The Dish: The couple making the case for Lao food in Baltimore

Saroj Sharma never expected to fall in love with Lao cuisine, or the woman who introduced him to it.

The dishes made by Khamhou Thepsouvanh, an immigrant from Laos, challenged everything Sharma knew. Instead of richly spiced meats and curries, which Sharma grew up on in the eastern and northeastern parts of India, the seasonings Thepsouvanh used felt earthy and light. He describes them as tasting as if they had been plucked from a garden. Largely reliant on fresh herbs like mint, kaffir lime leaves and cilantro for flavor, the food consists of simple and fermented ingredients like padaek, a pungent fish sauce, and sticky rice.

“You don’t have anything complex or so many spices,” Sharma said. “You taste the food, all the herbs, all the ingredients.”

Now Thepsouvanh and her Laos-food-convert husband are selling the dishes as Baltimore Lao Eats, a delivery and takeaway concept at 416 E. 30th St. Their tiny kitchen in the Abell neighborhood is the only place to find distinctly Lao food in the city.

Despite the minimal size, starting up the business in December was an all-consuming effort for the couple, who invested their life savings into bringing an authentic experience to a city with a small Lao community.

Their opening comes after Baltimore’s only other Lao eatery, Charming Elephant in Canton, closed in recent months following roughly five years of struggling to get patrons through the door.

Charming Elephant manager and co-owner Vanessa Sipayboun told The Banner in an interview last year that a lack of understanding of Laotian food plagued the business and contributed to low foot traffic. “What I’ve noticed from Lao people in the area is they’re kinda scared to put the name Lao out there,” she said of the country that shares a border with Thailand. “It’s more marketable to say you’re a Thai restaurant.”

The business, located at 2324 Boston St. has since transferred to new management, who did not respond to requests for comment. A new sign reads “Thai-Lao Garden.”

Thepsouvanh, who immigrated to Baltimore at 17 from Kasi in north-central Laos, began cooking around age 4 or 5. She carried buckets of water attached to a plank of wood on her back from the river through her rural mountain town and then, once home, boiled the water until plumes of steam rose, heating a woven bamboo basket of rice that grew sticky over time.

“It was all we could afford,” she said, adding that the dish was occasionally accompanied by jeow, a homemade, smoky and savory red pepper paste, or a sweet and tangy fermented papaya salad.

Thepsouvanh joined her father, who arrived in Baltimore after the Vietnam War, in 1995. She was intent on sending more money to Laos and doubted that her new neighbors would spend money on the basic meals that once kept her family from starving.

Sharma recalls meeting Thepsouvanh at a Baltimore-area party in 2000, and her relatives asking him jokingly: “Have you tried our stinky food yet?”

Sharma said, at first, the fermented foods — a crucial part of the Lao diet due to their longevity in storage — made him nervous. Then he tried laap, otherwise known as larb. The dish is made by cooking chicken breast meat in a pan, smashing it until it’s minced, and adding padaek, cilantro, kaffir lime leaves and squeezed lime, mint, onions, a powder made from toasted rice and, as Sharma calls it, “magic.”

Over the years, the couple learned to relay affection through food. They’d battle it out in the kitchen: Sharma making butter chicken and Thepsouvanh whipping up nam khao, a Laos staple now on their eatery’s menu, made by frying up a rice ball and mixing it into a salad of fermented pork sausage, scallions, cilantro, mint, chilis, padaek and crushed peanuts.

“You fry it crispy and the top gets so crispy, so when you break it it’s crushed, but the inside is moist and fried rice,” Sharma said. “I literally fell in love, and I so much fell in love that I know how to make it now.”

Between cleaning jobs and taking care of her mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, Thepsouvanh decided to put her work on display at a stall in the Baltimore Book Festival in Waverly in 2025. The food sold fast, prompting her and Sharma to believe they’d found an audience bold enough to take the Lao leap.

That same year while looking for commercial spaces they discovered a spot just large enough to hold a stove and some counter space at the Charm City Food Co. commissary kitchen.

But the journey of making a business out of serving food, no matter how tasty, is proving harder than they could have imagined. Thepsouvanh said she refuses to compromise on the authenticity of the cuisine, only making it the way she learned from her mother, who often accompanies her to work in a wheelchair.

That means finding affordable, fresh meat, produce and Lao seasonings, while paying food delivery platforms rising fees. DoorDash takes up to 30% commission on each order, Sharma said, as part of the company’s tiered pricing structure, where eateries in need of marketing pay more. UberEats also takes about 30% commission on Thepsouvanh’s food, and that rate may soon rise as the company announced plans Wednesday to raise delivery fees by 5%.

“We’ve got a long way to go before even making a profit,” he said, describing anything more than sustainability as a lofty goal.

Despite new technology like modern rice cookers, Thepsouvanh refuses to change how she makes her sticky rice and still slowly boils it in bamboo baskets reminiscent of those she used as a child.

“I don’t have much to give, but I have my culture, my food. If that can help the community, that’s all I need.”