MARCH 2020 109
opposite: Bright ingredients go
into Khao Soi (below, recipe p.
110), which is the most-requested
dish whenever the Nolintha
siblings, Vanvisa and Van (right)
host a party.
“I love the idea that there are cer-
tain dishes you don’t make in
small batches,” Van says. “And
you don’t make khao soi for two.”
Instead, they share with cowork-
ers and friends.WHEN THE NOLINTHA SIBLINGS first opened Bida Manda, there
wasn’t a model for what a Laotian restaurant in America
could be. Van and Vanvisa felt they had a responsibility to
make sure their version of Laotian food was truthful to their
memory of Luang Prabang, so they asked themselves, “What
do we eat when we miss home?” They eat mok pa, which is
sea bass baked in banana leaves, and khao soi, a rice noodle
soup (see the recipe on p. 110).
In the farming community Van and Vanvisa grew up in,
land is traditionally passed from one generation to the next.
The siblings asked their parents, Amphone and Sompheng,
to consider gifting them a piece of their land while they were
still alive, and then selling that land so that it could become
the seed money for Bida Manda. They said yes. “In a way we
are still tending to their land,” Van says. “It just happens to
be in Moore Square in Raleigh, 8,000 miles away.”
It took 17 years for Amphone and Sompheng to be granted
a visa to visit their children in Raleigh. Yet even when they
weren’t physically present, they were always there in spirit.
A giant black-and-white image of Amphone and Sompheng,
taken on their wedding day, hangs above the hostess stand at
Bida Manda, greeting everyone who walks into the restaurant.
“It’s a symbolic gesture of coming into this foreign cuisine,”
Van said. “It’s a moment of humanity.”
The first time their parents came to Bida Manda, the most
natural thing to do—after years of waiting for this moment—
was to sit down together for dinner. “They cooked for us,
and we cooked for them,” Van said. “And that became the
medium of connection.”BIDA MANDA
Raleigh, North Carolina