Saeng Douangdara: From Content Creator to Cookbook Author and Food Photographer
How he intentionally created the content that he wanted to see
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Saeng Douangdara’s path to becoming a cookbook author and food photographer started with a yearning and a spark. After graduate school, Saeng became an academic counselor at the University of California, Los Angeles. As he settled into professional life, Saeng missed his mother’s Lao cooking, so he learned to prepare her favorite dishes himself and quickly discovered not only a passion for cooking but also a desire to teach others about his native cuisine. Soon, Saeng found himself spending all his free time in the kitchen, cooking, doing live demos, and taking on small catering jobs. He also found Lao food genuinely underrepresented on the internet, so he started creating and sharing his own content.
“There was not much of Lao representation within the internet space. And so that kind of charged me. I would leave work at five, I would go home and start just recording me making my Lao food because that’s what I love to eat. So I was already making it. So I thought, why not intentionally create it for the world to see? If mainstream media wasn’t going to do it for me, then I was going to do it myself.”
In 2018, after years of juggling a full-time job and his side hustle making and promoting Lao cuisine, Saeng left the security of his academic career to work as a personal chef, cooking teacher, content creator, and, most recently, cookbook author.
When we sat down to speak with Saeng about how he landed his first cookbook deal with Ten Speed Press, he half-joked that he “manifested” it. But far from understanding “manifesting” as a “quasi-spiritual” notion that “the vibes of the universe will bring what you desire into existence,”1 Saeng created a spreadsheet with his short-term and long-term goals for himself, and he got to work.
Although Saeng didn’t share with us the full details of what he wrote on that spreadsheet, we imagine it may have included things like:
Become a leading expert in Lao cooking
Have over 900K followers and millions of views on social media
Become an active member in the Lao Food Movement
Publish a Lao cookbook with a big-name US publisher
Run annual food tours to Laos
Publish articles and recipes in numerous publications such as Delish, Buzzfeed, the New York Times, and the LA Times
Have a personal chef business and cook for Hollywood clientele
Use social media platforms to advocate, uplift, and center Lao cuisine
One thing that may not have been on Saeng’s list of goals was to become a professional food photographer, but when he couldn’t find a Lao photographer to shoot his cookbook, he set out to become one. Another accomplishment to add to an already impressive list! (Tune into the episode to hear how he went about it, along with a story about the time he almost got arrested for running a food cart without the proper paperwork!)
Whether you’re an aspiring cookbook author, budding food photographer, enterprising content creator, or curious about Lao cuisine, Saeng’s story offers much in the way of instruction and example.
Links from the episode:
Saeng Douangdara Website
The Lao Kitchen: Lao Flavors & Stories Told Through Family Recipes, by Saeng Douangdara
Visit the Everything Cookbooks Bookshop to find books mentioned in the show. (Buying books here supports the show, independent bookstores, and authors. A win-win-win! 🏆)
Next up on EVCB:
Nandita Godbole, an author who has fully crowd-funded and self-published seven cookbooks (and counting), joins us to talk about the ups and downs and pros and cons of going this route. Until then, keep on writing, reading, and cooking. ✍️📚🍳
Molly and the EVCB crew
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From a New York Times Opinion Essay, “The Long, Strange History of Manifesting,” by Tara Isabella Burton, the author of “Self-Made: Creating Our Identities From da Vinci to the Kardashians” and the novel “Here in Avalon.” (Link is for a gift article.)
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