Bowling Green's GADS mentioned at RNC

Eak Taing, 56, originally from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, moved to Bowling Green in 1981. Taing works at the Great American Donut Shop, or GADS as it is frequently called, which is owned by the Taing family. The shop has been a Bowling Green staple for 23 years. (AUSTIN ANTHONY/Herald)

Thursday, August 30, 2012
Allison I. Goodan
College Height Heralds (Western Kentucky U., USA)

A Bowling Green business and favorite snack spot among WKU students received national attention Wednesday night.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., mentioned Bowling Green’s Great American Donut Shop in a televised speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.

Paul, an ophthalmologist based in Bowling Green before his election to the Senate in 2010, said he and his family have frequented GADS.

"The Taings work long hours. Mrs. Taing told us that the family works through the night to make donuts," Paul said. "The Taing children have become valedictorians and National Merit Scholars.

"The Taings from Cambodia are an American success story, so Mr. President don’t you go telling the Taings: 'You didn’t build that.'"

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 Story Behind Chinese Food and Donuts Restaurants

July 20, 2010
By Rigoberto Hernandez
Mission Local (San Fancisco, California, USA)

If you are like me, you’ve probably wondered why some restaurants serve the bizarre combination of Chinese food and donuts.

Well, an article in the Atlantic found that “the initial impulse to sell two products was born of need.”

“Back in San Francisco, Jolly Chan, the owner of the Mission District’s popular Donuts and Chinese Food…. ‘The rent is too high,’ he told me, watching as customers queued for heaping plates of orange chicken and pot stickers. ‘It cannot be empty in the morning,’ he said. ‘I have donuts and coffee for morning customers and around 10 or 11 start working in food.’

“So why Chinese food and donuts? Chan had some answers, and it seemed that for many owners of such establishments, donuts came first. When he first emigrated from Cambodia in 1980, Chan, like many Cambodian immigrants, found a job in a donut shop. It was a trend begun by Ted Ngoy, who immigrated in 1975 and after learning the donut trade opened his own chain of shops. Ngoy went on to train the wave of Cambodian immigrants that followed. By the mid-’90s, 80 percent of California’s donut shops were Cambodian owned and operated. Chan says that when donuts stopped being sufficient to keep businesses running, many immigrants added Chinese food to their repertoires.”

Well, there you go. I personally always frequent J. George’s on 16th and Folsom Streets, which serves hamburgers, hot dogs, Chinese food and donuts.

A legacy built on yumminess

A baker at Lafeen’s cuts out the dough for the classic donut and puts them on the rack. After the baker cuts out the dough, it is then baked and deep-fried in cooking oil. — photo by Lillian Furlong

Friday, June 04, 2010
By Andrea Farrell
The Western Front (Washington State, USA)

There is nothing quite like the smell of fresh doughnuts: sweet rising dough, sugary glazes and, of course, the grease in the fryer as it bubbles away.

All of these smells drift through the air inside Lafeen’s Donuts & Ice Cream. Lafeen’s, located on Electric Avenue near Whatcom Falls Park, has been serving doughnuts to Bellingham residents for almost 27 years.

More important than the smell, however, is the taste.

“Oh, my gosh, they are the best doughnuts in the state,” customer Aaron Brown said.

Other loyal patrons agree. Manager Shawn Samuth said the company doesn’t have a website and rarely advertises.

Instead, the business relies on word of mouth to find new customers.

Lafeen’s is open between 6 a.m. and 10:45 p.m., but those in the know will say the evening is the best time for a warm, fresh doughnut.

Fryer and glazer William Born said he isn’t sure why Samuth decided to start making doughnuts at night instead of the early morning.

“I think my boss just got old,” Born said.

Samuth and his brother have owned and operated Lafeen’s for 14 years. Samuth said he enjoys running a business.

“I like it because you get to work for yourself,” he said. “You have the freedom to run the business the way you see fit, and to put your own ideas into it.”

Freedom is a familiar concept to Samuth. He and his family immigrated to the United States from Cambodia in 1976. He said they fled to escape the Khmer Rouge, the totalitarian regime that caused the deaths of approximately two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.

Samuth was 16 years old when he and his family took everything they could carry and left Cambodia. They hiked through the Dângrêk Mountains for five days and nights, finally arriving at a refugee camp in Thailand.

Samuth said it was frightening to be pursued through the mountains by government soldiers.

