In 2009, Nong Poonsukwattana was struggling to make ends meet with her Thai chicken and rice food cart in Portland, Oregon. The carts across the street had long lines, but hers didn’t. Several months into running Nong’s Khao Man Gai, she got a phone call that would change her life. It was a reporter from the local newspaper, The Oregonian, who wanted to interview her.
“When the photographer came by and took pictures, I’ll always remember he said, ‘Do you know this going to be big?’ And I didn’t know quite exactly what he meant.”
What he meant was that the day after the story came out, Nong’s Khao Man Gai had throngs of people willing to wait two hours to taste her food, and that continued day after day. She’s since been featured multiple times in The Oregonian, as well as Eater, Vice, PopSugar, and even on Food Network’s “Chopped” in 2014.
“It showed me how powerful the press is,” she says.
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