Food can be a tangible and accessible way to understand and connect with different cultures.

One chef has led the movement to bring traditional food from her home country of Laos to diners across the country.

Larbarone Lopez reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Thank you so much for coming.

For chef Sang Luangla, dinner here at her tip cow restaurant in Washington, D.C., is about more than the food.

I saw you order a lap alligator. I was like, oh, I gotta go to that table.

It's amazing.

It's a chance to highlight the rich heritage and culinary artistry of Laos, a country she fled in

1981 at age 12 with her mother, uncle, and two brothers,

after her father was taken to a labor camp.

We have to across the Mekong River at 3 o'clock in the morning, through a small, tiny

boat.

Then we have to walk about our chest-hide water to the other side of the riverbank in Thailand.

Some 300,000 people fled the landlocked country in the years after 1975.

That was after the failure of both the Vietnam War,

and the massive covert nine-year bombing campaign in Laos led by the U.S., known as the secret war.

When we get to the Thai border, we heard gunshots.

So we heard people trying to escape, either people tried to escape after us,

or they just shoot up in the sky when they saw us.

Many temporarily settled in refugee camps in northern Thailand.

That's where Chef Sang, as she's now known,

learn to prepare dishes from across Laos that are still reflected in her cooking today.

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