Today we’d like to introduce you to Noppakate Donaldson.
Noppakate, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I came to the United States in 2003 and worked in Thai food restaurants for several years. I felt that I couldn’t find the Thai food that I had grown up with, and I thought I could do better.
My mom taught me to cook since I was little. I had to follow my mom every weekend to the wet market in the south of Thailand, carrying a basket full of vegetables, pork, chicken and seafood. All the vendors knew my mom. Carrying the food was so heavy for me and mom sometimes turned to me and asked if I could carry it all. What can I say!
My home was close to a vegetable plantation where I spent evenings after school to help my friend tend the garden and prepare food for the farm pigs. We had such a great time. In the rainy season, some areas of the plantation were flooded and amazingly the catfish would jump out of the mud all around us. My friends could catch them, but I could never catch the fish. I learned so much about where the food that we eat comes from.
When I moved to Bangkok for university, I was overwhelmed by all of the food choices available in the capital of Thailand. And I couldn’t help but think about how different the food of central Thailand was from my hometown, Songkla.
Skip forward several years, and I found that not only was my southern Thai food widely unavailable, but the Thai food that I knew was not well represented in Southern California. I wanted to do something, so I started my food truck, Sanook in 2014 to serve the Thai food that I love to the people in my community, Santa Monica.
After five years of running my food truck, I felt like it was time to expand my menu so I opened a ghost kitchen at Colony in 2019.
Has it been a smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road. Running a food truck is tough. Parking and mechanical problems wear you out. I had way too many 17-hour days.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Sanook story. Tell us more about the business.
We specialize in making fresh authentic Thai food every day. Nothing pre-made. We prepare everything the way we do in Thailand.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I think the cloud kitchen is a new way of the restaurant business and the future is bright.
Contact Info:
- Address: 11419 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025
- Website: sanooksoi38.com
- Phone: 13103830014
- Email: [email protected]
Image Credit:
Noppakate Donaldson
Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