“My cousin’s family had a baby and we were worried he would cry,” he said. “But I carried him and he didn’t cry at all.”

In Thailand, Samuth’s father found work in the Thai army, which helped sponsor him to bring his family to the United States. Samuth became an American citizen in 1983.

Now, Samuth enjoys tinkering with new flavors and styles of doughnuts.

Since acquiring Lafeen’s in 1996, he has added the raspberry fritter, a selection of cake doughnuts and the popular buttermilk bar. The shop now boasts 75 different types of donuts, Samuth said.

Another recent addition is Wi-Fi Internet, meant to attract college students and professionals who want to get out of the house or office while staying connected.

Whatcom Community College freshman Phil Tatman said he usually takes advantage of the WiFi, sitting with his laptop and a doughnut.

Tatman said that when he first moved to the area, he came into Lafeen’s every day. He ate so many doughnuts that he got sick of them and had to take a break.

He now comes just twice a week. Still, he can’t get enough of the doughnuts.

“When you have a buttermilk bar or a French crueller hot and fresh, you are spoiled,” he said. Going back to old, cold, stale doughnuts just isn’t possible after you’ve tried Lafeen’s, he said.

Tatman said the shop is popular with families and stoned people with the munchies. One reviewer on Yelp.com wrote that Lafeen’s is a common ground and unspoken neutral zone for stoners, drunks, students and cops.

Tatman said he also visits Lafeen’s for the service.

“Once, I got a fritter straight out of the fryer,” Tatman said. “I asked, ‘Are there any chocolate ready?’ and they turned around, dipped it into the chocolate and handed it back to me.”

Doughnuts pave Cambodian family's path to America

Friday, May 21, 2010
By KATHY ANEY
East Oregonian (Oregon, USA)

When Phat and Sokhan Ong first started working at a Pendleton doughnut shop, they didn't know a bismarck from a bear claw.

"I didn't even know what a maple bar was," admits Sokhan.

The Ongs had fled Cambodia, a place where people often struggled to find enough food simply to survive. Doughnuts didn't exist in their world.

Sokhan and Phat (pronounced SO-kon and Paht) journeyed separately to Pendleton from Cambodia in the early 1980s. Cambodian leader Pol Pot had forced city dwellers and villagers alike to work in the fields. Those who resisted or moved too slowly were killed. Others died from starvation and overwork. More than 20 percent of the Cambodian population died over several years of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Both Phat and Sokhan ended up in Pendleton, sponsored by St. Mary's Catholic Church. The two met and married in Pendleton and now own and operate Up With Donuts. Over the years, they've shared their slice of the American dream with family members living back in Cambodia by paying for their passage, helping with paperwork and securing attorneys. So far, the couple has brought two nieces and two nephews to Oregon.

The latest is Nita Soeum. The 21-year-old came in October and now divides her time between learning English at Blue Mountain Community College and working at the doughnut shop.

"They learn English here," Sokhan said, smiling as she watched Nita retrieving a doughnut from the glass-covered case for a customer. "Our customers help them with their English."

The couple shepherded their first family member to Pendleton four years ago. She is now 26 and working as a blackjack dealer at the Wildhorse Casino.

The journey to America was tougher for Phat and Sokhan. Sokhan, her parents, five sisters and younger brother fled to the Philippines in 1979, where they lived in a camp for three years. During their stay, they took a six-month culture orientation course. They learned to use an oven and stove, rather than cooking on a fire surrounded by a ring of rocks. They became acquainted with flush toilets and other trappings of American living.

The family finally traveled to Pendleton where Sokhan's older brother Vado had moved earlier and found a job at the J.R. Simplot potato processing plant in Hermiston. Soon, she was working at the plant and struggling to learn English.

"I only knew two words - yes and no," she said.

Phat escaped from Cambodia to Thailand in 1979 and traveled to Olympia, Wash., before ending up in Pendleton in 1982. There, he worked a series of dishwashing jobs at the Circle S Barbecue, Cimmiyotti's and the Red Lion for minimum wage. He lived in a tiny studio apartment for $90 per month.

Inevitably he met Sokhan, one of the only other Cambodians in town. They married two years later and Phat started a job at Simplot.

Buying the doughnut shop was "an accident," Sokhan said.

They agreed to manage the business, though they knew little more than nothing.

