Saeng Douangdara
Do you want to work with Saeng? Click here!
Saeng Douangdara is a personal chef who specializes in Lao cuisine turned content creator with over 700K followers and millions of views on social media. Douangdara has been passionate about food since he was a kid and learned a lot from observing his mother cook for their family.
After earning an undergraduate degree in social welfare with certificates in Asian American Studies and Southeast Asian Studies, Douangdara pursued a Master’s degree in counseling psychology. While working as a counselor at the University of California, he also taught as a chef instructor in the evening at The Gourmandise School. This is where his passion for teaching Lao cuisine to the world truly took off. Douangdara decided to take a month-long trip back to Laos to reconnect with his roots and learn more about the history and culture of Lao food. This trip inspired him to start a personal chef business, Saeng’s Kitchen LLC, and cook for Hollywood clientele. He also noticed a gap in the representation of Lao food on social media and decided to use his platform to advocate, uplift, and center Lao cuisine. So far his work has been featured in numerous publications such as Delish, Buzzfeed, The New York Times, and LA Times.
Douangdara won an episode of the new TBS cooking competition show, “Rat In The Kitchen.” He is also one of many chefs who are part of the Lao Food Movement, a grassroots effort to center and empower Lao cuisine. His goal is to continue advocating for Lao cuisine and inspire other explore the delicious flavors to our culture.