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Today we’d like to introduce you to John Sungkamee.
Hi John, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I came to the US in 1990 when my mother, Supis Sungkamee, won a green card lottery. She had12 children and so I grew up with 11 siblings in Southern Thailand. I was the only one who came with my parents to the US since I was under 21 at the time. Two of my sisters were already living in the US, so we came and stayed with them.
When I first arrived in the United States, I went to school to study English and then graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business. I eventually pursued MBA program in Information Technology. I got my first full time job after graduated as a computer analyst and ended up working in IT and became a consultant for a big corporate firm like Toyota and IBM for about 15 years.
All of my siblings came from Thailand to visit my dad in 1997. After he passed away, they all stayed here for better opportunities. They’re all working in a restaurants in a different places. I knew my brothers and my sisters love to cook and they cook very well so I thought opening a restaurant would be a perfect business for us. I started Emporium Thai in 2000.
Back home in Thailand when I was a little, I remembered seeing my siblings helped mom and dad prepared food and cooked in the kitchen. We lived in a tiny house with a big land so all the ingredients were available right in the backyard. We had fish pawn, chicken farm, coconut trees, mango trees and my parents grew all the Thai herbs like fresh chilies, basil, galangal, kaffir lime leave. They cooked every day and the smell was so unique. Every time I think about it, there where so many great moments in our family. We always ate together and every dinner almost like a farm-to-table! We don’t have a lot but a lot of love in the house.
When Emporium Thai started, I was still working fulltime during the week and I’d come to manage the restaurant on the weekend. I really enjoyed meeting my customers at the restaurant and feel so blessed that people enjoyed the food our family offer. In 2006, my oldest brother Chef Tui Sungkamee who was an executive chef convinced me to take over a Thai restaurant in Thai Town called Jitlada. We went to look at it and I helped purchased the restaurant and set up the operations. Eventually my brother and my sister took over. Sadly my brother passed away in 2017. He was an amazing chef and loved by all the food critics locally and internationally, In 2012, I decided that I wanted to take the restaurant to the next level so I quit the corporate job and come manage Emporium Thai fulltime.
Since then, we have grown a lot. Emporium Thai has become one of the most well-known Thai restaurants in Los Angeles especially in the Westwood community and with UCLA. We’ve been focusing on providing high quality Thai food and we source local ingredients whenever possible.
Back in March 2020 we were supposed to celebrate our 20th anniversary but we ended up having to shut down due to city COVID regulations. We weren’t sure what to do but a few of my customers called in and offered some help. We started a program called “Feed The Frontline” where we sent emails to our customers asking them to purchase food as a donation. With those donations, I personally brought food to feed the first responders and healthcare workers all over Los Angeles. We put a stickers on the box and wrote down the names of the donors and I sent the pictures back to them. Everyone loved it. Imagine back in March 2020, it was scary. Nobody wants to be closed to the hospital but I seeing it differently. Every time I watched the news, it all about hospitals were overloaded with COVID patients and I feel helpless when I see doctors/first responders were so dead tried trying to save lives. Since my restaurant is so close to many hospitals such as Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, I thought bring lunch/dinner boxes to them would be the least we can do. So I start posting about our Fee The Frontline program on our Instagram page. Jennifer Love-Hewitt saw my post so she helped spread the word on her interview with the show called The Talk. You can view her talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HenizkhMU. I was also on KTLA5 News talking about the challenges we faced during that time. You can also find it here. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=5910057622341351
I thought it would be good if we can raise 200-300 boxed lunches to our healthcare workers in our community but ended up raised more than 3000 boxes and we still keep the program going to these days. We’re really proud of this program and you see the moments we captured here. https://www.ethaicuisine.com/feed-the-frontline
I feel very grateful to have been able to survive especially during these challenging times.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Absolutely not. Imagine 20 years ago, most restaurants didn’t even have a website. There was no social media, no Yelp, no Google. No UberEats/Postmates or DoorDash. We had to print a paper menu and hire someone to go distribute the menu. People could not easily find us and our business was kind of slow for the first few years. We survived because my family stuck together and we didn’t have the cost associated with having a big staff like we do today. The cost of living also was not as high then as it is now. When I expanded in 2006 and took over Jitlada, my team had to split into two restaurants and I had to go around from Westwood to Thai Town and back to Irvine where I used to live there. It was not easy to manage when you have to commute far away and technology was very expensive to impalement back then.
There were many challenges. For example, how to get repeat customers and build a repeat clientele. When I first took over the restaurant, it was under a different name. Then I changed it to Emporium Thai so previous customers did not come back when they know the ownership was changed so we had to basically start from zero. There were so many things I didn’t know at the time.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At Emporium Thai we strive to provide our guests with the best ingredients possible! This means we source high-quality products whenever possible, we use only non-GMO and seasonal produce.
