A Taste of Tradition

The year was 1974, a turbulent and terrifying time for many people in Southeast Asia. American bombs had only recently stopped falling on Laos, where Pathet Lao rebels would soon establish a communist dictatorship that exists to this day. Next door, North Vietnamese forces were just months away from taking over Saigon, and the Khmer Rouge was about to commence its repressive, genocidal rule of Cambodia. But at the Royal Palace in Luang Prabang, British ambassador Alan Davidson and the crown prince of Laos, Vong Savang, were talking food — specifically, fish.

Davidson, a burgeoning food writer, was interested in the edible fish of the Mekong River, and he had sought the crown prince’s thoughts on the topic. Before leaving, Davidson asked for sources of fish-based recipes, and the crown prince paused, “as though searching his memory,” Davidson would later recall, and returned