Taste of Laos

Lao/Thai Recipes from Dara Restaurant


Author Daovone Xayavong and her family are the owners/chefs of Dara Thai/Lao Cuisine Restaurant. Appropriately located in the famous "Gourmet Ghetto" in North Berkeley. Daovone and her staff serve traditional country-style Thai and Lao cuisine.

"Though there are hundreds of Thai restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are only a handful of Laotian restaurants, and Dara Thai/Lao Cuisine in Berkeley is one of the best." -- Joan Zoloth, Oakland Tribune

TASTE OF LAOS is the first authentic Laotian cookbook published in the United States. With easy to follow recipes this original cookbook will introduce this newest Asian cuisine to an American public already very much in love with the food of Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and China.

  • Explanations of Lao ingredients, vignettes about the food and customs of Laos and an extensive glossary and index make this cookbook an excellent reference tool for Laotian cuisine and culture.
  • San Francisco’s Channel 4 featured Dara Restaurant and Daovone on the Ethnic Restaurants in Berkeley episode of "Bay Area Backroads" with Doug McConnell, its host, and Joey Altman, host of "Bay Café" on Bay TV
  • The author won the first-prize trophy for the "Best Som Tum" (papaya salad) at the Amazing Thai Food Festival sponsored by the Thai Association of Northern California in 1998.

$15.95, trade paper, 144 pages

8 pages of full color, 14 black & white illustrations, full page map of Laos

ISBN 0-943389-32-1, 7 1/4" x 10 1/4"

Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West and Asia Books, Bangkok

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