom does it. She never measured. She just went by taste, by sight.”
The best home cooks aren’t afraid to go beyond the recipe and be spontaneous. They aren’t afraid to taste, and try new ingredients, techniques and styles of cuisine. For obvious reasons, they often remain the unsung heroes of the culinary world.
But luckily, Thairathom has stepped out of the home kitchen to give entrepreneurship a try, starting up Asian Flavors to serve a mix of traditional Lao, Thai and Filipino cuisine, plus her own fusion of the three and whatever comes to mind. Her small operation is one of dozens of mom-and-pop food booths that fill the Hale Ohana Marketplace in the former Sports Authority building on Ward Avenue.
Although Thairathom said she knew as a child that food was her passion, it’s taken half a lifetime to get here because she was discouraged from entering the culinary profession. Instead, she’s explored a full range of work, from telemarketing to travel industry reservations, tour narration, real estate property management and working in dental and ophthalmology offices, only to come back to what she really loves.
“My mom used to sell food in Laos, and she didn’t want me to be a chef because it’s a difficult profession. She didn’t want me to have to work as hard as she did, so I didn’t pursue it. Although it’s hard work, what keeps me going is hearing nice compliments such as customers telling me it’s one of the best things they’ve eaten, or ‘I can taste the love you put into your food.’”
After a brief foray into offering her food at farmers markets, she got a confidence boost in 2016 when she was “discovered” while serving food at a Chinese New Year street festival by Wang Chung’s owner Danny Chang, who invited her to a pop-up food event at his bar. Her nam khao tod (Lao crispy rice ball salad) and larb sticky rice burger became instant hits with food bloggers, but she couldn’t capitalize on her quick notoriety because she was needed to help her mom with work. Now she’s back and ready to devote her full attention to keeping diners well-fed.
Though Thairathom constantly rotates dishes in and out of her menu, standards include a trio of meaty dishes: lechon kawali ($9 mini/$12 regular plate), Lao sausage ($3.50, or $9 as a meal) and deep-fried pork chop ($11) cut up into bite-size pieces and served with a soy-vinegar sauce with cucumbers and onion, one of several of her sauce recipes that she will be bottling for sale soon.
It’s worthwhile to follow her Instagram feed @asianflavorshi to keep up with daily specials like Lao-style deep-fried pork ribs ($9/$12) that had me running down immediately for pork marinated in fish sauce and garlic, fried to achieve a deep brown crispy exterior.
One of her latest experiments was a dish of Yum Mama noodles using Thailand’s most famous brand of instant noodles. Instead of serving them in a typical spicy broth, she presented the noodles dry-fried with green beans and bean sprouts for crunch.
On another day you might find Thai meatballs ($2 for three, or $9 as a meal with rice), Thai red chicken curry ($12), pork pad krapao ($10) and shrimp tom yum ($11). I never worry about what’s going to be on her menu because it’s never hit-or-miss; it’s always delicious.
Recent innovations include the family-style presentation of different greens and ingredients for making Lao wraps. In coming weeks she plans to offer Filipino kamayan feasts of many ingredients, intended to be enjoyed by groups of families and friends, a free-for-all of food to be grabbed and devoured by hand. Can’t wait till that happens!
ASIAN FLAVORS
Ohana Hale Marketplace, 333 Ward Ave., booths 13 and 14
Food ****
Service ***/2
Ambience **1/2
Value ****
>> Call: 200-3994
>> Hours: 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays, 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays
>> Cost: Less than $15 per person for lunch
Ratings compare similar restaurants:
**** – excellent
*** – very good
** – average
* – below average
Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.
