The World According to Genevieve Vang
Whether she’s expanding her restaurant or marketing healthy “ready” refrigerated meals people can cook in no time or even stretching the proverbial 15 minutes of fame, the owner of Bangkok 96 in Dearborn is always on the go considering the next step in her journey.
That journey began far from Telegraph Road. Of Hmong origin, Vang spent her childhood in Laos before becoming a refugee first in Thailand and then in France, all by age 12. Life in France still wasn’t what it was for the family that had thrived before her dad lost his military job, and later, in France, his life. She remembers how cold the poorly heated home was and how the family existed with hardly any food, even though they lived close to the region’s prestigious cooking schools. She longed to work in a commercial kitchen, even if only to clean it.
“It was hard. It was always an upside-down struggle,” recalls Vang of her youth. “Sometimes struggle makes people stronger. I still remember who I was, who I am.”
Vang finally did work in a kitchen in 1989 after she and her husband, Guy, and their two children moved to metro-Detroit to be near family. That hard work eventually propelled the Vangs to open their own Thai restaurant, Bangkok 96, in 1996.
“To work in a kitchen was a dream for me,” says Vang, who praises Guy as a chef and partner who oversees the business. “In order to grow, you need a team with good management. There’s so much going on when you’re entrepreneurs— customer service, safety, sanitation, marketing—you have to create a foundation.” V
ang’s passion for food is endless. Even with a successful restaurant, she didn’t rest on her laurels. Instead, Vang set her sights on an even wider reach, hoping to get her Thai meals into markets for people to cook at home. Those efforts improved after she met George Vutetakis, former chef of Inn Season in Royal Oak and past director of research and development for Ferndale-based Garden Fresh Gourmet. Vutetakis introduced Vang to Garden Fresh owner Jack Aronson, who was in the process of selling his business to Campbell Soup. Both food entrepreneurs quickly became inspirations to Vang. The admiration was mutual.
“I reached out to her because there’s nobody better,” says Aronson, alluding to Yang’s clean-label commercial products that are all-natural, gluten-free and low-sodium. “She’s done some really interesting cutting-edge stuff that impresses me.”
Aronson is currently working to have Clean Planet Cuisine Chicken Pad Thai and Vegetarian Pad Thai on the market by the end of summer, using High Pressure Processing (HPP) at his newly opened Great Lakes HPP in Taylor. He started Clean Planet in Clinton Township in 2016.
“Homemade Pad Thai, fresh, never frozen,” Vang explains. “It’s exciting. I never thought my journey was going to get to this level. All the hard work paid off.”
“Because of Jack I’m able to bring a different idea for the future. We’re changing the way we do business,” Vang says.
In a separate venture, Vang also sells Thai Feast, a powdered sauce and broth line that is vegan, gluten-free, low in sugar and salt and free of MSG. She carries it in the restaurant and sells it on Amazon.
And look for Vang pretty soon at Bangkok 96 Street Food, which dubs itself as food someone might expect on a backpacking trip near the Mekong River or the streets of Bangkok, part of Detroit Shipping Co., a six-restaurant collective opening in Detroit in early summer. She is excited to be part of the Detroit food revolution and to introduce herself to new customers.
“I call it looking for opportunity. If you keep doing what you’re doing, do a good job. For the new entrepreneur, you have to do your homework,” Vang says.
Opportunity certainly does knock for Vang. In the summer of 2008, she was grocery shopping when her phone rang. It was Clint Eastwood. “I almost froze. The first thing I thought: ‘This is God.
He just sent Clint Eastwood to me,’” Vang recalls.
Eastwood asked her to cater the set of his movie Gran Torino, filmed on location in metro Detroit. Vang cooked through the night for 170 people. She was told to keep it fairly simple, but she wanted to represent the Hmong culture better than that.
“Number one, it’s not going to look good for my people. It’s too boring,” she says. “Number two, this is my opportunity.” Her outof-the-box thinking worked, and for two weeks she brought food to the set, always changing it up. She also brought a daily order of spicy larb—a Thai beef salad—for Eastwood, because it was his favorite.
“Cooking for Hollywood: It’s a beautiful page in my journey. Now nothing stops me,” she says. “I always remember who I was. I had nothing: no money, no food. Whenever I see someone on the street I have to make sure I give them something because they’re hungry.”
In 2016, Food Network approached Vang to be on “Clash of the Grandmas.” Confident about her cooking, Vang was less sure about baking, so she practiced for three months. Nervous, she kept her eyes on the prize—$10,000 and a trophy—by telling herself to have fun.
“Do the best you can, but remember it’s a chance of a lifetime,” she recalls. “Maybe I lost the show, but I know I learned something.
I know how to bake,” she says with a laugh.
She is putting that knowledge to work today by creating recipes for cupcakes and other desserts. That might not seem like a challenge until you consider that these versions are sugar-free with organic ingredients.
“It’s just a cake, but it’s got a lot of good things in there. I think we’re going to carry that,” she says and then adds with a smile, “maybe we’ll try to bring this to ‘Shark Tank.’”
Learn more at www.Bangkok96.com