"We came in blind," Phat said. "We had no idea of doughnut names or how to make them."

They learned the business.

"It was seven days a week, 24 hours a day, just the two of us," Phat said.

Their two sons, Shane and Panna, then 12 and 8, worked at the shop after school. Ultimately, the couple bought the place.

The couple said they feel blessed to live in the United States and able to help fellow Cambodians. They saved money from their tip jar to buy textbooks for students attending Phat's boyhood school, and then traveled to the Cambodian village in 2008 to deliver the books.

Their homeland, though greatly improved, is still a country without mooring.

"The government is unstable. They have bribery. They have lawlessness," Phat said. "A murderer can buy his way out."

Phat thanked Up With Donut customers for their loyalty and support.

"My second homeland has given me an opportunity to reach out to my first homeland," Phat said. "The people in our community and our customers have supported us so we can reach out."

Doughnut wars in Abilene

February 20, 2010
By Jaime Adame
Abilene Biz (Texas, USA)

About a week after arriving in the United States, Steve Lao was making doughnuts.

Lao, a native of Cambodia who endured the brutal regime led by Pol Pot, came to California in 1989 at age 29, where “my friend, he had a doughnut shop,” he said.

Choong Park of Korean ancestry got into doughnuts more recently, learning from his brother, who has owned a doughnut shop in Wichita Falls for about three years.

Both men recently have joined the seemingly crowded field of doughnut shop operators in Abilene, bringing the number of doughnut shops in Abilene to nine, according to business listings. There is the Jack ‘N’ Jill chain, as well as two A.M. Donut Shops (which also have Cambodian owners).

Park and his wife, Mi, own Dandy Donuts at 2549 S. 1st St., near Ross Avenue. Both are quick to smile and laugh with customers, and Choong Park has put his construction skills to good use, building a wooden deck he hopes will become a popular spot for outside diners when warmer weather arrives.

Lao, 51, runs Donut Time with his business partner, Kim An Om, at South Willis and South 27th streets, the former location of The Donut Palace. He speaks proudly and knowledgeably about his craft, and said he insists on making things “fair” for his customers, offering mix-and-match deals when a dozen items are ordered.

The men come to Abilene not without making sacrifices. Choong Park’s four children reside in Flower Mound, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, though his wife is temporarily in Abilene. The children range in age from 8 to 19, and he said his mother is looking after the youngest.

Lao has a wife and two children, ages 9 and 11, in California. He hopes to visit in May or June.

Each cite the influences of their fellow expatriates in getting into the doughnut business.

Lao estimated that as many as 90 percent of the doughnut shops in California are Cambodian-run.

“No. 1, we have no education,” said Lao matter-of-factly, explaining the state of refugees who came to the United States around the time he did. But Lao said they arrived with a strong work ethic needed to succeed in a demanding business that requires long hours.

Choong Park said Koreans dominate the doughnut business in the Dallas area. When asked why, he talked about the early start to the workday.

“They don’t mind. They work hard,” Choong Park said. “It’s not easy.”

EARLY DAYS

“I can wake up early, but this is way too early,” said Park with a laugh. Each day, Park said he gets to work at about 2 a.m. or earlier to prepare that day’s batch of doughnuts.

It’s just part of the doughnut business, and both men do the baking seven days a week.

Lao’s shop opens at 5 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m., making for workdays that stretch to 15 or 16 hours, he said.

Choong Park’s shop also opens at 5 a.m., though by 1 p.m. he usually shuts things down. But with plenty of dining space in a building that formerly was a restaurant, he said he’s thinking of perhaps adding lunch items to expand his offerings.

Choong Park, 50, said he came to the United States about 30 years ago from South Korea, hoping for a better life.

He lived in Abilene for about seven years before moving away in 2004, he said. He worked mostly construction jobs. With the help of contractors, he has completely remodeled the 3,000-square foot former restaurant.

It has a sun-drenched seating area, with new floors and fresh red-and-yellow paint job that adds to the bright setting. There also is a touch of art — Park’s 17-year-old daughter Dawn contributed a skilled painting of two doughnuts frosted with pink icing and blue swirls. The impressionistic work on canvas adds to the décor, along with flowers placed on the mantle of a former fireplace, which may be recognizable to many older Abilenians who remember when the building housed the very first Taco Bueno restaurant.

Dandy Donuts opened Dec. 15.

