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Food fighter: Detroit chef who fled Laos knows the pain of hunger – Detroit Free Press

Food fighter: Detroit chef who fled Laos knows the pain of hunger – Detroit Free Press

Mark Kurlyandchik
 
| Detroit Free Press

Genevieve Vang knows hunger all too well.

As a 9-year-old girl fleeing death in her native Laos during the height of the Vietnam War, Vang experienced incredible hardship, at times drinking water just to fill her stomach to ease the pain of scarcity.

“We were always hungry and there wasn’t any hope,” she recalls. “But you have to fight to survive and it teach you to have a job. It very hard. I came from nothing. I never forget where I came from.”

So when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Michigan and effectively shuttered her two Thai restaurants in Dearborn and Detroit, Vang — one of this year’s Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Food Fighters — was the first to call her publicist to ask where she could donate the food wasting away in her coolers. 

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That call became the catalyst for Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen for Good.

“I have to give back to my community,” Vang says, noting that she has run a business in Dearborn for more than 32 years. “I have to invest my time and make sure they have anything they need and more. It’s very important as an entrepreneur to give back to your community because that’s how you grow your business.”

In 2018, Vang entered the Detroit market with the opening of her Bangkok 96 Street Food stall inside the Detroit Shipping Co. food hall in Midtown.

As her community has grown, so have her efforts to give back.

At Thanksgiving, Vang was one of the vendors who donated three days’ time and food to prepare 400 turkey meals for the hall’s hungry neighbors.

It was her second year doing it, and Vang says it’s an important tradition because it allows her to celebrate what Thanksgiving means to her.

“I just want to be thankful for what I have here and am able to do here and the freedom,” she says. “Everybody fights to come here because it’s the best country in the world. And I’m lucky and proud to be here and do the best I can and work very hard.”

NAME: Genevieve Vang

AGE: 56

TITLE: Chef-owner of Bangkok 96 (Dearborn) & Bangkok 96 Street Food (Detroit)

HAILS FROM: Laos

LIVES IN: Warren

EARLIEST FOOD MEMORY: “Laughing Cow cheese. Somebody gave me just one piece wrapped in foil nicely. I ate that Laughing Cow cheese and it blew my mind away. I don’t know why it tastes so good. I remember I was maybe 3 or 4. I never experienced sugar. We didn’t know sugar. Not until just right before I became a refugee. But someone brought the Laughing Cow cheese and I remember it tastes so good and nothing tastes like that. Even now when I eat cheese, I don’t eat it like everybody else. Everything that relates to cheese and butter is me and in my DNA. I don’t need anything else.”

FIRST RESTAURANT JOB: “I grew up in a Hmong community. All women and all girls need to know how to cook. So we grow up like family cooking. You have to know how to cook to find husband. That’s our culture. … I came here to the United States in 1989. There was a Chinese restaurant for sale and we just made a little down payment because we were so poor. It was hard. No capital for business. Oh boy. That Chinese restaurant became Bangkok Tiger on Michigan Avenue in Dearborn inside a hotel. We were able to introduce our food early to the American community. It was the first Thai restaurant opened in Wayne County. That was us with my husband and sister in 1989.”

TOUGHEST CHALLENGE OF 2020: “COVID you can’t control. But most important is to control your mind and make sure you don’t go crazy. When you stop working, then your mind shut down. So what you have to do is keep busy and stay positive, move your body, get involved. If somebody needs help, do what you can. Keep busy and kill time and go from there because there’s some things you can’t control. That’s very challenging.”

MOST VALUABLE LESSON LEARNED: “COVID taught us how to be smarter. We had to all work together. As a human being, everything is better if we work together. If we don’t work together, nothing happens. We have to change the idea and we don’t need to invest a lot of money. If somebody just does their little part, we don’t have to spend a lot of money. Everything is possible.”

ANY REGRETS FROM THE PAST YEAR?: “I would get involved more in social media.” 

OUTLOOK ON THE FUTURE: “I feel like 2022 is going to be a new beginning for everybody and for us. And it’s not easy. We mostly lost one or two years of business. But we’re still open and make enough to pay our employees. It’s just not like it used to be doing business. But the good news is it’s almost there. If everybody believes in the science and gets the vaccine as fast as we can, we can save our community, too.”

Published at Thu, 11 Mar 2021 13:39:17 +0000

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Food fighter: Detroit chef who fled Laos knows the pain of hunger – Detroit Free Press

Food fighter: Detroit chef who fled Laos knows the pain of hunger – Detroit Free Press