New Traditional Lao-Thai Restaurant Opens in San Angelo

A local family paying homage to their southeast Asian roots opened the doors of “Ban Moon” on Wednesday, a new traditional Lao-Thai restaurant centered on fresh ingredients and authentic cooking.

The operation is headed by Moune (pronounced moon) Bounthevong and his son, Patrick, who settled on the Lao name, which translates to “Moon’s House”.

“[It’s been] my plan to open a Lao-Thai restaurant for a long time, but we don’t have the chance to do that,” Moune said before lunch service on Wednesday morning.

For the past two weeks, the restaurant owners and cooking staff have been working under the direction of three Fort Worth chefs who cook Lao and Thai food professionally.

“We hired some professional Lao-Thai cooks from Fort Worth to come and train us,” Moune explained. “We don’t want to do just not exactly—like Pad Thai, we want to [know] exactly what’s a Pad Thai, what to put in there to make it Pad Thai. We want professional to come over here and train.”

Since it’s their first time in the restaurant business, the chefs from Fort Worth are not only helping the restaurant’s staff get familiar with traditional Lao-Thai cooking, but are also imparting kitchen techniques that will enable them to cook on a restaurant scale.

With the complexity of some of the dishes, however, the cooking does take time, Patrick said, but everything is fresh, made-to-order.

“These foods have to be made the way we’re going to eat it,” Patrick said. “We only serve food we would eat. Sometimes, you know, you can’t rush things when you want it done right.”

When at home, Patrick explained, his family eats in a more communal sense, making several different dishes and each sharing from the various plates. The manner is common to southeast Asia, and some of the dishes in the restaurant are meant to be shared that way as well.

“There’s certain dishes that you can do like that in the community style, like the Larb dish and the papaya salad,” Patrick said. “You’ll order that with like sticky rice, and normally, there’ll be like a community where you kind of eat off the plate with one another.”

Moune is from Laos, and immigrated to the United States in 1980, due to political struggles with communism in the ‘70s.

“We moved from Laos to Thailand in 1978, I think, because my country had communists coming there,” Moune explained in a heavy accent. “We moved to Thai camp, like a refugee camp, and in 1980 we tried to apply to come to the United States.”

Moune explained that his family first arrived in San Francisco, where they spent a year before moving to Modesto, Calif. When they arrived, Patrick was born and the family started anew, learning English as refugees in a foreign land.

“We moved from California to Texas in 1991,” Moune said. “We moved to San Angelo to get a job over here. I worked at Ethicon, Johnson and Johnson, for 16 and half years, almost 17 years.”

The plan to open a restaurant in has been in the works for some two years now, Moune explained, and the family began working on remodeling the building at 405 W. Ave. N roughly six months ago, when the city’s Asian Market still occupied the space.

The menu features favorites from the Bounthavong family, including recipes Moune brought over with him when he immigrated in 1980. Basing their decisions on what they like to eat, the family wrote the card together and are placing special emphasis on authenticity.

“The way that we cook these meals is pretty much what we would cook for us to eat at home,” Patrick said. “We try to keep it as authentic as possible.”

Part of that authenticity means special-ordering several items, like Thai basil that can’t be picked up in a local market. Distinct herbs and freshness are paramount to the Lao and Thai cuisine, which is aromatic and complex as compared to other types of fare.

“Everything is like fresh,” Patrick said. “You can taste all the herbs and spices. We try to get all fresh vegetables, all fresh herbs. When you eat the food, you can kind of taste like layers of the seasonings that goes into the food.”

Moune explained that Thai and Lao cooking uses a lot of herbs like mint, lemongrass and Thai basil, which differs from the basil found in most supermarkets in that it has a stronger flavor and is closer to mint than to the basil used in Italian dishes.

The lack of many of the ingredients within 200-mile radius makes the Bouthanvong’s Fort Worth distributor essential, but it also ensures that the style of food won’t become stale in an oversaturated market.

“My kids and me decide to do that [open a restaurant] because San Angelo doesn’t have another Thai restaurant yet,” Moune said.

Ban Moon is open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on Fridays and Saturdays until 10 p.m. The restaurant is closed on Sundays. Ban Moon is located at 405 W. Ave. N.