Park said he owned a store in the Dallas area, but was encouraged to enter the doughnut business by people from his church.

After training with others and spending time learning from his brother, Choong Park said he sought out Abilene in part for the lower real estate prices, but also because he enjoyed his time in the town.

He and his wife made the investment in the building and the remodeling work, and now they are working to develop their business.

“It takes time to settle down,” said Choong Park. “Every day, it’s getting better.”

HELPING A FRIEND

For Lao, he has about 15 years of experience owning his own doughnut shop. He said he’s bought and sold several in that time in Southern California, training nephews to take over.

He has one California shop remaining open, which his wife is managing.

Lao said Donut Time is an investment, but also a way to help out Om, an old friend from when the two battled starvation during the repressive, violent crackdowns in their region.

Lao was forced into hiding, but said he could rely on the generosity of Om, who came to the United States in 1992.

“You don’t have any food to eat,” said Lao, recalling his struggles before coming to the United States as a refugee. “She gave her share,” he said, explaining “that’s why I came to help her here.”

Now, Lao is helping train Om and her son to learn the doughnut trade. He talks about the importance of making doughnuts in the “California” style, which he describes as bigger and fluffier than what he has seen in Texas.

The bell clangs at Donut Time, which opened Jan. 1, and Lao talks to customers pulling up to make an order. Drive-through orders are the most common at his shop.

There is a decent-sized seating area, but his shop is dominated by the large front counter.

In Abilene, Lao said he likes the friendly customers. Driving around, he said he’s also pleased by the lack of graffiti. He said he is considering moving his family from California to Abilene, but said he doesn’t know what the future holds.

OPTIMISM

Park wants to open a drive-through operation, but he has had to rely on help from his wife, Mi, after his nephew left the shop, unable to handle the early hours, Park said.

Until he figures out how to get more help, his shop will be walk-in only.

Both men offer more than doughnuts, however. Lao sells kolaches and breakfast burritos. Park also sells sausage rolls, and makes a habit of giving away his unsold merchandise to local charities like Love & Care Ministries.

“It is helpful,” said Terry Davis, director of ministries for the organization, which offers breakfast meals for the needy.

Whatever the competition, Park and Lao are optimistic about their businesses, though Lao said the economy undoubtedly has hurt sales in his California shop.

Still, not many places offer something you can buy for less than a dollar, Choong Park said.

“It’s convenient,” he said.

For customers, maybe. For the early risers behind the counter, not so much.

Doughnut shop

Luon Sa So, right, and his wife Kagnchana Un, box donuts and kolaches for a customer Monday morning at their new store Odessa Doughnuts and Deli. (Photo: Mark Sterkel|Odessa American)
An Apsara figurine representing a divine celestial female dancer sets on the counter of the Odessa Doughnuts and Deli shop. Owners Luon Sa So and Kagnchana Un are originally from Cambodia and are keeping in the family tradition of making doughnuts. (Photo: Mark Sterkel|Odessa American)

February 01, 2010
BY GEOFF FOLSOM
Odessa American (Texas, USA)

If you go

• What: Odessa Doughnuts and Deli.
• Where: 1520 N. Grant Ave.
• When: 3 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Sunday.
• Call: 333-2233.

Every day, Luon Sa So gets up and starts making doughnuts at 1:30 a.m. And he doesn’t shut Odessa Donuts and Deli’s doors until 7 p.m.

"A lot of people, they get up early," said the owner of the new store in Odessa, which he opened with his wife, Kagnchana Un, Jan. 1. "People who don’t, they do not do doughnuts. They cannot stand it."

But getting up early can hardly be considered a challenge for So, who fled his native Cambodia during the regime of dictator Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in 1975, in what many consider a period of genocide.

"If one guy does something wrong, they find you and kill your entire family," he said of his life at that time.

With his family, 8-year-old So walked day and night until he reached Thailand. Many that made the walk didn’t make it.

"You could see people laying down and dying everywhere," he said. "By that time, my mom was really sick."

Eventually, So’s family made it to neighboring Thailand, where they lived in a refugee camp. In the 1980s, they headed for the United States, settling in Greensboro, N.C.

"It’s very, very different," he said. "The United States is a freedom country."

Since he left Asia, things have improved in Cambodia. So now visits about once a year. He said it was on one of these trips in 2005 that he met his wife to be. It took about a year, but he was eventually able to bring Un to the United States.

