Seattle's Phnom Penh Noodle House: Excellent Food, Remarkable Chef Owner

Sam (Seng) Ung cries quietly, dabbing his eyes with a crumpled tissue, as Tom McElroy reads aloud a harrowing passage from Sam’s book I Survived the Killing Fields. If you want the epitome of someone crying with dignity, Sam’s the man.

I’m at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District, just a few blocks from Sam’s restaurant Phnom Penh Noodle House, for the book reading. A few weeks ago I wandered past the restaurant and noticed a big sign in the window about Sam’s book. Intrigued, I went inside and bought a copy from his lovely daughter Dawn, who works in the family business.

Although I had plans to meet friends for lunch elsewhere in the I.D., I decided to come back for a meal soon. Who can resist a wonderful bowl of noodles?

I noted the date of Sam’s next reading and plowed through the book—a quick but sometimes difficult read, with a few flashes of humor. (When he was new to America and cooking in a burger joint, the waitress gave him an order for a burger but told him to “hold the onion.” How, Sam wondered, was he supposed to cook a burger while holding an onion?)

When I was a carefree American youth, Sam was living through the insanity and Hell on Earth that was Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime of the late 1970s. He writes of being captured and interrogated by Khmer Rouge soldiers while out trying to find food for his family, seeing people around him murdered on a whim, watching family members die of malnourishment and untreated ailments, and much more. It goes on and on, with scenes of terrible suffering coupled with Sam and his family’s amazing resilience and endurance.