What Does a Shared Menu Look Like Across a Divide?

Proof

America's Test Kitchen

Society & Culture, Food, Arts

4.4 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when two chefs, Yia Vang and Colby Rasavong, inherit a fraught history and decide to cook their way through it? In this episode, reporter Ngoc Bui takes us inside a Hmong-Lao dinner where they use food to open conversations about a complex past and explore how a new culinary vernacular can bridge generations. Check out our recipe for Hmong Grilled Hilltribe Chicken with Kua Txob, inspired by Yia Vang, and this classic Laotian recipe for Nam khao! Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.rula.com/proof⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	How's the business going?
0:01.2	We're busier than ever, but struggling to get the staff we need. Oh, recruiting can be such a distraction. We gave Job Centre Plus a try, and they've really helped us out. Really? Yeah. It was dead easy. We got our own employer advisor, Julie, who helped advertise our jobs, shortlisted candidates for us and letters interview at the Job Centre. We've hired some great people, and Job Centre Plus really took the hassle out of it, And there was no fee.
0:23.1	Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. view at the job center. We've hired some great people and Job Center Plus really took the hassle
0:21.2	out of it and there was no fee. Brilliant. That's straight on my to-do list. Find out more at
0:26.0	business.gov.com.ukes. Eligibility criteria apply. Hey, Lulu Miller here. I am the host of Terrestrials,
0:33.9	a show all about animals and nature from Radio Lab.
0:41.2	If you've ever wanted to hear a story about an octopus breaking out of an aquarium,
0:48.0	or a squirrel that can regrow its brain, or do wild stories unfolding inside a tree stump?
0:50.5	Well, we've got an episode for you.
0:53.2	And did I mention, we sometimes break out into song.
0:59.5	Join us, Terrestrials, over on the Radio Lab for Kids Feed. Listen, wherever you get podcasts.
1:07.2	The dinner table might just be our most important space for difficult conversations.
1:14.2	This is especially true in culinary diplomacy, which is the intentional practice of strengthening geopolitical ties through food.
1:16.9	The idea is pretty simple.
1:18.8	Whenever we sit across from each other, it's natural to engage deeply.
1:22.8	But fostering actual progress, well, that's not so easy.
1:27.5	Today's story is about one such example of culinary diplomacy.
1:32.4	Only the characters at the center aren't politicians or government officials.
1:37.4	Yeo Vang and Colby Rassavong are award-winning chefs who inherited the historically fraught
1:43.1	relationship of their forebearers.
1:45.0	It's a decades-long conflict between the Hmong and Lao peoples of Southeast Asia.
1:51.0	By hosting a dinner event, the chefs hope to start conversations about the way forward.
	...

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