They now have an 18-month-old son, Brandon Rithearouk Kem, who can often be found sitting behind the counter, with his spiky hair, at the doughnut shop.

Un said she was impressed by the United States.

"Here it is really kind of big and developed," she said. "It made me really want to come here."

It wasn’t long until the family decided to head for Odessa. While Odessa has plenty of doughnut shops, Un (Cambodian tradition calls for women to keep their maiden names when married) said they chose to move here because they wanted to offer something the others didn’t have.

"For us, we do not do the doughnuts only," she said. "We do the doughnuts and deli. So we chose Odessa."

Along with doughnuts, the store offers cheesesteak sandwiches, turkey wraps and kolache, Czech pastries stuffed with sausage and other meats. It also sells bubble tea and smoothies.

"My kolache is the best in Odessa or Midland," he said.

Darren Farrill of Odessa said he likes that the food is hot when he orders it to bring to a construction site.

"The kolaches and stuff, it’s ready to go," he said.

Getting the building on North Grant Avenue prepared was a six month process for So. He said the one-time liquor store had been empty for 11 years. Improvements included everything from putting in ceramic tile floors to painting the building bright purple.

"I redo everything," he said. "I change everything."

And the family is taking to its new surroundings.

"I find the people here is nice," Un said. "Working at a restaurant in North Carolina, the people were different. The people here are real nice."

Still, So does admit he’s looking for a baker to help out. Those 122-hour work weeks can be a bit much after a while.

Cambodian couple finds new home for 41st Donut House

09/22/2009
By JONDI GUMZ
Santa Cruz Sentinel (California, USA)

41ST AVE DONUT HOUSE
WHAT: Doughnuts, 75 cents each, $8 per dozen; Farmers Brothers coffee, small, $1, medium, $1.25, large, $1.50.
OWNER: Keang Siv Lim and Hour Chiv
LOCATION: 1601Q 41st Ave., Capitola, King's Plaza shopping center
HOURS: 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week.
INFORMATION: 464-9599

CAPITOLA -- It cost a lot of dough -- close to $100,000 -- to move the 41st Ave. Donut House across the street.

Keang Siv Lim and Hour Chiv, who have been in the doughnut business locally for 23 years, discovered the exhaust hood and fan would not fit through the door of their new smaller location in the King's Plaza shopping center.

That didn't stop them.

They paid a contractor to cut a hole in the roof and use a crane to set the equipment in place. When they opened for business Monday morning, they were all smiles.

"First day," said Lim, handing over a doughnut and coffee to Marshall Jones, who lives nearby.

Jones, 68, admitted, "I'm a doughnut lover."

Lim, 61, and her husband Chiv, 62, are Cambodian natives of Chinese descent. They lived near the Thai border and made a living selling merchandise at a local marketplace until their country was taken over in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge.

They lost everything.

When Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 and fought off the Khmer Rouge, the couple escaped and spent two years in a refugee camp in Thailand. After another six months in a refugee camp in the Philippines, Lim and her husband, their five children, including one born in the refugee camp, and Lim's mother were allowed to resettle in the United States.

They arrived in November 1982.

The couple found work at a garment factory in Los Angeles, then in 1986 got an opportunity in Santa Cruz.

Cambodian who had purchased Ferrell's Donuts on Mission Street offered them jobs.

Lim took care of customers at the counter; her husband made the doughnuts, a job for early risers.

They learned the business, and in 1989, bought the shop. Two years later, they bought another doughnut shop on Ocean Street in Santa Cruz and changed the name to Ferrell's.

Their friend Yong Sip said most of the doughnut shops locally are owned by Cambodians.

That is true across California, according to Henry Chen, who married Lim and Chiv's second oldest daughter, Lena.

"When we first arrived, we were very hungry for the opportunity to succeed and bring about a better life for ourselves and our families," Chen said. "Most of us knew very little English."

For that reason, the seven-day-a-week doughnut business was a very good fit.

In the mid-1980s, it was not uncommon to find a Cambodian baker working in a doughnut shop at night, training four or five of his friends, Chen recalled. Most of these friends went on to become bakers themselves, and they in turn taught others.

Chen, for example, has a doughnut shop in Alameda.

He also has an expresso shop in Pacifica, managed by the youngest of Lim and Chiv's children, who was born in America.

That's another family tradition: Having the children help out at the doughnut shop.

