HOLLAND, Mich. — Early Friday morning, Taste of Asia began preparing their Khao Piak noodles. Made from tapioca flour, they formed and sliced the noodles by hand to be used for Khao Piak Sen, a hearty chicken and noodle dish in Laotian and other Southeast Asian countries. 

It’s one of several dishes they are preparing for hundreds of people at this weekend’s inaugural Great Rotary Asian Noodle Cookoff in Holland.

For owner Ketkeo “Lina” Vongkaysone, their family restaurant is a dream come true. They opened it in Holland in 2017. She runs the business alongside her husband and their children.

“I talked to my husband like, ‘I really want to do a restaurant,'” said Vongkaysone. “I love serving people. I love seeing them enjoying the food, and that’s why I’m here.”

She said opening a restaurant is her way of fulfilling a universal need, and that is the need for everyone to eat.

“My main goal was, I feel like everybody could eat. My family would always have food where we can always provide our family food over the table,” said Vongkaysone, who also took part in Lunch Buddies for Kids during the COVID-19 Pandemic. “People should be able to eat and to survive.”

A second-generation Laotian American, her experiences being born in the U.S., moving back to Laos as a child and returning to the U.S. have shaped her value for sharing food with the community.

“I found a dish that we, my brother and I, actually really love, which is the Khao Piak noodle. So that is something that really kind of reminded us, like the chicken noodles from the can a little bit, but a little bit better,” said Vongkaysone with a giggle.

Charles Elwood, an organizer for the cookoff and co-president of the West Michigan Asian American Association, says the lakeshore’s diverse Asian American communities will now have an outlet to share their cultures.

“A lot of Asians, we speak with our food. That’s part of I think what bridges all Asian cultures is we love our food, we love sharing our food,” said Elwood. “We just never had an event that brought everybody together.”

The event kicks off at 6 p.m. at the Midtown Center in Holland. Elwood said the event has sold out each time they announced additional tickets. Participating restaurants make sure enough food is prepared for all attending.

Restaurants located across West Michigan, from Laotian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indian, along with Singaporean & Malaysian cultures are expected to take part.

For Vongkaysone’s family, they said it is important for them to represent their experience.

“There’s not a lot of representations for Laotian culture and Khao Piak is such a great dish that not a lot of people know about, so we’re really excited to be able to represent,” said Vongkaysone’s daughter, Phinkeo.