The door swings open to a quiet kitchen. Elson Douangdara and Frick Chanthorn slide thin, sharp blades over the body of eye of round beef cuts, trimming strips of fat in relative silence. There are no screaming griddles or chefs in this kitchen. You won’t see fires jumping into the air from pans or hear pots clang jarringly on stovetop grates. All the hallmark sensations of a stereotypical chef’s kitchen can be experienced somewhere else.
Saap Lao’s operation is housed in a modest former catering kitchen behind a jangly door at the end of a strip mall in Bedford. Nearby, planes roar into landing position at DFW International Airport. Saap’s first brick and mortar is tight neighbors with a martial arts school. Huge bold letters read “SELF CONTROL” on the window ― an apt phrase once the garlic-soy aroma of the beef jerky washes over you.
Over three days, the beef rumps get frozen, sliced, marinated, flash-fried, bagged and stamped in the Bedford kitchen.
“We actually do it all by hand,” Kim Chanthorn says with a laugh. “It’s a lot of work.” You won’t find automation ― just family hands and a lot of garlic and dried Thai chiles. The new shop, with a retail space out front for selling jerky and swag, has been humming since September. They speckle-epoxied the kitchen floor themselves in the 1,200-square-foot space.
“So yeah, this is where we make the jerky now,” Chanthorn says. “This is all us.” She smiles at the two family members slicing the fat.
You might not be familiar with this version of beef jerky. The big brand stuff tastes like you’re teeth-yanking at a wood-smoked Stetson. Your mouth hums with salt. With most dehydrated or smoked jerky, your jaw muscles ache halfway through the bag like you’ve been singing Journey on karaoke night for two hours.
Instead, Saap Lao’s process of marinating-drying-flash-frying turns the beef into stained glass. It glistens and breaks, cracking, then melting in your mouth.
Their spicy flavor ― shards of beef painted with deep cherry red and studded with popping chiles ― has heat. Their newest flavor, Garlic Bomb, is drop-dead stunning ― a bag of beef jerky that laughingly laps any other brand. The bag was in tatters in minutes during the car ride home. Each slice is sticky from sauce. Together with the tender, breaking sensation, it transforms the feeling of addictive salty-food-snacking into the lunatic cravings of a sprinting zombie that catches a brain smell in the air.
“There’s no secret there,” Kim Chanthorn says about how it’s made. “It’s on the back of the bag.” On most bags of their jerky, you’ll find four or five ingredients: Sesame seeds, black pepper, some sugar, chili flakes, and soy are common. They don’t add preservatives, MSG, or those aorta-challenging nitrates. The process docks the family three days.
The idea grew, Chanthorn says, over a creamy bowl of chicken soup. Lao food traditions are woven into the fabric of their family. It was sometime around Christmas 2015 when they wondered aloud: Why isn’t there more bomb-ass Lao food in Dallas?
Jerky, it turns out, is the perfect gateway food to the dishes they crowd around as a family, like piping hot bowls of creamy tapioca noodles in chicken broth topped with crispy garlic and chili oil. You’ll find trays of the stuff at parties, says Kim Chanthorn. You’ll see the jerky added to a bowl of sticky rice.
The jerky is literally a gateway to more at Saap Lao. They use their garlic bomb and spicy beef packages to draw fans into the more substantial pop-ups of fried chicken stuffed with Lao sausage and crunchy-garlic-topped tapioca noodles, or Khao Soi (noodle soup) topped with fried chicken legs.
So, it’s about more than handmade food and small business models: It’s an appetizer before diving into a family meal.
Saap Lao Kitchen is located at 2816 Central Drive, Suite 180, Bedford. Retail shop hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. saaplaokitchen.com. Follow them on Instagram or sign up for email announcements to get the scoop on their pop-up events.
Nick Rallo is a Dallas freelance writer.