After the children were on their own, Lim and Chiv downsized, selling the two Santa Cruz shops and buying 41st Ave Donut.

When Goodwill bought the shopping center where they were located for the Shoreline cosmetology school, they were not ready to retire.

They found space at the Kings Plaza shopping center owned by the Ow family.

Patriarch George Ow Jr., whose father immigrated to America at 16, is impressed by their resilience.

"They are grandparents and still working longer and harder than most 20- to 30-year-olds," he said. "Definitely the American work ethic."

Tom and Pao Te escaped from Cambodia and build a reputation of making best donuts

Tom and Pao Te, who met on a blind date in Los Angeles in 1987 and were married the same year, run Kristy Donuts and Bagel shop on Border Avenue in Corona. They both escaped the killing fields of Cambodia in the 1970s. (Jerry Soifer / Special to The Press-Enterprise)

Friday, April 3, 2009
By JERRY SOIFER
Special to The Press-Enterprise (California, USA)

CORONA - Tom Te gets up at 2:30 a.m. every day of the year. He has doughnuts and bagels to bake and a hungry population to feed, even on Christmas Day.

He said his customers ask him to work the holiday so they have a place to go.

His wife, Pao, sleeps a little longer before joining her husband in the Kristy Donuts and Bagel shop they own in the Stater Bros. shopping plaza on Border Avenue in west Corona.

Tom, 51, and Pao, 53, have two sons, Brian, 20, and Dennis, 16, to feed and put through college. Then they can start to relax. Even if they didn't have children, it wouldn't be hard to motivate them. They are refugees from the reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia of the 1970s.

"You have to put in lots of hours to keep the business successful," Pao said. "It's wonderful. I came to the United States empty handed. Now, we have a house, a car, a business. This is the best country in the world."

According to some, the Tes have the best doughnut shop in western Riverside County. Rafael Camacho, 79, frequently makes the 12-mile drive from his Riverside home to eat a Kristy sugar donut and a cup of coffee.

"It's worth it," said Camacho. "The people are nice."

The Tes have built friendships that have lasted since they arrived in Corona in the mid-1980s. One customer is Glen Allen, a Corona resident who is bonded with the Tes by more than doughnuts and coffee.

"I've watched his (Te's) kids grow up," said Allen. "He's watched my kids grow up. When we leave (with the Allens' daughters) we're here at 6 a.m. They have the best doughnuts in town. This is probably the hardest working guy I know."

Corona resident Neil Baumgardner has been a customer for two decades.

"They are part of the neighborhood," Baumgardner said. "They have great doughnuts. They are great people."

The Tes met on a blind date in Los Angeles in 1987 and were married the same year after escaping separately from the killing fields of Cambodia.

Tom took a tortuous path to freedom, escaping from Cambodia on his seventh try. The first six times, Thailand officials shipped him back. He made it safely when he found a Red Cross camp. Pao successfully made it out on her second escape effort.

The Khmer Rouge made Tom work in the fields and on the construction of a dam for three years. There were no machines. It was all hand labor like the construction of the pyramids in Egypt.

"They treated you like an animal," Tom said. "I was beaten a couple of times if they don't like the way you do things for them."

On one escape attempt, he hid with some 30 members of his family in a cave. They were caught and sent back. Another time, they had to walk through a mine field on the way back to Cambodia. Some were killed.

After escaping, Tom lived in a refugee camp for two years before being shipped to Indonesia where he met with American embassy personnel. He was granted entry to the United States. He flew to Atlanta.

Told of California, he rode a bus three days and three nights to Orange County. There, he enrolled in Santa Ana College and started work in a chain of doughnut shops. He was sent to the Corona shop to work.

Eventually, the chain owner offered Tom a chance to buy the franchise. He and Pao put all their resources together to buy the place that is now a home in western Corona to so many.

Reach Jerry Soifer at jsoifer44@gmail.com
--------
INLAND PEOPLE

Tom and Pao Te
Home: Corona
Ages: 51 and 53
Occupation: Donut shop owners

Doughnuts and Barbecue

Talaya Sin and and Ben Hamamoto. (Photo: Ling Ma)

How one Asian American Studies major is taking back the mom-and-pop doughnut shop, one Cambodian barbecue cookout at a time.

