TACOMA — Tharath Eang uses a wide-bladed knife to slice a fish diagonally, scoring the flesh with cuts a few inches apart. The cuts, he explains, will help the tilapia cook faster. He tosses the gutted fish, tail and skin intact, into the deep fryer.
While the fish fries, Eang’s wife Souvanna prepares a sauce to accompany it. The sauce mixes tamarind, tomato, basil, garlic and other spices.
“You have to do it right, or don’t put it on the menu,” says Tharath, who takes pride in cooking the traditional food of his native Cambodia, the way he remembers his mother cooking it. “What we do here, we do authentically.”
The Eangs opened Mitapeap Khmer Restaurant in east Tacoma in December to showcase the food they grew up eating. Mitapeap is a Khmer word that means “friendship” and “welcome to old friends.”
The restaurant is a family operation, with the Eangs handling all the cooking and their teenage son Aalex waiting tables when he’s not in school.
Tharath, 40, a former delivery driver, and Souvanna, 38, who once worked in a dental clinic, both grew up in the Battambang area of Cambodia, not far from the border of Thailand. Both fled with their families from Cambodia’s oppressive government to Thai refugee camps in the late 1970s, then to the United States.
“When we came here, it felt like we were in heaven,” says Souvanna. “Everything was beautiful.”
Her family immigrated first to Virginia, but they disliked the cold winters. So after hearing about Tacoma from a family friend, the family relocated. The cross-country bus trip took three or four days, Souvanna remembers, with her newborn sibling crying all the way.
Tharath’s family moved first to Ilwaco, on the Washington coast, where a Catholic church sponsored them. But there were few other Asian families in Ilwaco, so Tharath’s family moved to South Bend, Pacific County, and Raymond, where Tharath graduated from high school, then to Tacoma.
Tharath and Souvanna met in Tacoma in 1989.
The couple decided to open Mitapeap, their first restaurant, at the urging of friends.
“Friends would come to our house to eat and they’d say, ‘Your food is good. Why not think about opening a restaurant?”’ Souvanna says.
The Eangs dined at Asian restaurants around town before Tharath decided he and Souvanna could do as well or better.
While there are many Thai and Vietnamese restaurants in Tacoma, Cambodian restaurants are rare. The Eangs describe the food of their homeland as somewhere between the food of Thailand and China with a dash of French influence, left over from colonial days.
“If you like Thai food, you will love Camobdian food,” Tharath says.
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