The Best
of Laos A country could tell its whole story through food, if only it knew how.
W
hen Latsamy Vetsaphong first heard a western friend wondering aloud where they could buy some of the amazing delicacies they had tried while in Laos, she realised there was a gap in the market for Lao souvenirs. And when she heard yet another friend lamenting that some of the food she had gathered to take home to relatives wasn’t nicely packaged, she knew she was onto something. “I heard people saying that Laos didn’t export anything but timber and handicrafts,” she says. “This was more than five years ago. I thought to myself, okay, what can I do to help?” She decided to focus on some of the country’s unique foods, using comments from her foreigner friends as a guide. “Let's say when they go to Luang Prabang, what do they like to buy? Quite often it’s riverweed, the famous one with sesame seeds,” she says. But it wasn’t just foreigners who were picking up food as gifts for the family back home. “I think even in Laos, locals still don’t know what food is available from north to south,” she says. “Laos may be a small country, but people don’t realise how diverse the food is here. Northerners are often unfamiliar with specific southern ingredients.”
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Through her new business, Lao Best, Latsamy has begun selecting what she believes is the best of the country’s