December 24, 2008
By Ling Ma
East Bay Express (California, USA)

When Talaya Sin met with the landlord of Allstar Donuts to negotiate taking over the lease of the small, troubled doughnut shop on University Avenue in Berkeley, she didn't expect she'd be running the business within twenty minutes. At the end of the meeting, the landlord turned to the previous owner working behind the counter and said, "OK, you can go home now." A shocked Sin started learning the cash register on the spot.

The decision to run a doughnut shop was more complex than this brief business meeting might suggest. Growing up as part of a Cambodian immigrant family in West Oakland, Sin had certainly seen other family members making a living in the business. But laboring in the family business wasn't necessarily anything that Sin had intended for herself. After all, the childhood transplant to the United States had double-majored in Asian American Studies and Psychobiology at UC Davis, later followed by a stint working as post-production translator at Farallon Films. There, she worked with filmmaker Steven Okazaki on The Conscience of Nhem En, a documentary short about Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge that's now short-listed for an Oscar nomination.

So when Sin found herself with a doughnut shop of her own, it was perhaps no surprise that she set out to reimagine the kind of shops that she grew up with. Her efforts to earn a living by embracing one culinary feature of American culture while trying to retain and celebrate some of the traditions of her native Cambodia epitomize in many ways the challenges facing first- and second-generation US immigrants.

"The thing I want to do differently is actually let it be known that we are Cambodians," Sin said. "There's nothing in a Cambodian doughnut shop that says they're Cambodian," she noted, explaining that many immigrant owners, who often sell cigarettes and lottery tickets alongside the Bavarian Creams, don't want to ruin the homey, all-American image of the mom-and-pop doughnut shop. "They feel like then, Americans might question their doughnuts." Yet, anyone with knowledge of the recent history of American doughnut-making knows better than that. "We sort of saved the doughnut-making art," Sin said.

One of the lesser-known facts about the humble doughnut business is that the majority of California doughnut shops are run by Cambodian immigrants, many of whom fled their homeland's political upheavals during the late 1970s and '80s. Sin's brother-in-law, who started the now-closed Lee's Donuts in 1985, was among the first wave of immigrants who perpetuated the trend, helping other immigrants like himself open their own Lee's Donuts.

In Buddha Is Hiding, a study of Cambodian immigrants in California, UC Berkeley professor Aihwa Ong traced the proliferation of Cambodian-owned doughnut shops to immigrants such as Ted Ngoy, who started as a trainee at a Winchell's doughnut shop, and by the mid-1980s had developed his own doughnut shop franchise by training hundreds of fellow Cambodian immigrants eager for jobs. Those trainees, in turn, created their own franchises.

In addition to the convenience of working at a job that required little understanding of English, Ong pointed out that doughnut shops were easy to run because family members often worked for free, thus keeping overhead low. People like Ngoy, she wrote, "become the capitalists who seed new business units that are partially based on exploiting the unpaid labor of relatives and minority friends." This helps explain how Cambodians ended up running a majority of doughnut shops in the state. Ong sees a similar pattern in the flourishing of Vietnamese-run nail salons.

Shortly after taking over Allstar, Sin started running Cambodian barbecue cookouts in the patio dining space. "It's one of my favorite things to eat," she says of the lemongrass-marinated beef skewers and chicken wings that Allstar offers on weekends. Sin may have left Cambodia when she was just a kid, but there are still things she misses about living there. While Cambodian barbecue is available year-round in her homeland, Sin only finds it available during New Year's in Stockton. "I thought, why not have a place where you can serve that year-round?"

Pretty soon, a banner was hung outside Allstar that advertised "Cambodian BBQ" — much to her family's dismay. "They didn't think the taste would be appealing to Americans," Sin says. Sin's boyfriend Ben Hamamoto, a columnist at the Japanese-American newspaper Nichi Bei Times, helps man the grill at the outdoor patio while Sin makes the marinades herself.

The weekend cookouts have generated positive buzz with locals. Commentators on the foodie web site Chowhound have followed the Cambodian menu, which Sin plans to expand beyond just barbecue. One commentator raved of the chicken wings, "The result is the best of home-style cooking. Bold, garlicky, clean flavors and still juicy."

And the fact that there is no culinary connection between Cambodian cuisine and doughnuts didn't stop Sin from tricking out her fried dough rings with Southeast Asian flavors like mango jelly, or experimenting with new varieties, such as one based on sangkaya, a pumpkin flan dessert popular in her homeland.

