The first time my family and I ate at Loak Toung, a small Thai restaurant in an off-the-beaten-path strip mall, we hadn’t officially moved to Tacoma yet. We were at a nearby Home Depot looking for something or other and decided to grab some lunch. It turned out, before we even had a home in Tacoma, we had a favorite restaurant.

Loak Toung is a literal mom-and-pop joint. In the kitchen, Maam Ray cooks up favorites from the Isan region, a part of Thailand that borders Laos and Cambodia, along with her daughter, Mook. In the front of the house, her husband, Jeremy Ray, who grew up in Puyallup, is the kind of waiter who often finds himself seated at a table with his guests, explaining the specials or just catching up on life.

I’m not a food critic or food writer or food expert, but to me, this is the kind of place that feels like home. The produce is fresh, the servings are hearty, and the flavors are both comforting and surprising. The name of the restaurant, Loak Toung, means something like “salt of the earth" in Thai, says Jeremy Ray. It speaks not just to the kind of food they serve, which Maam describes as more rural than the typical Bangkok fare at American Thai joints, but also the communal place from which they serve it.

“It’s nice introducing our style of food to people here since I feel like a lot of Thai food representations that we currently have is a lot of city food rather than our more home cooked–style meals here,” says Mook.

Maam and Jeremy met more than 20 years ago, when Jeremy was traveling through Thailand. A taxi dropped him off at a marketplace in the Bangkok suburb of Mumburi, where Maam was operating a food stall with her sister.

“I met her and she took me around Thailand and was super nice, and I came home and said, ‘I kind of miss her a little bit,’” says Ray. “And then I ended up going back to see her a few times, and then I got a job in the Middle East so I could go back all the time. And then we got married.”

They moved to Tacoma, and soon afterward, Maam landed in the kitchen at Indochine, a big downtown restaurant with a decidedly different vibe from Loak Toung. She worked there for nine years. Neither Maam nor Jeremy ever anticipated opening their own place together. (When I ask if this was always the plan, Maam can't stop laughing.) But when the Rays first opened Loak Toung in 2016, they were inspired by a few restaurants back in her hometown of Buriram: intentionally small places with a familial atmosphere and unpretentious food.

“I just want to create good food for customers,” Maam says. “We can share real food, what we eat every day in our hometown.”

“We ended up building a restaurant, and it’s ended up just being part of our family, our community,” Jeremy adds.

They hold an annual pumpkin-carving contest, filling up the restaurant space with friends—many of whom are old customers. They help cater a Thai festival put on every year by Tacoma's Asia Pacific Cultural Center. They source their food from local farmers, Southeast Asian grocers, and at a Tuesday market held on the grounds of a nearby Cambodian temple. In the best way, the restaurant both creates its own community and upholds a larger one. 

For my household, not blessed with any great cooks, Loak Toung takeout orders became acts of grace during the pandemic. And visits to the dining room since then are relaxing in a way that only meals at a favorite local spot can be. It’s the kind of place where, when our kids are not on their best behavior, well, we at least know staff has seen them on better days. And where the food feels like it’s being prepared for you in particular, rather than for some nameless guest.

“Mom always made food at home and it’s pretty similar to what we offer here,” says Mook.

It's nothing fancy. But it's better than that. It's everything a family restaurant is supposed to be.