FAMILY TABLE: Donuts can teach you a lot about life

Rashda Khan is a San Angelo-based food enthusiast, writer and culinary instructor. She can be reached at rashda@rashdakhan.com or (325) 656-2824. Or follow her

April 11, 2011

San Angelo Standard Times (Texas, USA)

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Sometimes a donut is a whole lot more than just a donut. It's the sweet taste of freedom, of being alive.

Tong Sa Vaun, the baker and co-owner of Angelo's Donuts & Café at 2901 Sherwood Way, had a donut-free childhood. In 1979, his oldest brother Sahak took 15-year-old Tong and their 14-year-old brother, Chettana, and escaped the killing fields that the Khmer Rouge had turned Cambodia into. They left behind their parents and eight other siblings. The brothers trekked through the jungle and muddy roads heading for Thailand where a refugee camp had been set up.

"I remember walking and being scared, especially every time we passed other people," Tong said. "We were afraid of being caught. We passed many corpses."

The brothers knew that if they could just reach the refugee camp, they would survive. However, the camp was crowded with desperate people and didn't turn out to be the haven they had expected. Shortages of food and water continued to plague them. "We couldn't even take baths, at least back home we had all these ponds around. We lived like animals. I wanted to go back to Cambodia and my family," he said. "When you live in a refugee camp, you hardly have anything sweet."

A year and half later, Sahak found Ted Ngoy, his wife's cousin who'd escaped in 1975 and settled in the U.S., and arranged sponsorship to Orange County, Calif. Ngoy, who owned a chain of donut shops in southern California, welcomed the brothers to their new home in 1981 with donuts. "That was the first time I ate a donut and it was 'Wow'."

Tong enrolled in high school, learned English, and helped out at one of the donut shops. He got interested in baking. In Cambodia, his mother had been a cook. "If you know how to cook, you can make something from whatever you find," he said, crediting his mother for keeping the family alive.

Ngoy helped sponsor and employ many of his fellow Cambodians before returning to his birthplace. He taught them baking, bookkeeping and names of donuts. He kept them from getting lost in a new country or being dependent on handouts. For all that, Tong is grateful.

"Donuts didn't only provide for us financially, but helped bring families together," he said. "The donut shops became a lifeline for refugees."

Meanwhile, the brothers continued to search for the rest of the family by contacting the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, the Red Cross, United Nations and any other organization that offered any hope. In 1991, Tong returned to Southeast Asia and found his family at a Thai refugee camp. Two of his siblings had died. The family had followed the brothers but had gotten lost. "Besides the killing, so many, many people got scattered, disappeared." Tong, wearing his trademark ball cap, shook his head.

Sahak, who by then owned his own donut business, sponsored the rest of the family and brought them to America. Like his mentor, Ngoy, Sahak introduced them to donuts.

So how did the Vaun family end up in West Texas? Once they arrived in America, the family decided to explore their new home. After living in California, part of the family decided to try out Maine. After a while, again part of the family got the wanderlust and moved to Houston, Texas. "The cold weather chased us out," said Toro Vaun, the eighth sibling born in 1977 and Tong's business partner in San Angelo.

One of their sisters' found a donut business for sale in Ballinger, and felt the call to branch out again. This was around the time of Hurricane Rita. She asked her younger brother Toro, a visual artist trying to get established, to help out. His plan was to save up, travel to Europe and keep working on his art. Instead, he found home.

The small town friendliness, the beautiful old architecture, the solitude spurred the creativity inside. "I had more time to create my art, I became more productive," Toro said. "There aren't too many distractions in Ballinger."

Toro began traveling to San Angelo to attend art exhibitions and museum openings. He saw the potential for a donut shop and talked to his family. In September 2010, Toro and Tong opened Angelo's Donuts & Café. Toro made it his own by decorating the café with large canvasses of his art work. Tong happily jumped into the kitchen.

He wakes up at 2 a.m. every morning to go to work. Recently engaged, Tong dons his Bluetooth and chats with his fiancée (who owns a donut shop in Houston and so is awake at the same time) as he starts working the ingredients. He makes classic, old-fashioned treats like apple fritters, glazed donuts, bountiful muffins and cinnamon twists. He also makes his special blueberry cake donuts. All his donuts, Tong said with obvious pride, are hand-cut and handled with chopsticks. Donuts dance merrily in hot bubbling oil as Tong moves them around with extra-large wooden chopsticks. "I'm very fast with my chopsticks and I have fun," he said. "I can grab, flip, turn and drum with them."

The future is looking bright. He's looking forward to getting married, and having his wife, Amiy, join him in San Angelo. Toro has landed the contract to operate the Library Café in the shiny new Stephens Central Library downtown. That and his artwork will keep him busy. The sister, the one responsible for Ballinger's Broadway Donut Shop, is now working to open Express Donuts, a drive-through business, on Sherwood Way.

"I called her up and said 'Are you trying to compete with me? Fine, I can take it.'" Tong said, laughing. "Actually, our family just likes being close to each other." Who can blame them after living through genocide, starvation, and separation.

"Mixing up donuts can teach a lot about life," Tong said, sipping his coffee. If the mix is too hard, you get dense, bread-like products that are hard to eat. If the mix is too soft, the end product is greasy and crumbles easily.

"So yes, we survived some very hard times, but then we came here where there is lot of freedom, easy to go crazy and live a soft life," he said. "You have to find a middle ground."