There are other plans in the works. Sin is looking to upgrade to a gourmet coffee vendor, and once she catches her breath, she'll change the outside sign to reflect her shop's new name: Yellow Brick Donuts. She's also working on improving the doughnut base by making it from scratch.

Landlord Kenneth Le, who leases out doughnut shops to many Cambodian families, says that out of all the business owners he's worked with Sin is certainly the youngest. She's also somewhat of an anomaly. The unglamorous work of selling doughnuts, filled as it is with long, unpopular hours, doesn't usually stay in the family, as younger and second-generation Cambodian Americans tend to look elsewhere for opportunities. The storefronts are then either closed down or sold, something Le said is now happening with many Cambodian-run doughnut shops.

"She really wants to work way harder to start her business," Le said of Sin. "The second generation, they don't want to do that."

In a sense, Sin is retracing the steps of her predecessors by taking on a job in a distinctly American industry. But while she is busting her chops to run a doughnut shop, she's doing it on her own terms: using an all-American icon as a means to celebrate the traditions of her homeland. That's a strategy that Sin's former teacher Richard Kim, an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at UC Davis, says just might be a savvy business decision. "With the East Bay area, there's the fetishization of ethnic foods," he notes. "She's playing to a certain market as well. Her clientele might include actual Cambodians, but I'm sure most of it is a non-Cambodian clientele as well. So it's a way of exposing them to Cambodian cuisine."

Sin herself sees a relation between her new line of work and the Asian American Studies classes she took in college. "I'm doing what I've been reading about, in terms of all the Asian immigrants who did doughnut shops, and who slaved and bent over backward," she said.

And as for her family? Well, they work for her now.

Gimme a dozen doughnuts sprinkled with good cheer

(Photo: KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES)

Sunday, January 13, 2008
By Marc Ramirez
Seattle Times staff reporter (Washington, USA)

If the proliferation of fancy-schmancy doughnut shops — and names such as Top Pot, Krispy Kreme and Mighty-O — have made your eyes glaze over in the last five years, don't blame Tony Oeung. He's been quietly producing many a regular's holey grail at North Seattle's Family Donut for the past 14 years.

From as far away as Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, they step into his breath-mint-sized shop in the Northgate neighborhood and ask: How's life?

Can't complain, he'll say with a smile. It wouldn't do any good. And anyway, it beats soldering printed-circuit boards for minimum wage, which was what he did when he first came to the U.S. from Cambodia in 1980.

Faithfully, they face down his armadas of jelly-filled, frosted or sugar-topped pastries, baked fresh every morning by his brother-in-law, who starts work at 1 a.m. "I'd like a dozen," they'll say.

"For here or to go?" he'll cackle, and that's Oeung: Amid a breakfast buffet of newfangled hipsters, a dependable taste of old-fashioned cheer.

Q: Ever fritter away your off-hours doing doughnuts in the parking lot?

A: Never. If I get away from here, I want to get away and not think about doughnuts.

Q: What makes a good doughnut?

A: You gotta know how much water to add. If the dough does not expand, it will look bad. And it will taste bad.

Q: Which doughnut is most popular?

A: I think they like maple bars. They'll say, give me two dozen — but I want at least two maple bars.

Q: Your personal favorite?

A: I like the bear claw, the five-fingered thing. Sometimes I take it home, leave it aside until the morning and then put it in the microwave, then I cut it and put ice cream inside. Those are killer.

Q: So why doughnuts? Why not flowers or shoes?

A: I remember when I first came to the U.S., people were like, oh, let's go have coffee and a doughnut. I always stopped by 7-Eleven and got the powdered doughnut in the plastic wrap. Then, one time, I stopped by Dunkin' Donuts and thought, wow, this is a pretty good business.

Q: Remember the famous Dunkin' Donuts commercial where the guy gets up 3 in the morning and says, "Time to make the doughnuts"?

A: Hmmm. (He frowns, as if in thought.) No. But I think that's not enough time to make the doughnuts.

Q: Do you cook at home?

A: No. (He busts up laughing.) That's funny.

Q: What do you like most about your job?

A: Other businesses, like 7-Eleven, you have all the paperwork. Here we only have doughnuts and coffee, and that's it ... . The only problem is, you gotta get up early and make the doughnuts.

Marc Ramirez: 206-464-8102 or mramirez@seattletimes.com