Why Thum Kitchen
Every time my parents wanted to make the dishes I grew up with (papaya salad, sticky rice), we drove 45 to 60 minutes into Atlanta's Chinatown to find the ingredients. It was never a question of whether we'd make the trip. It was just the cost of eating the food we loved.
I'm living in Manhattan. And I'm still making that trip.
The nearest H-Mart is 30 to 45 minutes by subway. Lao restaurants, in most American cities, barely exist, because Lao food has long been written off as too funky, too unfamiliar, too niche. So I do what I've always done: I piece it together. A subway ride to the Asian grocery. A Thai restaurant order, selectively chosen to recreate something close to what my mom made. Close, but never quite the same.
Thum Kitchen started because I was tired of the commute.
Not just the physical one, though that's real. But the emotional distance between the food I grew up with and the grocery store that has never had a place for it. I wanted to open my fridge on a Tuesday night in Manhattan, after a full day of work, and make papaya salad. The real kind. The kind that tastes like my mom made it.
Lao cuisine deserves a seat in the American grocery aisle.
Priscilla, Founder