With flowers in her hair, "Aunty La" has served Thai food at Avondale Sunday Market for decades. Amanda Saxton tries it out.
A man in a Hunting & Fishing beanie recently told me that "Aunty La and Uncle Tuoi taught this old Māori fulla to love chilli oil". We were at the Avondale Sunday Market, each with a steaming bowl of Thai combination noodle soup ($15). I dithered over whether or not a spoonful of deep red, flame-hot condiment would combust my ability to enjoy more subtle flavours. Sixty-one-year-old James Kawiti urged me on. He drives down from the Hokianga every few months to stock up on tubs of the stuff.
"I've been eating here for 20 years … this place is close to my heart," Kawiti continued. "It's the way Aunty La treats people. Her aroha. She's famous around here, ask anyone."
Monthien Tang - better known as Aunty La - is an Avondale institution. A sunbeam of a woman, with flowers in her hair and jokes for loyal customers, in the sunshine-yellow food truck she operates with her husband, Sisongkhami Sirisomphone (better known as Uncle Tuoi). People queue for the couple's noodle soups and golden, crisply blistered pork crackling. They snap up assorted $4 skewers: satay chicken, barbecue pork, moneybags, pork balls, Thai sausage. Her home-made chilli oil, infused with dried shrimp, ginger and lemongrass, reels in others.
Aunty La's recipes are from Thailand, but 54-year-old Tang and 61-year-old Sirisomphone hail from neighbouring Laos. They are refugees who fled the aftermath of a proxy war between Cold War powers. In the 60s and 70s, America dropped enough bombs on Laos to make it the world's most heavily bombed country per capita. Yet the Soviet-backed communists won, remaining in power today.