Not the same as Thai food: Laotian cuisine is on the rise, and a trip to tourist hotspot Luang Praba
It’s juicy, milky and subtly sweet, and full of small, white bee larvae, snug inside the hexagons.
The market occupies a few lanes close to the former royal palace, a French colonial-era residence turned museum.
Vendors from surrounding villages – mostly women – arrive before sunrise, setting up pitches on the floor and offering everything from rice to foraged herbs, chilli peppers, frogs, dried buffalo skin crisps and freshwater fish displayed in bamboo baskets.
With its ornate Buddhist temples, boutiques and bakeries, turquoise waterfalls, heritage hotels and almsgiving ceremonies, Luang Prabang, a Unesco World Heritage destination on the Mekong River, may be the most visited place in Laos, but this is a country that receives only a fraction of the number of tourists as neighbouring Thailand and Vietnam.Much like the country itself, Laotian food has remained largely unknown to outsiders.
The Lao had to focus on rebuilding following the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, says Lao-American Saeng Douangdara, a personal chef in Los Angeles with a large TikTok following. The country was heavily bombed during the conflict by US forces targeting North Vietnamese supply lines.
“For many Lao refugees in Western countries, like my family, the primary focus was survival,” he says. “So we opened Thai restaurants in America because Thai cuisine was already well-known and popular among Americans.
“Chefs would secretly prepare Lao food on the side for themselves to enjoy. They were not sure whether Americans would appreciate the vibrant flavours.”
As awareness of the cuisine begins to spread, Douangdara is planning to launch his own food tours to Laos. He will take guests to coffee shops and open-air markets and arrange feasts for them of Laotian cuisine.
Already a hit with tourists is Tamarind, a family-run restaurant overlooking the Nam Khan, a river that meets the Mekong just to the northeast of Luang Prabang’s old town. The restaurant, which opened in 2005, is so popular that it’s difficult to get a table there without a reservation.Occupying a terracotta-tiled building with pastel green windows, Tamarind has open-air seating with wooden tables and houseplants.
Its set menus afford diners an understanding of Laotian cuisine, and the restaurant doubles as a cooking school with tasting sessions, hands-on classes and market tours.
Head chef Joy Ngeuamboupha and his sisters prepare dinners that begin with a shot of rice whisky followed by gaeng nor mai, a hot bamboo stew cooked with wood ear mushrooms, squash and okra, and flavoured with yanang, a native herb.
Before we dig in, a waiter explains the ingredients used for each dish, and how to appreciate mok pa (fish steamed in a banana leaf pocket) by biting into fresh chilli after each mouthful.
“Many people outside Laos think that Lao food is the same as Thai food,” says Ngeuamboupha, who opened the restaurant with his wife. “But it’s not true. There’s less use of spices and dried herbs.
“In Laos, we cook a lot with different kinds of meat and fresh herbs,” he adds. “I feel that we combine a lot of earthy, bitter notes.”
“Sticky rice holds a central role in Lao culture, with every village tending to their own rice fields,” he says. “Life revolves around this staple.”
The freshwater fish that are integral to the cuisine come from the Mekong, which flows right through the country.
Soups and stews are flavoured with mai sakahn, or pepperwood, a black pepper plant that dots the country’s jungles. Inch-sized cuttings of the vine’s bark are added to or lam – a beef or ox meat stew originating from Luang Prabang – to give it a sharp, numbing aftertaste.“Lao cuisine so fearlessly incorporates pungency and spiciness, and skilfully balances flavours with the use of fresh herbs and seasonal vegetables,” Douangdara says. This is a skill born out of a need to forage.
Ngeuamboupha grew up in the countryside and it was often difficult to find enough food for the whole family. “When I went hunting with my father, he would teach me how to cook, what I can cook and eat, especially if I get lost in the forest,” he says. “He taught me which parts of animals are edible and tasty.”
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No Keomany, a restaurant supervisor at Luang Prabang’s Belmond La Résidence Phou Vao hotel, had a similar childhood. At dusk, Keomany would head to the riverbanks to catch fish and crabs, which would be preserved by being sun-dried.
“There are so many things you can eat from the jungle, but people in cities don’t know that,” Keomany says. “When we lived on the farm, we didn’t have cooking gas or even a pan for cooking. So we used bamboo hollows to cook our food.”
Chef Larisa Vesterbacka may be Russian, but at Tam Nan, Belmond’s newly revamped restaurant, she has crafted a menu that is rooted in these Laotian traditions.
For more than a year during the Covid-19 pandemic, Vesterbacka experimented with local ingredients and liaised with Lao hotel staff before the restaurant’s reopening, in September 2022. She is now experienced in sun drying, fermentation, charcoal grilling and slow cooking in clay pots.“What excites me the most is that Lao cuisine uses a variety of local herbs and spices, as well as the process of fermenting local vegetables, beans, salted lime, sun-dried meat, and fish to create so many interesting flavours and combinations,” Vesterbacka says.
“Laos is rich in a wide range of fruits, beans, vegetables, home-made tofu and fresh noodles, so it’s important we develop a vegetarian and vegan direction in our menu.”The American chef who is taking Laotian food to Laos
Khaiphaen, a small restaurant sandwiched between the offices of tour companies, guest houses and tourist villas a few blocks from Luang Prabang’s night market, also has a menu inspired by traditional dishes and ingredients. Its owners train and employ underprivileged youth.The restaurant’s interior walls are painted a mix of magenta and white and hung with colourful paintings, and there’s a boutique in one corner selling T-shirts, soft toys and tote bags made by marginalised youngsters.
A couple of wooden tables surrounded by plants stand on the restaurant’s small patio, alongside a busy alley.
On the dinner menu when we visit is battered Mekong fish served with white sesame-sprinkled river weed and sai oua, home-made pork sausages flavoured with galangal, lemongrass and lime leaves.If Laotian food is starting to sound familiar, that may be because, although still under-represented, it has influenced other Southeast Asian culinary traditions. Popular regional dishes such as larb (meat salad; known in Laos as laab) and green papaya salad have their origins in Laos.“People believe [laab] ushers in good health and luck,” Douangdara says, explaining why it is considered the national dish and is traditionally served during the Laotian New Year.“For Lao people, food holds a central place. It serves as a unifying force that brings people together,” he adds.
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