The Yangs of Curry Leaf

When Alexander Yang moved to Humboldt County amid the pandemic lockdown in 2020, he hoped to build his relationship with his mother More Yang, who goes by Wendy and had moved north from Fresno 15 years earlier. For the past couple of years, their plans for Kogiri, a Korean barbecue spot in Arcata, have stalled over permits. Now, with that project still in flux, mother and son are running Curry Leaf (2335 Fourth St., Eureka) and cooking traditional Thai food together.

Born and raised in Fresno amid a large Hmong community, Alex says he has always cooked. Since his father worked the swing shift, after school he was home with his siblings and uncle. “My uncle was a shit cook — I’m so sorry,” he laughs out. Feeding everyone came naturally and he fell in love with cooking. On a break from college, he worked at a sushi place called Wasabi that was owned by Korean Americans. There, he learned to make both Japanese and Korean food. Meanwhile, at home he was cooking Italian, French, Korean and the Hmong food he grew up with. He scrapped his plans to return to college and applied for culinary school, eventually graduating from the Institute of Technology in Clovis.

A first-generation Hmong immigrant from Laos, Wendy learned to cook her mother See Yang’s recipes. “She always made the house smell so good and made the house feel like a home,” she says, making traditional rice and laab, as well as chicken and beef soups. “I came here in 2012 to Humboldt and I left my four kids in Fresno. It’s really hard being a single mother and trying to find my way here in Humboldt,” she says. In 2020, she asked Alex to join her and they started to talk about opening a restaurant, “something that will last.”

Alex had worked in a few kitchens and helped open Lily’s Thai Kitchen in Willow Creek with Vongdeun “Lily” Phongpaseuth, Wendy’s “sister from a different mother” whom he calls “Auntie” and is “one of the best chefs I’ve ever worked with.” That was in 2021 and he recalls snow stranding people but bringing in crowds of hungry Caltrans workers.

Soon plans were underway for Kogiri, but every permit that went through seemed to breed more requirements from the city of Arcata, Alex says. The tabletop grills, still to be properly installed, are visible through the windows, prompting questions about when it’s going to open. But now the family is considering whether buying the building would make things easier, even if slower.

Alex says he worked at Plaza Grill, Rooftop and even Taco Bell in the interim. “It might just be the ADHD in me, but I was waiting for permits to happen,” and he couldn’t “sit still.” The stint in fast food, he says, was instructive in terms of learning management and consistency, especially under pressure.

Then Joe Tan, who had been trying to sell his pan-Asian restaurant Curry Leaf, made him an offer too sweet to walk away from. “I was like, ‘Bro, why would you do this to me?'” he says, with a sigh and a chuckle. “He broke me down.”

The Yang family took over Curry Leaf in May, and a banner declaring its new management still hangs over the entrance to the large dining room that was once home to the Gonsea Chinese Restaurant. Phongpaseuth helped with the menu and joined them in the kitchen along with Alex’s brother Arthur Yang.

“We’re Thai food but our name still has Asian fusion in it,” says Alex, “And I can be as creative as possible there.” When things settle, he hopes to do a chef’s table with fine dining course sets.

“My mom has almost no restaurant experience but she is a great home cook,” says Alex. He admits sometimes they butt heads in the kitchen, and teaching her professional kitchen protocols sometimes means a reversal of their dynamic. “There’s always that heat, like, ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean what I said when we were in a rush.'” He laughs and says, “I feel like our relationship is deepening as we yell at each other. … It’s more fun than it is frustrating.”

Wendy says, “Sometimes it’s tough because he’s young. But he’s working really hard … and learning at the same time.” Seeing him put in 16-hour days, she says, “I give him a lot of credit.” Not that she’s going to let him win every time. “I grew up more in a traditional way and he went to school, and he has to do everything by the book. He’s too Americanized and I’m more traditional, so sometimes he doesn’t want to use some ingredients,” she says. “Sometimes he win, sometimes I win.”

“I lived in Thailand for about 10 years, and I love traveling so I’ve been in and out of Thailand for the last few years,” she says. It’s important to her that the flavor profiles of classic Thai dishes like laab and tom yum goong are traditional, with galangal, lemongrass, chiles, lime leaf and mint. Cooking in a professional kitchen, she says, she’s developed a new appreciation for the work of sourcing ingredients at a restaurant. “Sometimes you just go eat pho, but you don’t appreciate all the ingredients that go into it.”

The result is a springy pad Thai ($18) that offers mild sweetness along with the tang of tamarind and a pad ka pow with tender, knife-minced beef and heady doses of Thai basil chiles and garlic ($20). The wide fried rice noodles in the pad see ew ($20) are wonderfully smoky with wok hei and soy sauce.

“I wanted to make it more like homemade, to make something different,” says Wendy, who adds making sauces from scratch is worth the extra effort.

On that score, mother and son agree.

Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.

This article appears in The Grand Jury Reports.