My sister who is our Executive Chef, Gina Sungkamee, graduated from one of the most prestigious culinary schools in Bangkok. Kitchen is her playground and she really cooks with love. Few years ago we started to experiment to see if we can create our base sauces that does not contain fish sauce or MSG added due to the growing of healthy clientele who enjoy eating good flavor food but also have dietary restrictions. So now all of our base sauce like Pad Thai sauce, stir fry sauces or curry sauces do not contact fish sauce or MSG at all. I think this has become our brand where vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free fan base can enjoy authentic Thai food without fish sauce in it. We still offer chili/fish sauce as a side condiment when requested. It’s just healthier and you can eat many dishes in one meal and still feel good. Many of our guests are doctors/professors/food nutritionists and we always get their complements about the flavor and quality of the food all the time.
We’re absolutely proud to receive many recognitions and awards including Voted Top 100 Best Thai Restaurants in the US. We’re also Thai Select Award restaurant which is a mark of certification awarded by the Ministry of Commerce, the Royal Thai Government to guarantee the authentic Thai taste of Thai food products and Thai restaurants in Thailand and overseas. And we’re the winner of 2021’s Los Angeles Travel Magazine Reader Choice Award for Best Internationally Inspired Restaurant.
One of the surprise joys we have was that so many celebrities will pop up at the restaurant. To name a few, our regular include Jennifer Love Hewitt, AKON, John Cleese, John Lithgow, Timothy Olyphant, Benicio Del Toro, Lamar Odom, Lupita Nyong’o, Willow Smith and even Cardi B visited us six times in one month. She loved our Mango Sticky Rice and even posted it on her IG Story https://www.instagram.com/p/CMWaKSLjDYI/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
When John Cleese said that he thinks this was the best Thai he ever had, it just simply made myself and my family so proud. https://www.instagram.com/p/CNGYgB5DkMR/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
We recently been featured on YelpLA as well https://www.instagram.com/tv/CPoq5x1hcvF/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Just like Mom and Dad did back in Thailand, we uses only the finest ingredients bought locally. Our mission is simple “To create such a memorably wonderful Thai dining experience that you’ll want to return to Emporium Thai often, and rave about us to your friends”.
We’re known for healthy Thai that offer a variety of dietary restrictions including gluten-free, peanut-free items, fish sauce-free as well as vegan and vegetarian options. Our catering business has been doing very well in the past 2-3 years. We’re specializing in corporate catering, and hospital catering, ranging from party trays to individual boxed lunches from 20 to 300 guests. We cater literally 6-10 events a week now and everyone love what we’ve to offer because good food = good mood. Who doesn’t loves a healthy Thai food?
We’ve done many wedding events as well and people starting to want us to cater to their wedding day which also made us so proud to be part of their important day.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
When I arrived here 31 years ago, I can barely communicate. I had no idea how my future will look like. But I know I always have positive mindset and good intention. When I opened Emporium Thai, my intention was to share the love of cooking within my family and to make sure my brothers and sisters have place to work and be able to showcase recipes that handed down for generations. I also want them to stay together just like when we were back home.
Quitting a high paying software engineering job and come run a restaurant doesn’t sound good at all. I weren’t sure how it’s going to turn out. I took a lot of risk and I feel fortunate to have come to this stage.
Since my mom won the green card lottery, that was my first big luck. And then I worked extremely hard on educations to make sure I can get a good job. I learned a lot when I was working in a corporate world and I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by good people. You have to have good people behind you to create luck.
I have to thanks my brothers and sisters who have been supporting me and we went thru up and down a lot together. There was a quote from the Roman philosopher, Seneca and he said “Luck Is What Happens When Preparation Meets Opportunity”. I really love this. It reminds me that we make our own luck. The difference between lucky and unlucky people, we’ve seen before, is all in our perspective.
I feel so grateful for all the support I’ve been receiving from my friends and family. I also feel very thankful to all of our customers who have been supporting us through all these years. I feel very lucky but I also know that I work extremely hard to get the luck! You have to have good intention and luck will come! That luck has brought me many new friends and many loyal customers.
At the front entrance of Emporium Thai, I have a picture frame with a quote from Mother Teresa that said “Do Small Things with Great Love”. Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. It makes me smile every time I walk into my restaurant. Given how many others in the restaurant business have not survived, I have to think that my mom is looking over Emporium Thai from heaven and making sure we’re here, so we can keep serving and delivering the kind of meals she used to cook for our family so long ago. Emporium Thai will become the legacy of my family as a celebration of mom’s life.
Pricing:
- 20-30/person
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.ethaicuisine.com
- Instagram: emporiumthai
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EmporiumThai/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmporiumThai
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGrIn0gX_rY
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/emporium-thai-los-angeles-5
