Hawker Fare

In 1981, two-year-old James Syhabout arrived in the Bay Area with his parents, refugees from Laos after the Vietnam War. They were settled with other Lao families in Oakland, in a courtyard building where moms dried spiced beef on the roof to make jerky, pickled fish in jars, and ate communally, Lao style, seated on the floor, double-dipping balls of sticky rice. After high school, Syhabout went to culinary school, cooked at some of the finest restaurants in Europe and Northern California, and opened his own fine-dining place, Oakland’s Commis. But he missed the pungency, snarl, and communal spirit of his childhood meals. This book, researched in Oakland and Southeast Asia, is the story of Syhabout’s reconstruction of memory through learning to cook the Lao-Isan dishes of his mother.