Innovation Week: Sayvepen “Sav” Sengsavang

It’s Innovation Week, and we are featuring the giants of Lao food innovation in the U.S. Please meet Chef Sav. He is the chef and co-owner of Le Mu Eats in Bethel, Maine. Sav received classical French training at the Culinary Institute of Virginia. Le Mu boasts a unique blend of multiple influences: Growing up in a home with Laotian-immigrant parents who love to cook and do so very well, integrating Southern foods and cooking techniques, and devoting personal time to culinary growth; learning new styles of cooking and studying other culture’s cuisines.

Q: What does innovation of Lao cuisine mean to you? Why is it important?


A: To me, innovation in Lao cuisine is all about telling my own personal story, as a first generation Lao American, through food; taking the Lao cuisine I grew up with, understanding it, respecting where it comes from or why something is done a certain way, but then using the ingredients and tools that are more readily available. I'm not making food that is "authentically" Lao, but making it authentically to me and my experience as a Lao American. I'm the child of Lao refugee immigrants, but I was born and raised in the United States, so I'm not going to make food that looks exactly like my parent's food. I might make jeow, but I'm going to make it with a local vegetables. I love to make thum, but I don't always have papaya on hand in the rural mountains of Maine, so I improvise and find a way to put the familiar flavors I love on the table with the produce I can get my hands on. It's important to tell your own story; trying to tell the story of traditional Lao food doesn't make sense coming from me. I still use the flavors of Laos, Lao techniques, Lao foods that are available because they are a part of my story, but they are not the entirety of my story.

Q: What are a few Lao dishes, desserts, or beverages that you've worked to innovate?

A: We've played with a lot of dishes, but there are a few that I love and come back and refine over and over. One is a play on nam vanh sali. I'm from Virginia, but currently live in Maine. I pull on my roots from growing up in the south, but use fresh corn when it's in season and make a coconut and charred corn cream pie. Another dish pays homage to one of my favorite meals my grandma makes for the family; a red curry crab. My version takes those addicting flavors in my grandmother's dish and pulls it into another southern soul food favorite; a red curry crab mac and cheese. Moving up to Maine (about 6 years ago) I was introduced to a totally different climate than the one I was used to utilizing in Virginia. I learned about the fiddlehead (something I had never heard of before); it's a fern foraged in late April and has a very green, sometimes slightly sweet taste and is very firm, with a texture close to asparagus. I threw them in my khrock and made thum; it was exactly the vegetable that could take on the flavors and stand up to the process of thum.

Red curry crab mac and cheese

Fiddlehead Thum

Coconut and charred corn cream pie


Q: What does the future of Lao food look like?


A: I think Lao food is going to look more diverse. The way modern technology is connecting the community, it's diversifying the story and allowing us to inspire each other. I see people doing laab in tacos, playing with khao jee to put a Lao spin on American classics, and all kinds of other stuff. It's exciting and it's great because it's stepping Lao food up onto the platform that so many other foods are already held; not super focused on rules and traditions, but rather the spirit of Lao food. Our parents were so focused on preserving the culture, and there is a place for that, but our generation is focused on a different narrative. We're expanding on the things we've learned, and making our food and flavors more accessible to more people.

Q: Who or what inspires your innovation?


A: Most of the time, the idea for a new dish comes from taking a look at what is available around me and thinking about how I might want to eat that. I keep a lot of Lao ingredients handy to work with; thai bird chilis, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, galangal, ingredients to make red, green and yellow curry, ground roasted rice, fish sauce, padaek, and whatever else I can get my hands on (which is not always easy in Maine). I live in an area where the food scene tends to be standard meat and potatoes, but there are a lot of local farmers playing with different root vegetables, producing varieties of cabbages and other hardy leaves, and there's quite a bit of experimenting with what fruits can be conditioned to grow here. The harvest season is much shorter than I'm used to in Virginia, and the climate is pretty harsh so I've had to adjust a lot to my environment; but that is what inspires innovation.

Q: Where can people learn more about the work that you do?

A: We have a small, 20 seat restaurant in Bethel, Maine called Le Mu Eats. You can follow our Facebook or Instagram pages. We are constantly playing with Lao foods, cooking techniques, and textures, bringing in the fresh produce and proteins available to us through the local farms and the coastal workers, and creating something new or taking a hand at a new spin on a beloved classic.

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Innovation Week: Lasamee Kettavong

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Innovation Week: Nupohn Inthanousay