Doughnuts with a side of Cambodia cuisine at Tan’s Donut in Santa Rosa

Chef Sophai Chey didn’t want to sell me somlor machu kreung, she admitted after I returned to her Santa Rosa restaurant several days later for a sit-down interview.

“In Cambodia, everyone eats it, but here, it’s only people who already know about it,” she said, showing me around the kitchen at her tidy little cafe at Guerneville and Fulton roads. “So we wondered, does she really want that food? Has she had that food before? Will it be OK?”

The answer is, yes, yes and heck yes, for the savory, sweet-and-sour soup stocked with beef tendon, lemongrass and pungent fermented anchovy. I have traveled across the southeast Asian region and have fallen in love with many such dishes celebrating the earthy flavors that range from sweet to briny to salty, freshened with fresh herbs and exotic spices.

More curious for me, however: why was I eating Cambodian food in a doughnut shop? Sophai and her husband, Van Chey, own Tan’s Donut, a casual cafe anchored by display cases brimming with daily-baked pastries of all kinds. They purchased the place in 2000 from the Tan family, who still own the two other Tan’s locations to the east in Santa Rosa.

Their doughnuts are some of the best anywhere, with giant apple fritters, buttermilk bars, chocolate eclairs, cake, crunch topped treats and so much more. But a few years ago, they added a few Vietnamese and Thai dishes to their lineup, luring customers with familiar pho, vermicelli bowls and pad Thai.

Eventually, they added a handful of Cambodian dishes, promoted mainly through word-of-mouth. Then, after shutting down for a while this past winter to remodel the dining room, they reopened in January with an expanded menu of Cambodian classics.

The Chey family doesn’t believe crullers and cha kreung satch moan (Cambodian lemongrass chicken stir-fry, $17.50) are popular combos in their homeland — they just thought, “we’ve got a big kitchen, why not.”

Their American-born daughter, Veronica Chey, didn’t quite get it, either. “But then I found a story about a guy in Long Beach who had a whole thing down there,” she said.

And yes, Cambodian-owned doughnut shops are a significant industry in the Southern California city, boasting its own “Cambodia Town” neighborhood. One local restaurant, Koh Ruessei, does serve Cambodian and Thai food and shares space with a Latino bakery specializing in elaborate birthday and wedding cakes.

There are more stores across California, from Cambodian immigrants and their kids who run the lion’s share of the state’s independent doughnut shops, plus plenty of doughnut-Chinese-Vietnamese-Thai food combo restaurants (think Savor Vietnamese Cuisine on Montgomery Drive near Mission Boulevard or Yo Panda on Corporate Center Parkway at Sebastopol Road, both in Santa Rosa, and both owned by a Chey cousin).

Yet, the Cheys’ business is unique for our area.

“In Santa Rosa, we just don’t have Cambodian food,” Sophai said. “Some places say they have it, but it’s more Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese — they don’t know how to cook Cambodian correctly.”

When Sophai was a young girl, she watched her mother run a small roadside stand in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

“It was hard work and a struggle,” she recalled. “She didn’t have a license or anything, just cooked to support us kids. Poor people cannot afford beef or even lemongrass, so people could buy it just once in a while. Still, when I played games, I played cooking.”

She learned how to make Cambodian curry, flavored with rich pork blood, chile paste and crunchy bamboo, then tossed with vegetables, rice vermicelli and either tofu ($16), chicken ($17.50) or shrimp ($18.50).

She watched how beef stew came together with hunks of slow-braised beef tendon and flank, meatballs, carrots, onions, star anise, red chile, palm sugar and many other ingredients she keeps secret ($19.50). A touch of fish sauce adds a delightful sour bite to the long-simmered, soupy concoction you can soak up with rice, vermicelli or fresh-baked bread from the Tan’s oven.

And she made lok lak, a traditional salad platter of sliced beef, tomatoes, cucumber, red onion and lettuce arranged like a wagon wheel ($18). The beef is marinated with soy sauce, oyster sauce, tomato sauce, sugar, fish sauce, ground black pepper and garlic, then wok-seared and served with a dipping sauce of lime, black pepper and prahok fermented fish paste.

Or maybe it’s not that recipe, exactly.

