From Bethesda Magazine: Introducing Eat A Lao

A mother-son duo bring Laotian flavors to Rockville

February 3, 2025 11:00 a.m. | Updated: February 3, 2025 11:09 a.m.

Flavors and textures explode with my first bite of the Rice Me Up salad at Eat A Lao. Puffed rice, peanuts and chunks of curried fried rice provide crunch, makrut lime leaves and lime juice offer tang, and cured pork sausage adds funkiness, a flavor hallmark of Laotian cooking. Add the sweetness of ginger, herbaceousness of fresh mint and cilantro, and heat from chile peppers, and you get one palate-jolting dish. 

Angkana Rumphan sits and her son Ing stands behind her
Angkana Rumphan, left, co-owns Eat A Lao with her son, Ing. Photo by Brendan McCabe.

Eat A Lao, which opened in October, is tucked away in the Sunshine Square shopping center off Rockville Pike, in the same strip as Duck Donuts. The 42-seat restaurant, decorated in a contemporary style, is co-owned by Rockville residents Angkana Rumphan, 66, and her son, Ing Rumphan, 40. She’s the chef; he runs the place and helps with cooking. The menu features dishes from Laos, Vietnam and the Rumphans’ native Thailand. “ ‘Eat A Lao’ is a play of words, inviting people to have a Laotian meal, eat out with friends and family and laugh, be loud,” Ing says.  

Angkana immigrated to the D.C. area in 1992 to cook at the Thai Embassy in Washington. After that, she was the chef at Duangrat’s in Falls Church, Virginia, from 1995 to 2007, then Thai Pavilion in Rockville from 2007 to 2018. She’s also the talent behind the terrific Kiin Imm Thai Restaurant in Rockville, which also has a location in Vienna, Virginia. (Ing co-owns both Kiin Imms.) 

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With her latest culinary venture, Angkana is taking the opportunity to explore a love for Laotian food nurtured from childhood; her father hails from Vientiane, Laos’ capital.  Many Lao ingredients are similar to Thai ones, among them galangal, lemongrass, makrut lime leaves, chiles, fresh herbs (cilantro, culantro and mint, for example) and a fermented fish sauce called padaek that is funkier than its Thai counterpart. “Lao cooks don’t add much sugar to food,” Ing says. “And don’t use much coconut milk.” 

Other must-have dishes at Eat A Lao include tender grilled pork ribs with tamarind glaze and toasted rice powder; Way of the North, a warm salad (usually known as laab or larb) made with minced pork, pork liver, pork blood, lime leaves and fried shallots; 4,000 Islands curry (pork ribs, masala curry paste and pickled garlic); and creme brulee made with pandan, a green-hued plant that, in powder or extract form, is used as a vanilla-like flavoring. Come for the cheeky menu names (Crying Out Lao, Nom Nom Nom, Ribs in Piece), stay for the great eats.

Eat A Lao, 1327 Rockville Pike, Units I, J and K, Rockville, 301-909-9181, eatalao.com

This appears in the January/February 2025 issue of Bethesda Magazine.

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