The Thai Food Queen of Texas | Street Food Icons

Honestly, I never thought that I would marry a foreigner. The heat in Texas is no joke. Luckily, we do this in the morning. It's kind of like going to a night market, except it's right down the road. So I got a half chicken and a mango. Normally, you would see a lot of curry, noodles, and all of that, but this is more like country style. No pad thai, no like green curry, no fried rice, you know. I'm Justin Tribiana, and... I'm Lakana Tribiana. And we run Didi, the Northern Thai street food truck here in Austin, Texas. Two pad, spiced down, two moo ping, and a mango sticky rice. We opened in 2016. We serve Isan food. It's very country style. We have pad kra pao. We have larp moo. We have moo ping. We have om kai. Som tam and som tam Isan. Mango sticky rice. Gai yang, grilled chicken. And tofu stir fry. So I need one pad, two mangoes to go. Pad kra pao, pad meaning you saute. Kra pao is the name of the basil. This style is like my mom would do it at home, like very simple, just basil and meat and homemade chili paste. Grab some sliced cucumber. Add some fried basil that I fried. And that's it. That's our most popular one, pad kra pao. The flavor base is like very different on each dish. The base sauce is fish sauce and Thai soy sauces. And the spice are like chili, Thai chili. And those are all homemade? Yeah, I made all the chili paste and chili powder. Do I have a tofu lo yet? And a tofu medium with an egg? Tofu lo is ready. My food is very labor intensive. If you don't care about it, it's not gonna come out good. So I do everything myself, by hand, and it takes a long time. I want to serve how me and my family eat in Thailand. So to be able to do that, you just have to follow the steps. Otherwise, it doesn't come out the same, you know? And this one is ready. That's the lap. I am from Roi Et. It's the northeast of Thailand. Isan is where all the farmer, all the rice, you know, that go through the country from. I learned to cook from my great-grandmother. When I was growing up, you have to make fire to cook rice. You have to make fire to make food. We didn't really have refrigerator at first. So if you want to eat, you know, you have to wake up early in the morning, start to cook sticky rice, because it take a while. My great-grandmother, she would be really tough on me. She wake me up at four in the morning, you know, to start fire and cook rice so she can take some rice to the temple. It was tough, but it's in a good way. You know, I learned a lot from that. You know, now I can do all the hard work. This is for rotisserie chicken. It has lemongrass and palm sugar and fish sauce. We met at a bus station. You know, I was just traveling to see my friend, and then we just exchanged there. What was that, MSN? Yeah. Island was so warm and welcoming to me as a tourist. And I just remember thinking, I want to stay here and I would like to do something to show my appreciation. So that little three-month vacation turned into nine months volunteering. During that time is when we met. And then when we met, that nine months turned into living in Thailand for five plus years. And then moving back to get married. We moved to America in 2013 when we got married. I was never like outside of Thailand. So I wanted to come here to see like how everything here is. And it was like a shock. I saw a purple tree. It was so different because in Thailand, it's just green or dry, brown, you know, it's just hot. What time is it? I don't know, it's eight? It's right now? Yeah. It is 8.02, so we're making good time. I was very homesick at first. You were homesick, you were missing your food, and she was cooking every meal, every day for everyone. So like all my friends and all my family, they absolutely loved it. And that's kind of what gave us the idea. As we looked at it, it's like, well, Austin has this booming, blossoming food scene. I put a website together. We're like brainstorming menu ideas and coming up with all these different dishes and concepts that we wanted to do. And I can't never talk about this without breaking up. My grandfather, we went to go visit him. He sat us down and he told us that he was giving his grandchildren his life savings. Like a week or two after that meeting, he passed away. That's what gave us the opportunity to begin Didi. And I think the reason we've had such good luck and fortune with what we've done is because he's kind of like there with us, watching over to make sure everything's kind of gone smoothly. So, yeah. Aww. Sorry. When we first started, we really had no idea what we were doing because we never done anything like this. I mean, I know how to cook, but I didn't know how to like run a restaurant and a business like this. So, I mean, we would like, you know, stay up until like two to 4 a.m. in the morning, you know, trying to get everything ready. Are we gonna go do the chickens now? Yeah, I'm about to go right now. Yeah, I got the fire going. We were two people. Yeah. And we were only two people for a good solid year. Yeah. And we were very busy, like right out the gates. Generally, it's 14 to 16 hours a day. We do that like six to seven days a week. I think I am the boss. Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. She looks sweet and innocent, but she's a tough cookie in that kitchen. A little bit drier. It's not dry. It's just slow cook, you know? If you do it right, it will be moist and tender. Slow cook it. It's not ready yet. Do not serve raw chicken. Kitchen life is not easy life, so there's heated moments. It's so stressful. It's stressful. But at the end of the day, I would much rather be working with her and spending my time with her than in an office somewhere else. I rest. I want to keep them nice, moist. I can't keep up with her work ethic. It's actually insane. I don't know where she gets the energy. She's cooking all day, every day. I work the window. I'm exhausted working the window, and she's in there like, you know, stirring, mashing, and then prepping on top of it. And then when she's not in the kitchen and she does have free time, she's in her garden like digging holes and planting herbs and vegetables. It's insane. I just wish that I could grow everything and then, you know, like pick out from my garden and organic and, you know, serve my, yeah, customer, you know. This is mint. It's going to go in one of my dish. Yeah, I love the garden because you can't just get basil from like Thailand, like from the market. The sweet basil and the holy basil, this one is more pungent. It's stronger. It's spicy. This is kaffir lime tree. This is lemon basil. It reminds me of my mom, you know, my grandma. We would eat that a lot. Chili. This is not as spicy as I like, but I mean, it's good. And this is some grapefruit, apple, and that's orange. This is lemon and some banana. And that's it. To be able to grow herbs that actually from my hometown and put in food, just the smell, just the taste of it, it's just like, you know, bring back like memories, you know, being with family. I think it took a time, probably 20 minutes. It's got a lot we're trying to get out right now. One pad, two mangoes to go. I knew she had a gift when I was in Thailand because I was eating Thai food every day for five years. And the best food was always what she cooked at home. And then when I saw that she would cook for Thais in Thailand and they would come and they would rave about her food, that was when I was like, really like, okay, so this is like the real deal. They're filming us for Vice, and I was telling them how you take the som tum back to your wife. I bring home papaya salad, which is her favorite thing here. And it comes with a lot of sauce, so I bring two TSA-approved containers and kind of siphon the sauces in there so I can fly with it. And when I get home, she just digs in. I got a hot chicken set and a mango sugar ice to go. The future of DDM, our goal is brick and mortar. I prefer a less fun. I think, you know, I don't mind working in the heat, but I just want to be able to do more just what we're serving right now. We try to keep it very, like, real to where I come from. And we will always be that way.