Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Food
Episode: Mark Padoongpatt, “Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America” (U of California Press, 2017)
Description: In Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America (University of California Press, 2017), Mark Padoongpatt weaves together histories of food, empire, race, immigration, and Los Angeles in the second half of the twentieth century. Flavors of Empire explores how Thai food became hyper-visible in the United States, and yet Thai people have remained relatively invisible in American life. The story of Thai food in America begins with U.S. informal empire and culinary tourism in Thailand in the 1950s. Subsequent migration and settlement in LA spurred a Thai restaurant boom in the 1970s and 1980s. Padoongpatt investigates...