From Front Yard Gardens to Koffeteria Cafes Counter
East End café explores garden-grown produce in Cambodian-inspired food
Once a month, Vanarin Kuch, chef/owner of East End café Koffeteria, heads to his Aunt Ky Vouch’s house to harvest galangal from her front yard. He uses the fragrant rhizomes in a rotating selection of Cambodian-inspired pastries such as a kolache filled with chicken meatball curry, which is a luxurious example of Kuch’s imaginative approach to cooking.
Though his creation may be unique to Houston, where many cuisines rub shoulders, it has deep roots in Cambodia. Kuch says, “As far back as I can remember, no matter what piece of land my parents or extended family had, they’ve always cultivated something—from as far back as when my parents were immigrants and refugees from Cambodia.”
On these plots, his mother and aunts grow Cambodian produce they have difficulty finding anywhere else. “A lot of the herbs my mom grows she can’t really find in the Asian stores or it just doesn’t taste the same,” he says. “The galangal that grows in my aunt’s front yard tastes a lot better than what you buy in the store.”
In addition to galangal, Kuch’s Aunt Ky grows jujubes (a small fruit that is also known as red dates and that looks like a cross between a date and an apple), which she dries and turns into a paste (Kuch has a quart in the freezer that will eventually be used at his café); along with lemongrass, makrut lime, garlic, Thai chiles, makaa (Spondias dulcis) and more. “She doesn’t have a big house and she literally uses every square inch of her backyard,” Kuch says. “She even has a spot where she puts a drying rack to dry fish.”
Kuch’s family’s relationship with local food goes beyond growing fruits, vegetables and herbs. His Aunt Ky goes to Galveston every day to fish, driving there in a truck she bought to “accommodate her fishing needs,” Kuch says. “She dries them [the fish]. She salts them. She fries them.”
He adds, “My earliest memory is when my grandma got the police called on her by accident because there’s this staple dish we make called prahok, which is basically an unfiltered, unadulterated version of fish sauce. It’s just fish you catch locally and salt until it smells good enough.” Unfortunately, a neighbor didn’t appreciate the smell and thought it was a decomposing body. When the police arrived, Kuch says, “My grandma was sitting there because she doesn’t know English and shouting ‘food’ at this container with fish particles swimming around. It’s funny now because people don’t realize how good it tastes.”
It’s those Cambodian flavors Kuch wants to share with his fellow Houstonians. “A lot of people don’t know what Cambodian food is,” he says. “I think it’s a really unique opportunity to let people into my background and my life and give them a little perspective on what it means to be Cambodian and raised in Houston.”
His Aunt Ky has been an important part of that mission. Not only is she providing produce but, as the oldest of his aunts, she is also passing along much of the knowledge about Cambodian food and culture. She also provides other ingredients and feedback. “One of things she loves doing for me is making preserved lemons, which she doesn’t grow.” Last year, she made 120 pounds of preserved lemons for Kuch. He used some of them to make a lemon meringue taco at Koffeteria. Kuch says she loved the taco. “She really liked the acidity.”
She’ll often tell him that one of his dishes tastes similar to a Cambodian dish he has never tried before. He says, “It’s cool to see what I’m thinking is doing something creative, melding different flavors, is similar to something that is very traditional in Cambodia.”
One such creation is a pesto made from makaa leaves, which Kuch gets from plants his aunt grows. Makaa is part of the cashew family and the Spondias genus, which includes several flowering plants that produce fruits that are sometimes called hog or Spanish plum in English. Makaa is sometimes also called ambarella, June plum and, in the Caribbean, golden apple. Kuch says his Aunt Ky grows six or seven makaa plants in her yard because she loves the fruit. According to him it tastes “like a green mango and a guava had a baby. Super delicious and very refreshing.”
Recently, his aunt gave Kuch a bunch of makaa leaves because she was worried they would be damaged in an upcoming freeze. He says the leaves are a “very lemony herb, akin to cilantro, but a lot brighter and sunnier.” For his Cambodian version of pesto, he used the makaa leaves and toasted peanuts. He paired it with a croissant stuffed with taro leaves, yam leaves and pennywort stewed with his aunt’s galangal, coconut and Thai chiles.
Kuch started out frying doughnuts and shrimp at age 14, at Navigation Seafood and Doughnuts, the restaurant his family owned right off Navigation and Canal Street in Houston’s Second Ward. Kuch says, “It was obviously not the most money-making venture but as a 14-year-old kid cooking in the kitchen illegally was a lot of fun.”
Koffeteria is also a family-run business. Kuch helms the kitchen, his husband manages the front of house and his father does the accounting. This core group along with Kuch’s sous chef and a barista were the only staff when the café opened three months before COVID-19 reached the Bayou City. They managed to not only survive the pandemic but to also grow the enterprise, in part due to an increasing wholesale business. Koffeteria now has 16 employees and Kuch would eventually like to open a commissary and a Cambodian restaurant. He says, “I think the possibilities are endless.”
Until then, Kuch, like his 14-year-old self, is having fun in the kitchen, bringing a creative twist to his native cuisine. He concocts imaginative dishes such as Gumbo Danishes and Sichuan Chicken Mole Kolaches that reflect the diversity of his hometown, while also staying rooted in his Cambodian heritage through his aunt’s backyard and the knowledge and culture inherited from his family. Kuch says, “I feel the hustle was passed down through the generations.”
Koffeteria (koffeteria.com) is located at 1110 Hutchins St Suite 102, Houston. @koffeteria