“For all my dishes, when I think about food, I just add things to make it taste even better,” Sophai said. “All my friends ask what I put in it, but I just rely on my own palate.”

For her — and my — favorite somlor machu kreung, though, it was her father’s recipe that she wanted to replicate. “My dad, he is the best cook for that kind of soup,” she said. “When I eat this, I miss him.”

The critical component is mam ca sac (“Pickled Gouramy Fish”), which is not, as I first thought, a misspelling of gourmet. It is a freshwater gourami species native to southwest Asia that, incidentally, can climb, use its fins and tail to push itself along the ground and survive out of water for long periods. It’s famous not just for its tasty, thick flesh but for escaping market baskets and skittering away.

Add to that anchovy extract, rice powder, salt and sugar, and you have that distinctive aroma that can make first-timers to the cuisine hesitate.

“Usually, people don’t go for it,” Veronica acknowledged. “Fish sauce is (the) base of a lot of our dishes, and yeah, it makes them smell a little crazy. Our thing is, don’t be scared of the smell until you taste the food.”

Chewy beef tendon and fatty flank steak slow-cooked for about seven hours until the meat is perfectly tender-chewy and the cartilage melts in your mouth. A healthy dose of tamarind powder and thick wands of crisp lemongrass add extra tang and a beautiful acidic bite, while strips of red bell pepper and soft green bell pepper bring a slightly sweet note ($19). The broth thickens as it cools, and that’s when I like to spoon it over the side of hot white rice.

As much as Sophai loves cooking, she never dreamed she would be doing it in Sonoma County.

After the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975, Van and his family were sent to refugee camps. After securing sponsorship and learning English in the camps, Van emigrated to California in 1985 and settled into high school.

Adapting to American culture was a challenge, and he and other immigrant southeast Asian friends soon found themselves acting out and getting in trouble. The solution was simple, he recalls his mother saying: “You’re a bad boy. You need to get married.”

Van’s father was friends with Sophai’s father back in Cambodia and decided to make a match.

“I never talked to the boys in school, it’s hard,” she said. “One day, my dad told me, ‘You have to get married.’ I was shocked, I said, no, but I don’t know him. My dad said, ‘I already engaged you.’ I said, how do I do that, I don’t know him. But (Van) came to Cambodia, and I said, OK.”

In 1994, Sophai, then 21, came to the United States with her first daughter, Molyta Chey, just 10 months old.

By then, Van worked as a paralegal to help fellow immigrants get settled in the states, assisting with translating, expiring Visas and such. He was also a preschool teacher at Head Start, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services program for early childhood education, health and nutrition for children in low-income families.

Sophai, unable to attend school and learn English while caring for Molyta (and later her daughter, Veronica), worked at several electronics companies. She and Van started a cleaning business while also working two other jobs and finally saved enough money to purchase Tan’s. It was good timing, as after 30 years with Head Start, Van suffered a stroke and had to retire.

Besides making Sophai happy to cook again, and allowing the Chan clan income, owning Tan’s has also benefited their family back in Cambodia.

“The shop has really helped my parents sponsor more family to come here,” Veronica said. “All my four cousins first worked here when they came to America. My grandparents were able to come visit and could have stayed, but they didn’t really like it and went back home. And since we opened, we’ve always had one baker, my cousin-in-law, Louep Nop. He bakes at night and works at FedEx during the day.”

With post-pandemic business back on track, the Cheys hope to expand their menu this year. The cuisine is already popular with locals from the Philippines, Laos and Thailand, and it’s suddenly attracting interest from young Americans who the Cheys find are typically more adventurous diners.

Diners wanting to explore even more can, for now, check their Facebook for Saturday specials like spicy fish soup or somlaw karkoh veggie-chicken “gumbo.”

“Sometimes I am scared people won’t like it, but lots more people suddenly want to try it,” Sophai said. “And they come back.”

Veronica smiled. “We keep it how we like our food for ourselves, and it’s kinda like if they don’t like it, then, well … we’re authentic Cambodian.”

Carey Sweet is a Sebastopol-based food and restaurant writer. Read her restaurant reviews every other week in Sonoma Life. Contact her at carey@careysweet.com.